Food Industry & Public Health

This assignment delves into the complex relationship between the food industry and public health. Students are tasked with analyzing various aspects of this relationship, including the impacts of genetically modified (GM) crops, the rise of convenience foods, and the overall nutritional influence exerted by the food industry. The analysis should draw upon provided academic sources to support claims and provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject.

Running head: Understanding food system 1
Understanding food system
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29th September 2017

Understanding food system 2
Understanding food system
Modern food systems have had a significant impact on convenience culture. As a result,
foods that are less convenient to the consumer are not highly considered as to those that are most
convenient. This has thus led to less cooking in the homes due to the busy schedule of the family
members and more purchase of fast foods in shops, restaurants and even supermarkets (Lee &
Lin, 2013). Much has resulted with the convenience culture in families. Junk foods have become
the mode of the day, little or even no foods are cooked in the homes and even taking similar food
types for a long time due to limited sources (Slater, 2013). This essay will focus on the adverse
effects and the implications of convenience culture like in health, wellbeing, the economy of the
country, ethical impacts in the society, work and gender, and concentration of wealth and power
(Martinez, 2010).
Convenience culture has its greatest impact on health. As far as health is concerned,
comfort foods need packing in cans. This food processing will entail removing some nutrients
including fiber and vitamins and thus reducing their nutritional value. Some are also genetically
modified and so dangerous to the health of an individual because they may cause damage to
body organs and can cause gastrointestinal disorders, asserts Klümper & Qaim (2014). In the
food industry, the convenience foods have high calories, trans-fats, saturated sugar, salt, and fats.
This makes it hard to control the sugar, salt and fat levels in the body. As a result, many are
prone to allergies, and cardiovascular diseases, obese and the immune system is weakened
(Schlosser, 2012).

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People may enjoy the shortly lived convenience culture of fast food industries. The
wellbeing of consumers is thus not taken care of because it contributes to major lifestyle diseases
like cancer, diabetes, stroke, blood pressure and even heart attacks. Through the junk foods and
the processed foods were taken, the long-term effect is not considered. At first, the consumers
will enjoy the soft drinks and other foods that are fast, easier, cheaper and ready to cook
Vartanian et al. (2011) but little do they forget that they are doing away with the natural eating
habits and expensing their health in the years to come.
Convenient culture also has affected the economy. For instance, some hotels and firms
have reached a situation where they do not take part in the service industry but rather involved in
the manufacturing industry. In as much as there is a defined line of the production process, the
restaurants taking the line of manufacturing sector will soon need machines that will make the
whole process fast, hence more profit. The first effect is on those humans working there because
they will have lost their jobs to the machines. Moreover, the country’s level of income through
the tax will be reduced because of the tax breaks brought in by the manufacturing industries to
the fast food industries. Also in the economy of the nation, large fast food restaurant chains have
dominated in the food supply to various places and as a result making the independent investors
and small business to be less efficient thus affecting their productivity (Belasco, 2014).
The ethical impact in the society has been affected by the convenience culture through
fast food industry. This majorly targets on the children in particular through their adverts Elbel,
Gyamfi & Kersh, 2011). Looking at the example of McDonald's, their advertisements have a
negative impact on children. They have captured the children’s mind with eating toy and making
them believe that the food cooked by their mothers at home does not taste as good as of clown
(Andreyeva, Kelly & Harris, 2011). In other adverts, there is a family, kids and the parents,

Understanding food system 4
enjoying a meal at a restaurant. This corrupts the mind of the young growing child and thus
demands to eat in such places with their parents (Watson et al., 2014). This programs the
memory of the children and they always want things faster and cheap and parents will always
grant them their desires with the aim of pleasing them. The ethics of the society are affected, and
the parents are geared to feed themselves in restaurants with the perceived faster, readily
accessible and easier meals rather than cooking at home.
Many people are working to attain more wealth. This is also true in the fast-growing food
industries. People are now working to achieve more wealth regardless of the means that are used.
The shareholders of the large fast-food giants and industries as seen earlier are now morning
from service industries to manufacturing industries. As a result, the cost of manufacturing should
be catered for in the end. The costs of these foods are thus made higher. Because most people
have not the time to cook at home due to much work and having been used to fast food will
always buy the foods even if the prices go up (Temple, & Steyn, 2011). The consumers are thus
in a struggle to afford the prices of foods, while the investors are enjoying the high cost of the
goods. There is a wide gap that at the end created between the low and the high class. Thus the
wealth status of a state is affected at the cost of convenience culture.
Women were well known and respected in the typical kitchen duties. Today we are far
much away from this fact. In as much as women and men should be given equal opportunities
and privileges in study and work, there are some duties which are very noble and unique –
cooking being one of them. The convenience culture has brought the home cooking thing down,
and currently one will hardly spend even an hour in preparing a delicious meal for the family
(Allen, & Sachs, 2012). Instead, they fully depend on fast foods, all taking pre-cooked foods
which will require a minimum time in preparing. The cooking skills are thus lost at the expense

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of more time needed in office duties. As children grow up, they have the mindset that the only
way to live is by working more and depending on fast foods. The children also fail to learn the
necessary house chores that especially in cooking for ladies because parents have no time for
that.
Also, the output in places of work is affected. Especially for the female, who are
primarily affected by the regular consumption of fast foods are not productive in their work and
given duties (McClintock, 2011). Many students are unhealthy because of the convenience
culture of fast foods. They are prone to diseases because of their diet and at a very tender age,
instead of giving their best in workplaces, are affected by the allergies and cardiovascular
diseases as a result of poor diet (Hanks et al., 2012). In their perspective, they judge the fast food
industries as saving them more time to work but at the end take the expense of their health.
In the convenience culture, the main aim is to provide food that has a standard look and
taste all through the world. The fast food industries are working to fulfill this. Little do they look
into the jeopardized and unstable human health, the harmful influence in the economy, the
affected ethics in our society, the degraded moral values and responsibilities and the view of
children on future things (Nestle,2013). The fast food industries and restaurants are no longer
concerned with providing service but rather provision of manufactured foods. Food is no more
local and natural but rather it is global and humanmade. This brings more adverse effects on the
health and general life of the consumer. The adverse effects of fast food should be looked into
and should also enable us to consider actions to be taken into account concerning the same (Shim
et al., 2011).

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References
Allen, P., & Sachs, C. (2012). Women and food chains: The gendered politics of food. Taking
food public: Redefining foodways in a changing world, 23-40.
Andreyeva, T., Kelly, I. R., & Harris, J. L. (2011). Exposure to food advertising on
television: associations with children's fast food and soft drink consumption and
obesity. Economics & Human Biology, 9(3), 221-233. Accessed on 29 Sep. 17
http://www.uconnruddcenter.org/resources/upload/docs/what/advertising/
ExposureFoodAdsTV_EHB_3.11.pdf
Belasco, W. J. (2014). Appetite for change: How the counterculture took on the food
industry. Cornell University Press.
Elbel, B., Gyamfi, J., & Kersh, R. (2011). Child and adolescent fast-food choice and the
influence of calorie labeling: a natural experiment. International journal of obesity
(2005), 35(4), 493.
Hanks, A. S., Just, D. R., Smith, L. E., & Wansink, B. (2012). Healthy convenience: nudging
students toward healthier choices in the lunchroom. Journal of Public Health, 34(3), 370-
376. Accessed on 29 Sep. 17
https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-abstract/34/3/370/1559501
Klümper, W., & Qaim, M. (2014). A meta-analysis of the impacts of genetically modified

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crops. PloS one, 9(11), e111629.
Lee, J. Y., & Lin, B. H. (2013). A study of the demand for convenience food. Journal of food
products marketing, 19(1), 1-14.
McClintock, N. (2011). From industrial garden to food desert. Cultivating food justice: Race,
class, and sustainability, 89.
Nestle, M. (2013). Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health (Vol.
3). Univ of California Press. Accessed on 29 Sep. 17 http://www.foodpolitics.com/food-
politics-how-the-food-industry-influences-nutrition-and-health/
Schlosser, E. (2012). Fast food nation: The dark side of the all-American meal. Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt.
Shim, S. M., Seo, S. H., Lee, Y., Moon, G. I., Kim, M. S., & Park, J. H. (2011). Consumers’
knowledge and safety perceptions of food additives: Evaluation on the effectiveness of
transmitting information on preservatives. Food Control, 22(7), 1054-1060.
Slater, J. (2013). Is cooking dead? The state of home economics food and nutrition education
in a Canadian province. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 37(6), 617-624.
Temple, N. J., & Steyn, N. P. (2011). The cost of a healthy diet: A South African
perspective. Nutrition, 27(5), 505-508.
Vartanian, L. R., Schwartz, M. B., & Brownell, K. D. (2011). Effects of soft drink

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consumption on nutrition and health: a systematic review and meta-
analysis. American journal of public health. Accessed on 29 Sep. 17.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2005.083782
Watson, W. L., Kelly, B., Hector, D., Hughes, C., King, L., Crawford, J., ... & Chapman, K.
(2014). Can front-of-pack labelling schemes guide healthier food choices? Australian
shoppers’ responses to seven labelling formats. Appetite, 72, 90-97. Accessed on 29 Sep.
17.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kathy_Chapman2/publication/257701242_Consume
r_testing_of_front-of-pack_food_labelling_schemes/links/
0046352bbe48928cec000000.pdf