Dear Editor,
As a teenager growing up in Batesville forty-five years ago, there were two fast-food
restaurants in town, The Sonic and Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was considered a treat if
I ventured out to eat at either one of them, which was usually a result of a special event
or a date. Most of the food I consumed was at home prepared by my mother.
The landscape of Highway 6 has changed dramatically with the addition of a multitude
of fast -food chains that line the road, often making the choice of which to choose mind
boggling.
What has not changed in forty-five years is the human body’s need for vital sustenance
and nutritious food; neither of which fast food can supply.
Around twenty years ago I read a book titled “Sugar Blues” by William Duffy. The book
chronicled the perils and consequences of overconsuming sugar in a person’s diet, and
even more how prevalent sugar is in the diet of the average person.
Processed sugar is just one ingredient in fast food that makes it so unhealthy for the
human body. The list is long and becoming longer, of the chemicals, dyes, and additives
that make consuming fast-food and many times regular food, damaging to our health.
According to some experts, including Robert Kennedy, Jr., many foods in America are
banned in Europe and other nations. It is also no secret that America is a very
unhealthy nation. Some reports show that America is 49th on the list of life expectancy
with Japan and some other Asian and Mediterranean countries way ahead of the United
States.
The ingredients in most fast food consist of saturated fats, (which are the worst fat to
consume), high fructose corn syrup, red dye, other dyes, artificial sweeteners, sodium
nitrates, nitrates, and the explosion of copious amounts of sugar, sugar, and more
sugar. What many don’t realize is that fast-food was not created for nutrition and
convenience; it was created for profit.

Sure, the food tastes good to the palate because it satiates the senses with abundance
of salt and sugar: two of the most powerful taste sensations humans possess. The body
does have a need for salt and it has a need for sugar, but not in the form and the
amount in fast-food. And if the ingredients in the fast-food isn’t bad enough, the way it is
prepared through frying makes it unhealthy, because the deep frying adds calories and
heats up the chemicals to make them even more toxic.
While many Americans don’t consider all the sugar and chemicals in their food; consider
this, can you retain a healthy body by overconsuming food that many people would not
even feed to their dog or cat?
Consider why most “food” in grocery stores is in packages, boxes, plastic bags and
looks nothing like what we know to resemble food. Also, please question why the candy
aisle is so huge and is becoming larger by the day.
One final thing to ponder is why is there an explosion of chronic and auto-immune
diseases. The idiom “you are what you eat” has never been truer than it is today. If we
keep eating garbage as a nation, the results will continue to be the sickness, the
allergies, and the obesity which was unheard of a generation ago.
Americans need to start eating better, and one way we can do it is to stop frequenting
the fast-food restaurants and stop supporting our own demise. We are literally digging
our graves with our teeth. America doesn’t need another fast-food restaurant for profit, it
needs to return to food that nourishes our bodies and restrains the disease epidemic
that threatens our very existence as a nation.
Joan Williams-Miles