Date Posted: 2/5/2013 3:13:31 PM
Posted By: jullieflavia Membership Level: Gold Total Points: 2188
Eating habits are why and how people eat as well as the way people obtain, store use and discard food. Since the turn of the century, new methods of processing and storage of food have resulted in a proliferation of the kinds and numbers of food items available to our population, but little is known about the ways in which such innovations have altered the specific composition of the diet. There is a big difference between the kinds of foods and ways in which we eat our food today. Modernization therefore has changed our eating habits and takes claim to both the desirable and also the undesirable. Modernization has changed people’s lives in very many aspects. Most of these trends in eating habits are man-made and can be changed through an awareness of nutrition on foods available to the population. People may gain understanding of nutrition and diseases but practicing them is not possible for some due to factors like poverty, ignorance, taboos among many others. These factors contribute to both positive and negative nutritional effects on people all around the world.In our African societies some communities form beliefs on what food is acceptable and what is not at times some foods are to be eaten only on specific occasions and by specific groups of people only. Such food practices are referred to as taboos and in this case food taboos. Most people form impressions about the way people interact with each other while eating food and what should be taken and not taken as food this is especially dictated by culture and religious doctrines. Some people have beliefs of how food is shared within a house. In some communities, women are forbidden to eat certain parts of an animal, certain prepared foods are only to be eaten by a particular group. At times culture dictates who eats first and who eats last. These food taboos sets boundaries to what one can eat and cannot eat. Within a community or a population of people, there exists inequality in terms of accessibility of food stuffs due to the varied economic statuses. Availability and demand are the determinants of food prices and therefore most of the unhealthy foods are cheap and easily accessible, more people therefore prefer to take junk food that is cheap. More than seventy percent of our population is struggling to make a living and cannot afford the highly prized healthy food in the market and this causes rise of unhealthy eating culture and consequently poor nutritional statuses. The poor are not able to maintain a healthy diet because they don’t have access to some kinds of food. They stick to a fixed diet for days or weeks just because that is what is available to them. Even when able to purchase more foods will not risk cooking some other kinds of food leaving the other to go bad. Preservative methods like refrigeration would not be available to the poor. With industrialization, new methods of cooking became popular because they are easy to learn and saves on time spent preparing food. As a result there has been an emergence of fast food places and since people work within tight breaks in their work places cannot go home for lunch they depend on the very easily available foods from the fast foods restraints.
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