Food is the fuel we consume to survive. It provides us with essential nutrients and proteins we use to power our cells and maintain our body. Since the time of prehistory until recently, humans have survived on natural, organic food. Whether they obtained it through hunting and gathering or agriculture, the food was always, well, pure. Now our food is a little less than that.
The continuing trend of obesity and the health problems it creates can be directly attributed to the diet. A diet high in heavily processed food, sugars and fats will ultimately lead to weight gain and poor overall health.
But this is common knowledge; one diet can allow an almost disease-free life and another can riddle you with health problems eventually causing an early death. A person with a poor diet, especially one high in heavily processed or chemically enhanced food, is not only setting himself up for obesity, but also cancer.
People tend to forget the real purpose of food. In our society, where food is so abundant, people forget you used to have to hunt or gather, or starve and die. Food was the ultimate goal of each day, and so it was appreciated and honored among all else. Nowadays, my brother tells me he sometimes feels like eating is simply a chore, one he finds vexing.
With this cavalier attitude about food, we also have prolific, unhealthful snacks and servings that are provided in large quantities. The portions are bigger, the taste is bigger and so, in turn, people become bigger.
Too often people feel compelled, whether chemically, such is the case with Monosodium Glutamate, or socially, to eat more and more when actually we require less and less as our lifestyles, though increasingly hectic, become ever more sedentary.
One problem with MSG is that it turns off the switch in your brain that regulates the feeling of being full. This allows for several Big Macs to be ingested without noticing just how much food that actually is.
Though many people already know diet is key to health and happiness, they don't realize how much they could change their lives simply by changing their diet. A natural, organic diet is what you should strive for, though it is much easier said than done.
Money or willpower limitations abound. And the more we fall victim to cheap, fast food whether in the grocery store or a restaurant, a heavily processed or chemically grown diet will result in health problems, and cancer as the eventual end.
An organic, natural diet provides only what is needed to the body and nothing gets wasted, left to rot and be consumed by cancerous cells. The cure for cancer is not necessarily a magical pill or some secret we must spend money to find, it is simply a healthy life and an organic diet.
I recommend the documentary, "The Beautiful Truth," which provides a wonderful take as well as scientific evidence and a wide range of other subjects explored in detail that relate back to diet and health.
The opinions expressed are solely the writer's. Peter Reindl is a sophomore at Munster High School.
