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How Our Food Has Changed and the Impact of Those Changes Essay Example

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How Our Food Has Changed and the Impact of Those Changes Essay Example
How Our Food Has Changed and the Impact of those Changes
What do we eat? Food. Sounds simple enough, but is it? It used to be that food was all you could eat, but today there is a plethora of “edible food like substances” in our grocery store (Pollan). In today’s world, the fact that it is sold in a grocery store doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s nutritious or healthful. I’m going to step back into the past and show how food has changed in the last 50 years and the impact that it‘s having on us. It’s not just what we eat or how we eat, but how it affects us in everything from our physical health to our mental health to our pocket books.
Food that was available 50 years ago was vastly different from what is available today. There was more “real” food available. There was certainly the beginning of junk food back then, but it was different. The fast food places were almost non-existent. We had a limited amount of junk that we could buy. Homemakers were actually homemakers back then. They cooked from scratch a lot of the time and dinner was meat and potatoes, and a vegetable or two. Dessert was homemade. Only certain fruits and vegetables were available at any given time. It depended on what was in season at the time.
Then came the era of “fast.” Everything was fast, including food. Fast food places were popping up on every corner. We were in such a time crunch all of the time that we starting rushing through not only the eating, but also the preparation of our meals. Housewives thought that all the convenience foods were a great idea. It now took half the time to prepare a meal compared to making it from scratch. Surely the food was good and nutritious. Ah, the time it saved. It was thought to be wonderful; but at what price?
Food today is not as nutritious as it used to be. This is a contributing factor and, quite possibly, a major cause of the rapid rise in degenerative diseases. The fresh fruits and vegetables that are eaten now
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