Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Is Fast Food The New Tobacco?

 


  

     The main question everyone keeps asking themselves is fast food considered the new tobacco? Quite honestly, it really should be considered the new tobacco. Fast food is everywhere and is easily accessible to anyone. Being that it is so accessible everywhere to everyone, a lot of people choose to go to fast-food restaurants before they even think about cooking at home or eating from a healthier place. Healthy restaurants are honestly hard to find around in the city I live. I feel like healthy places aren’t around as much as fast-food restaurants which makes it hard for people to resist the food that they like to order. Fast food becomes an addiction after the consistent eating of it. It can be so addicting even if you try sometimes, fast food is always around and available to us. For example, the app “Uber Eats” is used by so many people for when they don’t feel like cooking or don’t have time to cook and need something quick. They do have some healthy options but not many of them look appealing to most so, of course, most would rather choose the unhealthy option. So, Uber Eats is also contributing to the fast-food addiction.

  

 

  Some people can’t help but get food from their favorite fast-food chain restaurant. For some, all they can eat is fast food due to their circumstances. There are people who can’t afford to buy a bunch of groceries to make homemade food, so instead, they might go to McDonald’s for a three-dollar meal. This is why I don’t think the obesity issue should be government regulated. Everyone has different reasons for the way they eat, and some can’t help but eat it due to whatever is going on in their life. It’s more of a personal thing for everyone so therefore it should stay a personal responsibility. From the reading “Don’t Blame the Eater”, it was stated that “Lunch and dinner, for me, was a daily choice between McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut. Then as now, these were the only available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal.”(Zinczenko) In this example, David Zinczenko stated that because his mom worked long hours during the day he had no choice but to eat from these fast-food restaurants. They’re the most accessible and affordable. It is known that healthier options are more on the expensive side for different people.

   In the reading, “What You Eat Is Your Business”, it was stated that “The best way to alleviate the obesity “public health” crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of public health.” I had to disagree with this statement. He’s trying to say that removing people from their insurance that deal with obesity is the right thing to do in order to help fight obesity. I feel like that will end up being the complete opposite. In a lot of cases, people need the insurance to go to the doctor to help them lose weight; a significant amount of people probably have been trying. There are better ways to try and fight obesity. Michelle Obama tried to incorporate healthy lunch alternatives for the children because obesity can start very early in life and can become dangerous over time. Little things do go a long way in helping with the obesity issue. I personally feel like there’s always going an obesity issue but I do feel like over time it will decrease in percentages.



Sunday, February 6, 2022

Is Pop Culture Good for You?

 


    Today pop culture is included in everyone’s lives. We’re surrounded by pop culture daily. Simply just watching tv and logging into social media platforms each day is a form of pop culture. Whether or not people agree, pop culture has brought people together. You can interact with so many people daily even if you have no one around you. Social media helps different people from all around the world interact and state their beliefs and be who they are.  People around the world are influenced by pop culture also. If you think about pop culture has helped us in so many different ways.

    Let’s start with social media, social media is one of the most popular platforms that is used daily. People all around the world have some form of social media that allows them to socialize and post whenever they want. When I mentioned that pop culture brings people together, this is one of the ways that it has brought us together. For example, if multiple people see someone post something relatable, they’ll connect and bond over it. Sometimes you can even create lifelong bonds between someone you met through a screen which seems crazy, but it happens in real life.


Pop culture not only benefits us socially but benefits us intellectually. Watching television programs and browsing the internet helps us exercise our brains. According to Steven Johnson’s article, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, a lot of television shows are made to increase cognitive activity. Johnson used the example of the show “The Simpsons”. This show was made for just laughs and fun. This television doesn’t require much thought when watching it, so it doesn’t benefit your intelligence. A quote I picked from the article for my group’s collaborative work was “They reduce the amount of analytic work you need to do to make sense of a story.” Johnson’s main point in the article was to show the benefits of pop culture through TV. When you watch a show like “The Simpsons” you don’t have to think but when you watch a show like “The Sopranos”, it requires more intellectual thought which increases brain activity.

    Some may argue that pop culture is not good for us as a society. They may think that it can promote violence, create anxiety, make us less intelligent, etc. I believe that pop culture is beneficial. Yes, violence and forms of discrimination are displayed on a lot of platforms, but people also use these platforms to spread a lot of positivity. There’s always going to be someone negative that doesn’t agree with you. For example, on social media, some people do use these platforms to spread hate and violence for the world to see. A lot of people may see it and not pay it any mind because that’s just how social media works. Social media is one of the main reasons why mental health awareness has grown which is a very positive thing to promote. Some television shows don’t require thinking like “SpongeBob SquarePants” or “The Simpsons” but there are plenty more shows going on that require analytic work from the audience to understand. Tv doesn’t “dumb us down”, our brains are always working and when watching these shows it helps parts of our brains exercise. So, overall pop culture may have some negatives to it as everything else in the world has, but this has benefited the world so much in so many different ways.





My Mentor

  Having a mentor is really helpful in life. They’re someone you trust enough to give you the opportunity to be the best person you can be. ...