Healthy Food vs Junk Food
Diet is almost everything according to nutritionists. The importance of consuming a healthy diet is immensely beneficial for a good and enjoyable lifestyle. As many religions and persisting cultures refer, the food that we eat should be in the desired quality in terms of nutrition as well as taste. However, the world today is facing a serious problem regarding junk food or unhealthy food. Many health-related problems have a common origin, that is junk food. Therefore, it is extremely important to distinguish healthy food from junk food for a healthy lifestyle.
Healthy Food
As it sounds, the healthy foods simply benefit the health of a person. However, there is no precise definition for the term, but it includes many types of foods including natural food, organic food, uncompressed and unrefined food, and nutritional supplements. These types of foods are available in the farmlands obviously, but not everyone can go to farmlands to buy healthy foods. Therefore, supermarkets have now opened sections for healthy food. Functional foods are also healthy foods, and sometimes people even refer these two to be the same. However, functional foods are processed food without additives that would affect the consumers health. Healthy foods have a great nutritional value and most importantly, they are problem free. Hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and cancers are some of the main health-related problems that the man face today, and all those will have an excellent answer through the consumption of healthy foods. The essential vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are adequately present in healthy foods. Mostly fresh vegetables and fruits have all these incredible potential to defend us.
Junk Food
Junk means waste or of no real importance. When junk becomes as an adjective to the term food, it sounds dangerous. However, junk food means that there is very little or no nutritional value. It encompasses an array of foods including both sugary and fatty products and breads also. According to Michael Jacobson (1972), any food that is unhealthy via regular consumption is also junk food, additionally to the low nutritional value claim. Because of the flavours and other additives to these foods, people love to consume them. In addition, the convenience in consuming and preparing has also been a major cause for the attraction of people into junk foods. They are generally high in calories with saturated fats, salt, and sometimes sugar. Additionally, there are very small amounts of fruits, vegetables, and dietary fibres. In analysing these facts, junk food could only give the consumers an immediate satisfaction, but with a load of problems, meanwhile the producers extract most of peoples’ money. It could affect the psychological states of people, and one study confirmed it using rats. Alterations in the brain was another interesting research, in which Johnson and Kenny (2010) state that junk food could affect the human brain as worse as what heroin and cocaine do.
Comparison of Healthy vs Junk Food
Although almost everything incorporated with healthy and junk food are opposite, the main differences are as follows.
| Healthy Food | Junk Food |
| Rich in nutrients viz. protein, carbohydrate, dietary fibres, fats, vitamins, minerals… etc | Low or no nutrients, but rich in saturated fats, salt, sugars, artificial flavours… etc |
| Prevents consumers from cancer, diabetes, heart diseases, and obesity | Causes the consumers to have cancer, diabetes, heart diseases, and obesity |
| Not convenient to access and prepare | Very convenient to access and mostly prepared and ready to eat |
| Mostly natural | Mostly artificial |
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