You are what you eat.

"You are what you eat." We have seen this many times, be it on the streets or through the television, encouraging people to eat healthy,and telling people that their health depends on what they eat. Many think that it is exaggerated, but "You are what you eat" isn't baseless.

Recently, on an article by the straits times,it was reported that singaporeans today are fatter, taller and heavier than singaporeans in the previous generation. One of the main reasons is because Singaporeans have a better life now. But the food that we eat plays a very big role too.

Have you ever wondered what your potato chips are made of? Potatoes? Salt? That's all? Not exactly. If potato chips contained just potatoes and salt, they wouldn't be so popular now. Those chilli, onion flavours dont just come from potatoes. Then those flavours come from real onions, chillies, right? Apparently not. The so-called orginal flavours come from artificial flvourings which are detrimental to our body. Additionally,Potato chips are deep fried in oxidized oil that is re-used for weeks at a time. Deep fried at high temperatures which cause the chemical, acrylimide to be released. Acrylimides are a known cancer causing agent that also causes nerve damage. When you eat 1 single serving bag of potato chips you may be eating up to 500times more acrylamide than the maximum level allowed in drinking water. The simple chip ain't that innocent anymore.

Chips aren't the only culprits. Burgers, another all time favourite. Most Burgers contain MSG (monosodium glutamate), which is a chemical used for flavour enhancement and fattening of animals. MSG is also common in most foodstuffs. MSG also causes many problems. It can cause headaches, swelling of cheeks and constant dehydration. Such problems are not uncommon, in fact, my mother experienced swollen cheeks after eating an especially delicious bowl of noodles.

Chickens today are a lot fatter than they used to be. So what fills them up? Hormone injections. As we consume the hormome laden chickens it enters our bloodstream, and we become hormone laden, being intoxicated with this causes health problems ranging from cancer to obesity.

You are what you eat. And today, that isn't good. For better taste, we have forsaken the genuine goodness in our food with artificial flavourings and hormones or whatever, that do nothing but harm us. The reason why we are fatter now as compared to the previous generation is not just because they had a tougher life, but that their food was just food, today, food is more hormones than food itself. The potato of the past has now transformed into the cancer-obesity-blahblahblah disease-causing, and probably life threatening chip.





Which do you want? If we want to be in the right shape, size, condition, then we have to curb this unhealthy processing of food, food should not be artificial and full of taste but void in benefits, and full of detriments, food should be kept natural, and the way it should be. A great man(sorry, forgot his name) once said "let food be your medicine, and let medicine be your food.That was before our food had things added to it. When food was clean and "untouched", things were like that, until we ruined our food. Food used to make us fit, now food makes us fat. Cancer used to be a rarity, now its the norm. The solution to being healthy lies in our food.

We are what we eat.