The United States of America has a unique culture that separates itself from other countries quite noticeably. Amongst every culture are common ways of living that are generally relative across that particular area. In our country, an unhealthy lifestyle is very easy to come by and is the most convenient way of living for the average American citizen. As of late, a social movement behind overall health has slowly been gaining more and more momentum which brings many consumer issues to the forefront. Things like our every day diet, what is in the food we eat, mental and physical health, as well as an attentiveness to the contents of our everyday uses such as soaps, medicines, etc. are only some of the pieces of our culture which have been normalized that have potential to do us and our body’s harm if not at once, over time.

The normalization of unhealthy living has made it difficult to look past price tags and advertising as the healthy options tend to also be the most expensive and hard to find. A Harvard study shows that on average the healthier, organic options are $1.25 more than the unhealthy option. For a healthy consumer. this adds up very quickly to a total which is much more than it should be. This number is absurd, especially due to the fact that diet is one of the primary causes of illness, heart disease, cancer, strokes, and that’s only to name a few. Diet is also the single most primary cause of obesity, which is a nationwide issue in our country. The United States is, by the numbers, the single most obese country in the world. This is directly correlated to the availability and the advertising schemes of major mass production companies who prey on the penny pinchers we all are. Every individual consumer must independently and consciously decide to make the switch from the norm of the unhealthy diet, as we are all but blatantly told to do otherwise.

So what is a healthy diet exactly? That can be very dependent on every single individual and what their body is or isn’t able to take in. But, the most unhealthy diet that we are all so accustomed to, is the diet of mass produced products and fast food. Mass production of food is an extremely unnatural process which involves endless lists of chemicals, phytochemicals, hormones, toxins, carbons, hydrocarbons, and much more as the list goes on forever. But, it is also our cheapest and most convenient option. Our everyday intake of these sort of products can do serious harm to us and our bodies and can even lead to fatal consequences.

Consumers should be able to choose from an assortment of organic or all natural products and not an assortment of unhealthy and manufactured products. The most common, and therefore most dangerous, processed intake we can consume, is that of produced meat. Meat is the clear-cut best source of protein we can consume.

The benefits of it don’t go much further than that however, as the other supposed “benefits” of meat can be found in more abundance in other, healthier options. Due to mistreatment, the inducement of chemical and hormonal products, and the diet of animals involved in mass production, we are subject to the intake of extremely unhealthy meat and energy, which translates to poor energy and pH levels, poor state of mind, and potential illness of all kinds.

All produced meat is heavy in heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which when cooked at high temperatures and especially when fried or grilled over an open flame, become mutagenic. In other words, this means that these acids have the ability to change DNA which produces a much higher risk of cancer and other disease.

This is not only true for meat but is also true for all produced and chemically induced products we consume. But yet, we as mass consumers are blind to these facts until we make the conscious effort to uncover them ourselves. And until we do so, we are pointed in the direction of unhealthy living. It’s time to look past the surface and at the bigger picture.