You Are What You Eat: THE IMPACTS ON AND RESPONSE BY SOCIETY

Impacts of High Consumption

Consumption of nutrients is needed in order for our body to function. However, when these nutrients are consumed in excess, it will cause negative effects on our health. Excessive proteins and carbohydrates consumed will turn into fats, which will lead to health issues such as obesity. A fat percentage of 30% falls under the obese category. A healthy adult should have 13-25% fats.

The Impact of Unhealthy Eating Habits and Unbalanced Diet

Obesity has become a weighty problem in developing and developed societies. Despite it being a more serious problem in other places, such as United States, Japan and France (just to name a few), the number of obese people in Singapore has also been inching up the scale over the past few years. The percentage of Singaporean adults who are obese rose from 8.6% in 1992 to 11.3% in 2010, and gone up to 12.9% in 2015.

Who are the “men who made us fat”?

Causes: Media influence

Almost everyone in the city is media and tech-savvy. We are constantly doused in the array of advertisements. Almost every commercial break, whether it is before a YouTube video, or in between television programs, we would be able to watch a fast food commercial. Those addictive jingles are deeply drilled into our ears, the visually palatable images of stringy cheese, thick trails of sauce and not to forget, the trademark deep-fried-yellow that fill most commercials, are all locked into our memory cells. So exactly how do they entice us audience into purchasing their irresistible pack of unhealthiness?

There are seasonal menus that these fast food empires offer. We all want to try something new to break out of our robotic work-life, and trying out these ever-changing menus definitely will do the trick. A perfect example is McDonald’s, in which the company has different menus for each season: Chinese New Year, Halloween, Christmas, Valentines etc. They even offer different varieties in different regions, making each meal even more unique and palatable. Pizza Hut also have their own trick up their sleeve: offering a wide variety of crusts for the pizza. Oreo have their own whopping lines of flavored cookies. Such wide variety of processed food choices will attract hungry customers to their doorstep.

An example of a seasonal promotional poster for McDonald’s.

Ultimately the reason why people constantly return back for more fast food is because it just tastes so good. The taste of fast food is very carefully controlled. People get addicted to these unhealthy processed food because they have just the right ratio of salt, sugar and fat. Once we get hooked onto these processed foods, it is extremely difficult to break out of the cycle.

Response by Society

The Singapore Health Promotion Board (HPB thereafter) launched an initiative to ensure school children were eating healthily in school. The Healthy Meals in Schools Program encourages healthier food choices in schools. This program involves the teachers, canteen vendors and students. This helps to cut down the fat, sugar and sodium intake, serving more whole grains, fruit and vegetables. The School Canteen Committee was set up in helping to regulate and monitor the food and beverages sold. Health Education  is a compulsory subject in the Primary School curriculum. These efforts were to help children cultivate the habit of healthy eating  and leading a healthy lifestyle.

Health Promotion Board have also launched the National Steps Challenge in 2016 to promote an active lifestyle, giving out free pedometers and fit-bands to encourage people to partake in the event.

Promotion of the National Steps challenge in the MRT station. Interactive media (the light-up floors) encourage participants to walk instead of taking the travelator.

The National Steps Challenge is to promote healthy lifestyle and raise awareness in the danger high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol levels. The program is encouraging participants to walk around 10 000 steps per day, which is to help in lowering blood pressure, blood cholesterol levels and improve glucose control.

The latest project the Health Promotion Board has carried out is the replacing of the Healthy Diet Pyramid. From recent surveys, it has shown that the percentage of Singaporeans aged 18 to 69 years that are obese jumped a whopping 57% from the previous survey in 2014. This has led to the HPB realizing that the pyramid still do not give Singaporeans a good idea on what is a balanced diet.

The Healthy Diet Pyramid will be replaced with My Healthy Plate, to give Singaporeans a better idea of the right portions and ratio of a variety of different food groups. This was introduce in the hopes of lowering the obesity rate in Singapore.

My Healthy Plate, replacing the Healthy Pyramid

In the midst of all these rising numbers, more and more health food bars have popped up. Lean Bento, The Daily Cut and Rawbar are just a few of the many that are now catered to provide healthier options to the working population as well. They are mostly located around the Central Business District. The “Healthy Eating” trend have become increasing popular, as seen from the increase in number of juice bars, salad stops and acai bowls shops throughout the years.

Green Bites outlet at Hong Lim Food Centre. Salads are in demand at hawker centres.

 

Project Acai: a popular health food shop. They sell acai bowls, which is a source of vitamins and fiber.

Despite being perceived as “healthy”, these dishes contain high levels of sugar and calories. Most of the ingredients used are not fresh. Fruits and vegetables lose nutrients extremely fast, thus by the time the food reaches your mouth, more than half the nutrients are lost.

Taking acai bowls fro example, they claim to be high in antioxidants ( a free radical that can help to reduce the cholesterol in the bloodstream), however most of the antioxidants are not stored in the juice of acai berries, which is what acai bowls are made from. The juice are mainly just sugar, which does more harm than good to our health. The amount of sugar per bowl is approximately equal to the amount of sugar in 2.5 cans of coke.

Nutrition facts for the acai bowl. There is an overload on Vitamin C, Sugar, and calories.

Salad dressing are usually loaded with fat, sugar, calories and sodium. This usually diminishes the health factor of the leafy greens itself. All in all, these dishes that are deemed as “healthy” may not be so healthy after all.

Conclusions

The most important takeaway here is to always eat in moderation and try to lead an active, healthy lifestyle. Sometimes it is hard to resist the temptation of our favorite snacks, which is alright, as long as we do not binge on it too often.

It is always better to purchase food without the nutrition labels. This means eat fresh food and not processed food. If we are purchasing processed food, always choose those that has the Healthier Choice label, and always remember to read the nutrition facts to understand what we are eating and to determine whether we are making a healthy choice.

Always choose the product with the Healthier Choice logo.