Junk food

Unhealthy food 

Our health depends on different factors, and nutrition (харчування) is one of them. We get all nutrients (поживні речовини), vitamins, minerals and microelements with food. However, apart from necessary, vital elements, many food products contain ingredients that are useless or even destructive (руйнівний) for health. Unfortunately, very often unhealthy food is tasty, appetizing (апетитний) and relatively inexpensive (відносно недорогий), so, we are tempted (маємо спокусу) to buy it again and again. As a result, we receive too little healthy elements, such as protein, unsaturated fats (ненасичені жири) and too many empty calories, trans fats (транс жири) and carbohydrates (вуглеводи). It causes various health problems – from obesity (ожиріння) to metabolic disease (порушення обміну речовин) and accelerated physiological ageing (прискорене фізіологічне старіння).  

The most dangerous for health is so-called “junk food” or food containing empty calories. It is food with low biological value and high content of solid fats (тверді жири), calories and sugar. This category includes carbonated (газований) soft drinks, sweets, fast-food, chips, chocolate bars and other snacks. They are addictive like drugs – the more you drink, the more you want. Lemonades don’t allay thirst (втамувати спрагу), and their “refreshing effect” is just an advertising trick (рекламний трюк), no more. 

As for chips and other ready-made snacks, they are full of carcinogens (канцерогени), chemical additives (хімічні добавки) and taste modifiers (підсилювачі смаку). As you probably know, chips are made not of natural potatoes, but of potato-starch (картопляне борошно), which has low nutritional value (поживна цінність) and digests (перетравлюється) poorly. Moreover, they are fried in low-grade oil (низької якості) with artificial flavourings (штучні ароматизатои). That’s why all these snacks cause heartburn (печія) and gastritis (гастрит). 

Apart from “junk food”, there are other categories of unhealthy food, for example, manufactured meat products. This category includes all types of sausages. All sausage products contain very little meat and much animal fat, soya, ground bones and skin. These unhealthy saturated fats are accumulated (збирається) in your organism, causing obesity (призводить до ожиріння).  

Food made of refined (перероблений) flour – white bread, pasta, biscuits – contains nothing good for health. These products are just empty carbohydrates, which are converted (перетворюватися) into fats and accumulated in our organisms.  

So, if you want to be healthy, pay attention to what you eat. If you like sweets, choose natural ones – honey, dried fruits, or, at least, natural bitter chocolate. If you can’t live without flour products, opt for wholegrain (із цілого зерна) food. And please, never eat fast-food, convenience meat products (напівфабрикати) and chips. And never drink Cola. 

Paragraph 1. Answer: 1) What do we get with food? 2) Descriptive adjectives for “junk food”. 3) What healthy and unhealthy elements do you know? 4) What health problems does unhealthy eating cause? 

Paragraph 2.  Complete: 1) Junk food contains … .2) Junk food includes … . 3) Junk food is … , it doesn’t …, it’s just an … . 

Paragraph 3.  Make up word-combinations and then sentences with them: chemical, modifiers, starch, low, poorly, low-grade, flavourings, cause, full of, carcinogens, additives, taste, potato, nutritional value, oil, artificial, heartburn.