Question 1

Over the past three decades, the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased dramatically in the United States of America (USA). The Increase was concentrated in the obese categories, especially junk food which has more than doubled between 1980 and 2004, from 15% to 32% (Ogden et. al., 2006). Based on the research by Rose and Murphy (1999), people nowadays tend to consume script-based category of food such as snack foods, junk foods, fast foods and so on according to time or situation in which foods are eaten. In general, junk foods are more than just something to eat. They also represent money, profits, past emotional associations, childhood indulgences, and high-power advertising. The junk food problem is not one of the nutrition, but is related to the economics structure of this country and to the psychological and emotional make up of millions of Malaysians. If you want to wean yourself, your friends, and your clients away from health-destroying junk foods, then you must also understand the true nature of junk food addiction. You must learn how junk food is promoted, and why we allow ourselves to become willing addicts to food that supplies no nutrition or fulfils no need to human diet. In short, we must learn about the health benefits, economical and psychological aspects of junk food. According to the It is no secret that junk food is typically high in fat, sodium and sugar, and low in fruits, vegetables and fibre. However, they are convenient and easily available. The downside is that it is more than just an unbalanced meal. Especially with longterm consumption, fast food can negatively affect you physically and emotionally. The average fast food meal contains too many calories. Consuming excess calories puts you at risk of weight-related health conditions. According to study findings published in a January 2005 Lancet article, regular eating fast food over an extended period may increase your chances of type 2 diabetes. People who ate fast food three times a week had a two-fold greater increase in insulin resistance. This happens when the hormone insulin does not properly regulate blood glucose levels. Hypertension, dyslipidaemia and cardiovascular disease are also linked to insulin resistance (Fontaine et. al., 2003). Eventually, junk foods cost you twice. Once when you pay the overinflated prices for them and again when you pay the costs of ill health that they produce.

Junk food exist today for only one reason, which is they are highly profitable. Junk foods put millions of ringgits into the pockets of manufacturers. It is a fact that the lowestprofit item in most grocery stores is the produce, the fresh fruits and vegetables, and that the highest mark-up comes from packages, processed and junk foods. Natural and traditional foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are rarely advertised because they cannot be given a brand name or identity by a manufacturer. After all, a potato is just a potato, and worth only a few cents, but if you slice that potato, boil it in oil, add a large dose of salt and preservatives, and package it a bright bag with a catchy name, then you have potato chips that can be sold for ten to twenty times the cost of the original potato. There are two ways to handle this situation. The best way is simply to refuse to ever buy or eat such products. If junk foods are never a part of your diet, you will never be tempted to buy them. Even if you eat them only on rare occasions, the potential for buying them will still remain. The second way is to make a list before you go shopping. Then refuse to buy anything not on your list, and always shop alone without a spouse or begging children.

We cannot blame the entire junk food problem on the manufacturers and advertisers of these products. After all, if people did not eat such food, they would never be kept in the marketplace. But people do eat junk foods and they eat them almost compulsively, without regard to their health or to the innate harmfulness of these foods. Why do junk foods exercise such a stranglehold on people nutritional well-being? The answer is because such foods are psychologically addictive. A habitual use of junk food occurs not because the food is fulfilling any physiological need, but because they answer some psychological need. People eat non-nutritious, worthless foods purely for emotional and psychological reasons. "Most people do not eat foods because they are good for them," says Dr. Robert S. Harris, a professor of nutritional biochemistry at MIT, "But because the foods appeal to their appetite, to their emotions, to their soul."

The way to fight junk food addiction is through education. Spread the words to your friends, your family and your clients about the nutritional inadequacies of these foods. Let them see the economic harm that also comes from consuming such foods. First, teach the person the economic facts of life about junk foods. Junk food are very expensive to eat in terms of the actual nutritional provided. The rest is for pretty packaging, promotion,

advertising and profits. Second, the person must be made aware of the psychological reasons for junk food addiction. They should be told that most eating patterns are based on emotional and not rational decisions. Foods as a reward or punishment should not be used, neither for children nor adults. An approach to this problem on several levels, nutritional, economic, and psychological can help most people end their romance with junk food and give them years of healthy and illness-free living.

Question 2

The temperature of the atmosphere near the earth's surface is warmed through a natural process called the greenhouse effect. Visible, shortwave light comes from the sun to the earth, passing unimpeded through a blanket of thermal of greenhouse gases. Radiation from the sun reflects off the planet's surface toward space but does not easily pass through the thermal blanket. Some of it is trapped and reflected downward, keeping the planet at an average temperature suitable to life. However, growth in industry, agriculture, and transportation has produced additional quantities of the natural greenhouse gases. It is generally accepted that this increase in the quantity of greenhouse gases is trapping more heat and increasing global temperatures that leads to phenomenon called global warming.

One of the first things scientists learned is that there are several greenhouse gases responsible for warming, and humans emit them in a variety of ways. Most come from the combustion of fossil fuels in cars, factories and electricity production. The gas responsible for the most warming is carbon dioxide, also called CO 2. Other contributors include methane released from landfills and agriculture, especially from the digestive systems of grazing animals, nitrous oxide from fertilizers, gases used for refrigeration and industrial processes, and the loss of forests that would otherwise store CO 2. Different greenhouse gases have very different heat-trapping abilities. Some of them can even trap more heat than CO 2. A molecule of methane produces more than 20 times the warming of a molecule of CO2. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2. Other gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons, which have been banned in much of the world because they also degrade the ozone layer, have heattrapping potential thousands of times greater than CO 2. Since their concentrations are much lower than CO2, none of these gases adds as much warmth to the atmosphere as CO 2 does. During the 20th century, the atmospheric temperature rose 1.1F (0.6C), and sea level rose several inches. Although this may not seem like an enormous increase, the effects it leaves on the environment and the organisms that live in it are damaging and deadly. Many plants and animals cannot adapt to temperature changes in their environment quickly, and this is causing many to become endangered, and for some extinct.

Furthermore, when fossil fuels are burned they give off a large amount of carbon dioxide. The existence of natural cycle for keeping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is maintained majorly by the green plants. They convert the carbon dioxide in the air to oxygen through the process of photosynthesis, and in this way, they can be looked at as a natural regulator of the carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, deforestation is preventing this job to be fully accomplished, and with half of all the Earth's forests gone, and four million trees cut down each year just for paper use, the amount of carbon dioxide is rising. With more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more of the sun's radiation is being reflected back to earth, instead of space, and this is causing our average temperature to rise. Recycling the reusable product, buying energy efficient products, replanting the tress are some of the simple action that we can do to reduce global warming. Rather than stand by, nations are moving quickly to adapt to climate change and taking necessary steps to gradually change the impact of global warming and its consequences.

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