Blog #6 - Kelli Grimm

Personally, my food habits suck… give me ALL the butter, sugar, and salt. My brothers and I grew up playing sports in addition to the countless activities we had somehow managed to overwhelm our two working parents with. This meant that there wasn’t always time to plan out a healthy meal and the quick option was often the one we went with. Since we stayed active year-round, my brothers and I never struggled with the daunting label of child obesity. But as I grew older and soon was in charge of buying my own groceries and planning my own meals I realized how unhealthy my go-to comfort food items actually were: chips-usually BBQ, popcorn, ramen, powdered donuts, McDonalds, and god forbid I went a day without pop. At the same time, my activity level decreased, and I began seeing fluctuations in my weight and health.

I was oh so lucky enough to date someone who was overly hypercritical of what was present on his plate (and mine) as he majored in dietetics and had suffered himself from childhood obesity. While his nagging about what I should eat usually just irritated me and made me want to stuff my face with chocolate cake, he eventually talked me into watching a documentary on Netflix called Fed Up which hit me like a sack of potatoes. The documentary focused on the obesity epidemic and largely focused on the dangers of sugar content in food production and how it was a ~typically hushed~ leading cause for obesity. High sugar content is not only sourced from food but beverages as well, Fed Up states that a 20-ounce bottle of soda contains the equivalent of approximately 17 teaspoons of sugar and would take a 110-pound child 75 minutes of riding a bike to burn the calories off alone. With the push back focused so largely on cutting fats, sugars went unnoticed. The food industry masked unhealthy foods with labels such as “low fat” and “no fat” however, these products are pumped with sugars to make up for the lack of taste. This is counteractive as excess sugar intake leads to high blood sugar levels, detected by the pancreas which then secretes insulin. Insulin signals your body to store the energy, often times in the form of fat cells or adipocytes leading to excess fat storage and eventually obesity.

This is largely due to the focused marketing towards children by food corporations. According to Fed Up, kids watch an average of 4000 food-related ads every year--98% of which are products high in fat, sugar, and sodium. Not only does the frequency of the ads make children more likely to favor unhealthy options but the ways in which advertisements draw kids in through color, characters, and toys makes it almost impossible for them to resist. Dietary choices then, become no longer the sole decision of the parents but the ads entice the children to favor specific foods resulting in an increase in product sales for corporations who can further fund marketing strategies for children.

Following this documentary, I became much more aware of what I was putting into my body and have made an effort to give up drinking pop (even though I still have a small problem and indulge in my cravings for caffeinated sugar every once in a while). I learned the importance of being observant of food labels and recognizing drastic changes in products which claim to be healthy.