Food Health and Diet Project: Analysis of My Food Habits

Many of the things that prefer to eat aren’t the healthiest choices. Naturally, the healthiest food choices tend to not be as tasty as the unhealthy food choices. Its food factors like Trans fats, sugar, and High fructose corn syrup are what we love because it makes everything taste artificially better. Although they may make foods taste better, they do not help with the improvement in our health, in fact, high consumption in some of these food factors and even just consumption in general of some can negatively influence danger in our health. Many overconsume these food factors have contributed heavily to the ever-rising epidemic of diabetes and obesity. With the data and results of this food health and diet project, I will be able to analyze my food habits, in each category and have a better comprehension of what my generally healthy food goals should be.

According to main.diabites.org, “Approximately 2,841,723 people in Texas, or 14.2% of the adult population, have diabetes”, the amount of people who suffer from diseases like diabetes locally is alarming and it should make us more cautious in our food and health choices. What exactly are Trans fats? Well according to americanheartassosication.org, “There are two broad types of trans fats found in foods: naturally-occurring and artificial trans fats”. The naturally occurring trans fats are found in the guts of some animals, while the artificial trans fats are industrially created superficially for food products. Both of these types of trans fats can negatively decrease your health not only can it cause high cholesterol and a high risk of stroke but the article states, “It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes”. Sugar is something that is most often put into our food items, it's important that we maintain our sugar levels but overconsumption of these items can cause serious health problems. According to everydayhealth.com, “That said, some research does suggest that eating too many sweetened foods can affect type 2 diabetes risk, and with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that 30.3 million Americans have the disease — and that millions of more individuals are projected to develop it, too — understanding all the risk factors for the disease, including sugar consumption, is essential to help reverse the diabetes epidemic” high sugar intake is definitely considered to be one of the main factors that can cause diabetes. High fructose corn syrup is another factor that contributes to the risk of getting diabetes many studies have been conducted over the correlation between high fructose corn syrup and the influence it has on the risk of getting diabetes. What is high fructose corn syrup exactly? It's something that we should all be familiar with since it's commonly used in our everyday food products. It may make foods taste artificially sweeter, but it can come at a cost, newusc.edu explains “A new study by USC and University of Oxford researchers indicated that large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in national food supplies across the world may be one explanation for the rising global epidemic of Type 2 diabetes and resulting in higher health care costs” high fructose corn syrup is filled with an unhealthy amount of sugar and overconsumption can have deadly results such as diabetes. Diabetes itself is already a horrible disease but it can also lead to obesity which is an even worse disease. Being a diabetic means you’ve already have made bad food health choices but being obese means you're constantly having bad food choices and eventually lead to your death.

My experience during this food healthy diet project was very insightful on my eating habits. For the first three days, I recorded my normal eating habits with all the normal food items I usually consume on a weekly basis. I wanted to keep my data as accurate as possible to my normal food intake so my results wouldn’t be biased. And then I totaled my average and then compared it to my recommended and noticed my food habits. Then when I logged in my after three-day information I tried to lower my sugar intake so I stopped snacking on candy as I usually would. I didn’t want to force myself to go on a full diet, because I personally do not have the motivation or willpower to strongly change my food choices. My sugars were low and all of my food groups (Carbs, Proteins, Fats) were way below the recommended amount. This whole process along with the graphs made me realize how unhealthy my food choices are. I mostly skip meals almost every day and don’t think about it but when I was able to look I realized how much nutrition that I was lacking in some areas and really made me think about my food choices. What most surprised me from learning all of this information from the project was the number of total calories that my before average was, I expected it to be over the recommended amount of calories but my results were.

In conclusion Factors like Trans-fats, sugar, and high fructose corn syrup are all food factors that are can become major health risks if you over-consume. Diseases like diabetes and obesity are most likely caused by these factors and these diseases can be very deadly if you do not choose your food choices correctly. This healthy food diet project has been very eye-opening, allowing myself to analyze my food eating habits and consider what my food patterns are. This project gave me the realization that I need to try to keep my calorie levels at a recommended level and eat more and less specific food groups, such as carbs, protein, and fats. Seeing the data from this project has opened up my eyes to my eating habits.