Healthy Lifestyle Through Healthy Food

            For years, doctors and nutritionist have said that a low fat diet is the key to losing weight, managing cholesterol and preventing health problems. This is true. Aside from exercising, eating healthy meals can keep us as fit as a fiddle and as healthy as a horse. 
  
            We have to eat healthy food to grow healthily and to stay strong in fighting against diseases. The types of healthy food include vegetable, fruits, whole grain pasta, protein foods like fish and chicken. Fruits and vegetable contain lots of vitamin and minerals. We should at least exercise three to five times a week for at least thirty minutes per session.

         People like to eat junk food because it is delicious. Children are attracted to it due to its colourings. Junk food tastes good  because it has high level of sugar content and artificial flavouring. Junk food has an extended expiring date due to the artificial preservatives that can cause side effects on our health.


           

High fat food changes our waistline as well as our brains. The more we are exposed to junk food, our brain will derive pleasure from the sugar in the junk food will the brain will in turn make us want to eat more junk food. Junk food is a processed food. Candies, potato chips, cakes, chewing gum and ice-cream are usually added with chemical preservatives and synthetic vitamins. Some of the most dangerous ingredients found in junk food are genetically modified ingredients. Junk food has preservatives. Eating junk food is bad because it can lead us to suffer from health problems.

           An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Prevention is better than cure. We should start early on eating healthy food instead of junk food. The advantages of healthy food are; it can reduce the risk of cancer and many other types of diseases, it is cure to illnesses, it keeps our body fit and healthy. The advantages of junk food are; it is much cheaper and it taste good. However, the disadvantages of junk outweigh it advantages. They are bad for health as it can lead to many types of illnesses, can cause obesity, rot our teeth prematurely due to its high sugar content, it can raise the blood pressure due to its high salt content making our health to deteriorate.

           As a matter of fact, healthy fats play a huge role in helping us manage our mood, stay on top of our mental game, fight fatigue and control our weight. Soymilk, tofu, olives, avocados, olive oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, soybean oil, corn oil, fatty fish like salmon, tuna, sardines; nuts like almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, cashews are sources of healthy fats. The types of unhealthy food are candy or sweets, snacks, carbonated drinks and hamburger from fast food outlets. As we can see how junk food affects our internal body structures, hence we should change our eating habits. Healthy food keeps us healthy and happy.

    

Joyce Tan Hsin Yi

Sri KDU International School