en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:44:19 GMT 15 By Louis Huang
Every two out of three people I see in the hallway are fat. That’s if our school represents the national average according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports that two-thirds of American citizens are overweight or obese. However, no one tells the fat man at the mall to put down the double quarter-pounder with bacon. Everyday dozens of kids migrate to various places outside the school to take their 'jack' or smoking break. The media blasts them for their apparent stupidity. Government ads talk about the horrible side effects of smoking, but at the same time we put things into our body that can be far worse than smokers' nicotine or even tar. No doubt smoking has its problems, but Livescience's report "10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction," junk food beats smoking as the leading way to kill yourself. Almost half a million people died directly from their eating habits last year, compared to 400,000 deaths caused directly from smoking. Yep, junk food has surpassed the infamous cancer stick, and to top it all off, pun intended, junk food affects more people than cigarettes. Back at school, while the smokers are outside freezing their butts off taking a drag, inside students munch down fatty chips and sugar drinks that clog their arteries. Students pack the snack bars and vending machines during break growing that plump belly that's oh so fashionable now adays. How many of us stuff our bellies with polysorbate 60 and maltodextrin, common ingredients in chips and Twinkies? Think about the emphasis on the arsenic and cyanide in cigarettes compared to the lack of emphasis of on polysorbate 60 and maltodextrin. Well, your fresh corn and apples have just as much pesticide. Just like peanut butter has a certain percentage of rat feces, all foods contain a few surprises that can be poisonous to your health, which is no different then the arsenic in your tobacco. Like junk food, the main factor involved in the damage done by smoking is the amount the person smokes. In fact, cigarettes have a 1:1 ratio of healing once one quits. That is, the day one stops smoking cigarettes, it takes a day for your lungs to heal for every pack you smoke. So if one smoked a pack a day for five years, then it would take five years for the lungs to heal. Fat cells on the other hand do not go away. Fat cells can shrink, but never leave your body. So next time before you spend your four dollars and fifty cents to get a big gulp and two hot dogs that have been rolling in grease all day, think. Junk food has become the cigarettes of our generation. ]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:04:00 GMT