Brooke Edmonds
September, 9, 2010
7:17pm
In 2000, the United States government set goals for the amount of fruits and vegetables people should be eating. Ten years later, health officials are saying most Americans are not even close to reaching these healthy eating goals. The goal is for 75 percent of people to eat at least two servings of fruit and 50 percent of people to eat at least three servings of vegetables everyday. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 67.5 percent of people eat fruit less than two times a day and 73.7 percent eat vegetables less than three times per day. Connie Diekman, director of nutrition at Washington University says that some of the reasons for the decrease is because eating fruits and veggies is inconvenient for people who need fast snacks or meals. She also said another reason is because nowadays its so easy to grab fast food and junk. Dr. Jennifer Foltz says in the next several years new programs will get involved to start promoting healthy eating and bringing more fruits and vegetables into the workplaces and schools.
After reading this article, I was not surprised at all by the decreases in healthy eating. Its no wonder people don’t eat fruits and vegetables very often since most are pricey and not convenient to take along to school and work. If fast food restaurants and school cafes would start offering more healthy options at reasonable prices instead of the usual cheap fried foods, a lot of people would start meeting the healthy eating goals because they would be more likely to buy healthier foods at lower prices. I think the writer of this article did a good job hitting the main points he was trying to get across and he even used quotes from other sources to back up what he was trying to say.
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/642984.html
2 comments:
I agree with you Brooke. Fast food is literally everywhere when you walk outside and look boths ways more than likely soemthing will be in your face. It's very cheap, convenient, and not very time comsuming at all. Now take eating healthy, cost much more, not found in a bunch of place and its time consuming trying to read labels to check the sugar or sodium levels and counting calories. It's much easier to go down to McKie D's and grab a burger, fries and a drink for $3.24 than do all that so it doesn't really surprise me that a third of our nation doesn't receive the proper amount of fruits and vegetables each day. I am included but it does push me to want to change that.
This article is not at all surprising but it is sad. Children develop bad habits at an early age since they learn best from example and if their parents are eating poorly then the trend will continue.
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