#thereasonswhy

By: DJ Mitchell

So I’ve lived in Palos Heights for my entire life. When I was little, there was only one fast food restaurant that was in palos and it was a McDonald’s. Now there are four. There were restaurants that were in Palos for years. Now they come and go frequently. There was a restaurant named Bona Pit that was around for as long as I could remember. Now, about 4 restaurants have been made in that building and got outcompeted within years. This is because of the new fast food restaurants that are taking over my neighborhood and this new world.

It’s completely obvious why these fast food corporations are taking over and why obesity is on the rise and people are completely oblivious to it. People eat fast food due to the fact that it is extremely cheap. The food that Dale and I made costs around 7 dollars to make. With that money, a poor mother could buy a full meal for herself and her kids. It’s a cheap fast meal which seems to be the only dinner option she has. I went to the McDonald’s by my house and interviewed my friend Jayden that works there. He is on my swim team and I find myself being extremely competitive with him due to the fact that we swim the same stroke. I asked him various questions about the food he serves. I asked him if he ever gets repeated customers and his exact words were “All the time. A single mother comes by and buys double cheeseburgers for each of her kids almost on the daily.” When he told me this, I was shook. I decided to do some research on what is inside of a McDonald’s double cheeseburger. I found out that a McDouble has 25.9 grams of fat and 10.5 of grams of saturated fat. This is disgusting. I’ve seen people and even find myself guilty of eating 2 or 3 McDouble. This is over 20 or 30 grams of unsaturated fat. This mother has no other option though and she is forced to feed her children this due to low money and the very expensive prices at grocery stores like Jewel. After this learning this, I went to Jewel across the street and looked at the prices of fruit and vegetables. A fricken ball of iceberg lettuce costs six dollars. How can a family that is tight on money make a salad when lettuce costs six dollars by itself. This isn’t even including the fruits or other toppings. What sounds like a better option for a family. A couple double cheeseburgers that cost about a dollar each or a salad that can exceed ten dollars. I might sound like a person who does not eat fast food but I eat it regularly. After practice, I find it as a quick meal. After learning these facts, I may never eat fast food due to the fact of the knowledge I gained. This brings me to my next point which is how people are not informed of what they are eating.

Ya still with me, Ok good. I’ve heard throughout my life that people don’t want to find out what’s in fast food because “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.” This accusation is completely false. Because you don’t know what is going in your body doesn’t mean that it is negatively impacting it. What if your drink acid on accident and you did not know it was acid? Does that mean that you are not gonna die? No, people need to know what they are eating so they can protect themselves from gaining an extensive amount of weight. When growing up I heard from many people that “your a kid and you can eat whatever you want. Don’t worry about what you eat.” I’m not saying kids should be like Olympians and go on extreme diets but they should show some resistance. Kids grow up eating fast food which is why this carries over to when they grow older and gain weight due to the metabolism becoming weaker. We need to teach the young about what they are eating to change the world. Kids learn the greatest at a young age because their neurons move with extreme speed. Why don’t we teach them young so they can grow and fix the mistakes that we made. Teach them that they are not indestructible and they will see the consequences if they continue to go down the path of extreme fast food ingestion.

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