Question: Should the sale of junk food in school canteens be banned?
As the name suggests, junk food is something edible but non-nutritious and non-beneficial to health (Smith 2005). According to Health Foundation (2005), approximately 50% of the most popular snack foods ranging from biscuits to flavoured yogurt have low nutritional values. The addiction towards junk food can be evidenced by the fact that more than half of the contemporary Australian schoolchildren have their meals in school where abundance of junk food is available (Tran 2005). Junk food manages to gain loyalty among buyers and sellers as it is highly flavoured and can be easily accessed and brings supernormal profits. Nonetheless, it is indispensable to ban the sale of junk food in school canteens for several reasons.
First of all, the high-kilojoule-content junk food triggers childhood obesity. Most junk food contains high proportion of flavour and fat to enhance its taste (Smith 2005). Besides partaking junk food in school canteens, children have the tendency to consume it at home too. This is revealed by the chart published by Australian Nutrition Journal (2004) whereby most of the 12-14-year-old children in 2003 have more intakes of fat and sugar than recommended. Fresh fruit and vegetables were neglected badly. It is the consumption of food with high contents of fat and sugar that causes obesity among the children. Junk food does fulfill the features and thus, it leads to unfavourable weight gain.
Furthermore, other health problems can also be originated from the frequent consumption of junk food. Based on the information given by The Food Show (2005), junk food reduces the intake of nutritious food by the schoolchildren. Consequently, their health development, growth and learning potential are adversely affected as all of these require a balanced diet. Research study also proved that reduction of junk food helped in improving the children’s daily conduct. Their behaviour can be deviated due to the chemical additives content in the unhealthy food. Hence, by banning the sale of junk food in school canteens, the disciplinary problems among the schoolchildren can be overcome.
Last but not least, prohibition of junk food sale in school canteens can minimise the litter problem in the school vicinity too. Junk food is packaged and the schoolchildren tend to throw the packages indiscriminately. Litter is a bad habit as it not only causes hazard to the people nearby but also degrades the image of the citizens in the eyes of the outsiders (Smith 2005). Hence, by stopping junk food sale can assist in improving school hygiene.
In a nutshell, the sale of junk food should be forbidden in school canteens as its consumption affects the health of the schoolchildren and damages the environment. School News (2005) showed that canteen profits were directly proportional to the sale of junk food. Therefore, it is understandable that the sale can hardly be stamped out completely due to the high profits offered in a short span of time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The introductory sentence and thesis statement given is clear and well organised. But there is one thing that is quite confusing, is yogurt considered as junk food. From the source given, not yogurt is a food that has moderate nutritional value?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, to improve the second paragraph, the sentence "It is the consumption of food with high contents of fat and sugar that causes obesity among the children” should be changed with adding another fact given. Let the last paragraph to restate the thesis statement…hehe.
In the third paragraph, the word “content” think should be changed with contents.
In the fourth paragraph, think you can add more details like the more time can be spent by groundsman on other works. This can make all the paragraph to look more balance.
In the conclusion, the thesis statement is well restated. But I think in the last two sentences, it sounds like you do not have a clear stand on the topic. To improve this, I think you can add some solutions to solve this problems or adding the fact that the disadvantages have outweighed the advantages to show how serious the thing is and hence need to be solved as soon as possible.
Overall, this essay is comprehensive and well written and there are many vocabularies I can learn from this. The essay is very convincing and supported well with the standard source given. Great job and well done!!!