Bad effects of fast food Essay Example for Free

Bad effects of fast food Essay Did you know as of January, of this year, there is about 50 million people daily that eat fast food in America. That around 1/6th of the population. The average meal for a family of four at McDonalds can cost around $27.89, with a homemade meal for four costing $13.78, or $9.26 for a vegetarian meal. People argue that it just cheaper than cooking a meal but in reality it is a lot more. Even if you just order off the $1 menu you still have to think of the other expenses like gas. Another factor is health. On average someone eat fast food a least 2 times a week so compare to someone who doesn’t eat that much can gain up to 10 more pound. If you don’t exercise daily you can become out of shape fast. People who have family members with some diseases like Diabetes and high blood pressure should not eat as much fast food as they do because just eating it 2 times a week can double the incidence of insulin resistance, a risk factor for Diabetes. There is also lots of sodium in fast food and that alone can give you high blood pressure. People who eat fast-food 4 or more times a week, up their risk of dying from heart disease by 80%. Fast foods create a much higher risk of heart disease because of the high level of saturated or transfats found in much of the food. Those fats can clog the arteries and cause high cholesterol levels. A well-balanced food contains all essential elements which are necessary for human development. Whereas fast food does not have all these elements, this type of food contains some elements in high quantity while others are absent. So just by eating out because it cheaper at the moment or quicker in the long run you are actually paying more because of medical bills it’s just a game of cause and effect.

Wind Power in the Near Future Essay -- Energy Mechanics Essays

Wind Power in the Near Future Today many people are anxious about energy for the future, as it seems realistic that petroleum energy will someday run out and since some environmental problems caused by petroleum use are getting worse. As alternatives to today’s main energy source, oil, some others have been proposed already, such as solar, water, biomass, and nuclear. Wind Power is the one of the ways that has the biggest potential and is the most practical. And it is predicted to play an important role in electrical generation for the new era. But to think wind power will be the dominant energy source can be too optimistic. How will wind power be used? To what extent will wind power take the place of petroleum? We can find the answers in some recently published articles. The article â€Å"Wind Farm to be Established in the Netherlands,† refers to the case of BA and Chevron Texaco, the major petroleum companies, which are constructing a wind farm near Rotterdam. The article reports that this wind farm will generate the low emission electricity for 20,000 households and help the stability of the electricity market. And in the article â€Å"Power into the Future,† Ken Eastwood reports on the position of wind power in Australia. Until now mainly coal has been used in Australia, but in 2001, the federal government of Australia announced that within 10 years an extra 2 per cent of the country’s power must be produced by renewable sources, in order to reduce global warming. Eastwood said the electric generating system would shift from a small amount of huge generators to smaller but widely distributed ones. Wind power can be produced locally on a small scale. One example from Ravenshoe, a small town in northeast Australia, is shown. There... ...leum based energy, but up to a single digit percent of total. It seems that the use of wind power will be limited in both it’s amount and location. And most likely, it will be used in combination with other methods. Works Cited American Wind Energy Association. â€Å"Wind Energy: An Untapped Resource.† Ken Eastwood. â€Å"Power into the Future.† Australian Geographic, Jul-Sep 2002, Issue 67. Harris Cassius A. â€Å"Wind Farm to be Established in the Netherlands.† Civil Engineering, Mar 2002, Vol. 72, Issue 3. Walt Patterson. â€Å"Pioneered the Concept of Distributed Micropower Generation.† Scientific American, Dec 2004, Vol. 291, Issue 6. Joe Provey. â€Å"Off the Grid.† Popular Mechanics, Mar 2005, Vol. 182, Issue 3. Peter Schwartz and Reiss Spencer. â€Å"Nuclear Now.† Wired, Feb 2005, p 78~83. â€Å"Wind Turbines Taking Toll on Birds of Prey.† USA Today, Jan 05, 2005. Wind Power in the Near Future Essay -- Energy Mechanics Essays Wind Power in the Near Future Today many people are anxious about energy for the future, as it seems realistic that petroleum energy will someday run out and since some environmental problems caused by petroleum use are getting worse. As alternatives to today’s main energy source, oil, some others have been proposed already, such as solar, water, biomass, and nuclear. Wind Power is the one of the ways that has the biggest potential and is the most practical. And it is predicted to play an important role in electrical generation for the new era. But to think wind power will be the dominant energy source can be too optimistic. How will wind power be used? To what extent will wind power take the place of petroleum? We can find the answers in some recently published articles. The article â€Å"Wind Farm to be Established in the Netherlands,† refers to the case of BA and Chevron Texaco, the major petroleum companies, which are constructing a wind farm near Rotterdam. The article reports that this wind farm will generate the low emission electricity for 20,000 households and help the stability of the electricity market. And in the article â€Å"Power into the Future,† Ken Eastwood reports on the position of wind power in Australia. Until now mainly coal has been used in Australia, but in 2001, the federal government of Australia announced that within 10 years an extra 2 per cent of the country’s power must be produced by renewable sources, in order to reduce global warming. Eastwood said the electric generating system would shift from a small amount of huge generators to smaller but widely distributed ones. Wind power can be produced locally on a small scale. One example from Ravenshoe, a small town in northeast Australia, is shown. There... ...leum based energy, but up to a single digit percent of total. It seems that the use of wind power will be limited in both it’s amount and location. And most likely, it will be used in combination with other methods. Works Cited American Wind Energy Association. â€Å"Wind Energy: An Untapped Resource.† Ken Eastwood. â€Å"Power into the Future.† Australian Geographic, Jul-Sep 2002, Issue 67. Harris Cassius A. â€Å"Wind Farm to be Established in the Netherlands.† Civil Engineering, Mar 2002, Vol. 72, Issue 3. Walt Patterson. â€Å"Pioneered the Concept of Distributed Micropower Generation.† Scientific American, Dec 2004, Vol. 291, Issue 6. Joe Provey. â€Å"Off the Grid.† Popular Mechanics, Mar 2005, Vol. 182, Issue 3. Peter Schwartz and Reiss Spencer. â€Å"Nuclear Now.† Wired, Feb 2005, p 78~83. â€Å"Wind Turbines Taking Toll on Birds of Prey.† USA Today, Jan 05, 2005.

Mice and Men and Great Expectations Essay

Of Mice and Men and Great Expectations, have many similarities. They both show the way certain characters are treated by society. These similarities may be strong but there are natural differences that come from the different times and places the stories are set in.-as well as the way the authors approach the topic.  Steinbeck begins Of Mice and Men by creating a tranquil scene where everything is seemingly at peace. Steinbeck creates with words images of paradise such as when he writes: â€Å"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.† A river, which is said to â€Å"run deep†, is calm and slow moving. Its water is clear too, â€Å"twinkling over yellow sands,† it has warm water too and seems perfect-almost too good to be true. Inevitably it is. Of Mice and men is set in the 1930s during America’s great depression. After the stock exchange crashed in New York, money and jobs became hard to find. There was poverty all over America and California, which affected everything. Like the American dream, paradise can only exist with money. Therefore only the wealthy can enjoy this and even then it is spoilt by the poverty surrounding it. The American Dream is a paradox, just like the paradise of Salinas River. They cannot exist because they contradict themselves. Paradise is bliss but how can this exist with so much poverty and suffering in the world? The Salinas River seems briefly to have escaped the paradox. There is no sign of poverty, just peace and tranquillity. Then human life enters the scene. Human life is introduced when a path is described; â€Å"There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the highway.† It’s the point that the track has been â€Å"beaten hard† that really emphasises what effect humans have had on the river. Other animals leave tracks that are temporary and blend into the scene. Humans have left their path permanently, like a scar it proves that not even the Salinas River can reach paradise. But it is not the only scar, â€Å"In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it.† Two more scars. The introduction of humans into the scene sees the end of the animal life in the scene. As the humans approach all the wildlife is scared of and the area is completely deserted. â€Å"For a moment the place was lifeless.† The peace is broken and with it any chance of the Salinas River truly becoming paradise.  The story is set in California where few people owned land. They had either lost it due to the financial problems the depression caused or were just too poor to afford any in the first place. The people needed to find work; one of the most common jobs was to work on a farm. These people became known as migrant farmers. They would drift from one farm to the next, rarely settling for long. The two characters that enter the scene are migrant farmers and are looking for work. This is the first introduction of human life into the scene. Great Expectations is set in Victorian England, where just like in 1930s California, the rich thrived and the poor suffered terribly. Even more distressing perhaps was the disease that swept through towns and killed many children as well as adults. This led to an increase in orphans, who have the same feelings of being alone and poor. They have the same problems as many others and weren’t much better off than the criminals in jail. Criminals were treated like animals, as were the poor community as a whole. Just like during the dust bowl, if you weren’t rich then you were a social outcast. After introducing the character Pip, Dickens begins describing his surroundings. Dickens goes into great detail to set the scene. He describes the area as â€Å"Marsh Country† which stretches for twenty miles up to the coast. Pip is in a secluded graveyard overgrown and derelict. Beyond the graveyard is a â€Å"dark flat wilderness,† â€Å"Intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes.† It is a â€Å"raw afternoon towards the evening.† The setting is dark and there is a sense of evil and death about the place. It seems to be building upto something sinister, and does so when the criminal enters the scene. He is described as a â€Å"fearful man, in all course grey with an iron on his leg.† He almost represents death in this scene, an evil presence trying to seize Pip.

Live, Love, Garden - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 6 Words: 1705 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2017/09/22 Category Advertising Essay Type Argumentative essay Did you like this example? Kristin Cooper Live, Love, Garden Each morning I look out my window at our garden, and the surrounding trees. I listen to a symphony of birds, as the sunlight shines higher in the neighbor’s sycamore tree. A full night’s sleep leaves me thirsty, so I go to the kitchen for a glass of cool water. I know that the plants in the garden are also thirsty, and I venture outside to water them. The grass feels good between my toes and as I reach for a ripe tomato, a butterfly dips down into a flower. This garden is full of life, and I feel fortunate to know it intimately. Not only does my garden provide an abundance of organic fruits and vegetables that are healthier than most produce in grocery stores, but the work it takes to grow this produce requires constant physical activity that is great for physical health, and relieving stress. Cultivating a fruit and vegetable garden is a tremendously rewarding experience. A garden is a fertile piece of land with a collection of plants that are cared for by an individual or a community. A garden can be any size arrangement of flowers, shrubs, fruits, vegetables, herbs or trees. My parents taught me how to care for a garden. We have five members in our family, with five mouths to feed, so we have a large garden. This garden is spread out across our entire backyard, with six fruit trees scattered throughout. Persimmon, apple, mandarin, orange, avocado, and lime all yield their fruits at different times throughout the year. We have a beautiful flower garden, with many varieties, as well as a dedicated rose garden. We have categorized most of the vegetable plants into separate garden boxes or planters. For example the herb garden box contains rosemary, thyme, oregano, cilantro, curry, and borage. The salsa garden box contains various types of peppers, and onions. A third garden box contains zucchini, yellow squash, cantaloupe, and peanuts. We also have a planter with fifteen tomato plants, consisting of eleven different varieties. The food grown in these garden boxes is healthier than industrially farmed food bought in the store, because I am knowledgeable about how the food was grown. In fact we consider our garden to be organic, which requires using natural fertilizer, and not using pesticides, herbicides, and growth hormones, all of which are chemical products and these substances are harmful to humans. For example, growth hormones make fruits and vegetables look bigger, and better, but without nutrient rich soil they lack in nutrients. On the other hand, fertilizer made from natural compost, decomposing plant matter is free of pesticides and herbicides. Fruits and vegetables grown organically can taste much different than store bought foods and that taste of extra flavor means the produce is higher in nutrients. Of the eleven different types of tomatoes in my family’s garden, each has a rich and unique flavor; store bought tomatoes do not compare. The oranges we gr ow are also much tastier than oranges I have bought in grocery stores. Some oranges have a really thick peel, and once opened up, it is not a juicy treat, while the oranges from my tree, have a thin peel, and are dripping with juice. Eating organic fruits and vegetables instead of processed foods is vital for good health. Having a home garden provides an abundance of healthy food that is easily accessible. Our own backyard is a resource for much of the food we eat which has limited our trips to the grocery store and saved us a lot of money. Having the ability to pick fresh food from the garden has ensured that even when there is scarce food in the refrigerator, we still have plenty of healthy food to eat. It is financially rewarding when a plant that costs as much as a few pieces of fruit, produces enough to feed a household for weeks. Sometimes a plant will produce a lot of ripe fruit and there is too much to eat all at once. When fruit is ripe it has a short period when it n eeds to be eaten, or it will go bad. I find it very unfortunate to watch good food go to waste, so I try to share what I can with my neighbors, friends, family, and community members. The orange tree in my backyard produces hundreds, thousands of oranges every summer. With so much fruit, my family can eat oranges everyday and there are still a lot that never get eaten and rot away. My family’s solution is to share them with everybody, and when we still have leftovers we make orange juice. I start by picking a few dozen oranges, and cleaning them. I take them inside, and roll them on the counter to break up the pulp and make them juicier. The next step is to cut them in half, and then juice them using a manual or mechanical juicer. It takes some time and some muscle to make a pitcher full of orange juice, but the work is well worth the fresh, sweet and sour flavor that invigorates my taste buds. The home squeezed orange juice is rich in nutrients, and healthier than stor e bought orange juice. The physical activity that is required to maintain a garden can help keep a gardener in good physical health. Juicing oranges is only a tiny part of the physical activity in maintaining a garden. Actually, there is a lot of work to maintain a garden, such as pulling weeds, watering plants, picking the fruit and vegetables, digging, planting, cultivating, pruning, fertilizing, etc. This work requires constant bending, stooping, kneeling, reaching above your head, and walking back and forth. After a few hours of work in the garden I am as sore as I would be if I had gone to the gym. In addition to the physical work, at the beginning of each growing season there is a lot of planning to be done, especially since each season there are different vegetables that can be grown. When it is time to change the crops my family has to prepare the land and the vegetable boxes by removing old vegetable plants and weeds. Some plants have extensive roots and if they cannot b e pulled out by hand it may be necessary to dig them out of the ground with a shovel. First we evaluate the situation to prepare for how much work needs to be done, how many holes I will need to dig, and the size of the holes. When the holes are prepared, the soil needs to be cultivated and amended as final preparation before the planting. My family has a compost bin that we use to make natural fertilizer amendment for our garden. Compost is recycled plant matter that is collected in a bin, and given time it will break down into nutrient rich soil. To help the compost break down, it must be turned often. One of my brothers has a chore to turn the compost twice a week. Turning the compost can take him from three to ten minutes. Using a pitchfork to lift the material from the bottom of the pile and place it on top, continuously until the material from the top makes its way to the bottom since the material on the bottom decomposes much faster. Once the compost is ready to use we till it into the surrounding soil, a pronged tool helps to mix this fertilizer into the garden soil. When the land is fertile it is time to put the plants in their holes, with a mixture of compost fertilizer, and untreated earth. Once the garden is planted, most of the hard work is done, but there is still constant maintenance to keep the garden healthy. To do this maintenance on a regular basis actually provides a place and sometimes strenuous activity to relieve stress. It can be very cathartic to take the time working in a certain area that needs maintenance. For instance, I enjoy sitting down in the dirt, and weeding. Being out in the sunshine, the fresh air, amongst the plants, and in the dirt, feels good. While my life gets crazy in a fast paced way, I am grateful to have a beautiful piece of land that is a peaceful escape place. Our plants remind me of how important it is to notice the natural cycle of life. Life, death, and rebirth, is the natural cycle of all life on earth. A seed will grow into a plant that will one day die, to then be recycled back into the earth. Part of that natural cycle is eating! Having homegrown food as ingredients in a homemade meal is the ultimate reward for growing a fruit and vegetable garden. It feels like a luxury to enjoy fresh produce that is so rich in flavor. When I pick out ingredients for dinner, I take a basket and I go shopping for free in my backyard. One of my favorite recipes is fresh tomato sauce. The recipe calls for tomatoes, onions, olive oil, garlic, parsley, basil, oregano, a bay leaf, and sugar. To make it, first steam the tomatoes to soften them. Then slice up the onions, crush the garlic, and brown them in a pan with the olive oil. After the tomatoes steam, they are peeled, crushed and added to the garlic and onions. Oregano, a bay leaf, parsley, and basil are added to the simmering sauce. Finally, sugar is added to the sauce to neutralize the acid in the tomatoes. The full aroma of fresh tomato sauce fills the kitchen where we stand shoulder to shoulder over the stove while the food simmers. My entire family expresses our gratitude for the rewards of our garden as we sit down for our meal. In the short time I have been growing a fruit and vegetable garden I have gained experiential knowledge that has inspired me to grow my own healthy food for the rest of my life. I am grateful for the family interaction, the physical activity, and the organic produce. Growing organic fruits and vegetables takes hard work, but the experience is deeply rewarding. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Live, Love, Garden" essay for you Create order