Oral anglais Bac - Idea of progress

IDEA OF PROGRESS

Junk Food

An article by Elaine Magee

The heaviest child in the world - Jessica

Exercise your will power by Oscar Ramos

The notion of Idea of progress is synonymous of evolution, development, improvement and increase. In terms of progress, we can easily mention different fields such as medicine (vaccines, antibiotics, life expectancy), as society (women right, right to vote…) as technology (robots, weapons, movies…) which goes faster than the past.

Progress isn't always synonymous with positive connotations because it also has drawbacks, for example people expect of each other to be more and more performing, faster, but we're human not robots.

These three documents are related to this notion because they all explore the notion of progress specifically about the progress with the junk food.

So how can be junk food a real plague to the whole world?

What is exactly the junk food? There are some things you need to know.

Junk food facts began in 1920's, fast food emerges in USA and since then, they have spread all over the country. Nowadays they are located all over the world. Among them: KFC, Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s

Junk food has become so popular because it's tasty, quick and easy to get, quite cheap too. You can see advertisements everywhere that make fast food look cool and it's well package so it's handy.

Yet it's far from being good for people's health: it is addicting so the more you eat it the more you get addicted and it's not good for your health. It's cheap but it is low in nutritional value so you keep being hungry and you keep buying fast food so you're overeating. Junk food is for example: chips, hamburgers, lollipops, chocolate or sodas…

• Elaine Magee

The first document is an article written by Elaine Magee a nutrition doctor known as « The recipes Doctor ». She's an Expert Colum and has a Master of Public Health. Her aim is to change the way America eats by writing recipe books of nutrition and healthy cooking because she said that fast food is dangerous for people's health and people are getting obese.

According to her, junk food is about food which contains mostly sugar and high fructose. Some says that pizza is junk food but for Elaine Magee a homemade pizza you cook with real tomato sauce, cheese and vegetable is not considered as junk food. She also said that a research reveals that fast food promotes overeating because as it said it is low in fiber and in satiation value, produces lots of calories, a little nutritional value.

Elaine Magee wrote several recipes books in which she try to explain to Americans how to cook healthy dishes easily because she wants to change the way that Americans eat.

• Jessica

The second document is a video in which is about Jessica an 8 years old girl was known as « the heaviest child in the world ». She weighed 420 pounds. She ate peanuts butter and other things high in calories as junk food. Jessica is addicted to food; her fridge was full of this. She ate constantly and threw tantrums when she didn't get the food she wanted. Her legs couldn't support her and she was forced to roll on the floor. She had problem of overweight:  she was obese and that generated troubled of breathing. She was taken to an obesity clinic on emergency.

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