Negative Impact of Junk Food on University Student’s Performance

Junk food is well known as a convenient way to get meals. It is well known that students are the group that contribute mostly to the revenue of fast-food restaurants. Students who live away from home and have a bad habit of life usually consume fast food. Moreover, university students eat this kind of food every day or every meal, but they do not care what consequences the junk food brings to them. In the long run in eating these foods, there will be some specific symptoms of their health, especially in the brain’s performance. This essay will demonstrate the problem that university students meet and solutions for each problem.

Recently, the awareness of choosing food get worse in adolescence and their lifestyle can also contribute to this problem. They always are looking for junk food or insecure food for their meals. Junk food is unhealthy food, which could contain high calories but there is no nutrient. When students go to university, they will get independent from their parents. That may lead to change student’s lifestyle. Students could be busy with their time table, that reason why they tend to eat more junk food. When students consume tremendous quantities of these foods, their bodies could absorb much calories and fats without nutrition. Burkhalter and Hillman (2011) argue that nutrition is crucial to improve and maintain the health of the brain. Further, they also highlight that student’s brain receives the blocks which are called ‘the prober building blocks’ from nutrient food can enhance academic performance. Therefore, if university students consume junk food or insecure food in the long run, they will get worse in their academic performance because of lacking of nutrition for their brain. In another article, Cabrera et al. (2018) point out that students have a better quality of food, they are likely to get the better results. As the results of articles, they always emphasize habits, which people have to get used to living a good lifestyle. Educating about lifestyle for university students is very important because it not only makes their health better but student’s performance also get improved.

The good behavior life style in this context is to have high quality of meals. Every meal contains particular benefit to our body. Therefore, no meal skipping is the first step to have a good routine. Breakfast is necessary for our body; these meals provide energies and vitamins in the morning. Adolphus et al. (2013) cite in their article that “Iron, B vitamins (folate, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12) and Vitamin D are approximately 20–60% higher in children who regularly eat breakfast compared with breakfast skippers” (Gibson, 2003). Also in this article, they also emphasize that the children student enjoys their breakfast every morning, they are able to get better academic performance compared with no breakfast regularly. Moreover, Adolescences need nutrition from healthy foods for each meal, such as vegetables, fruits, milk. Polidori et al. (2009) state that “Healthy subjects of any age with a high daily intake of fruits and vegetables have higher antioxidant levels, lower levels of biomarkers of oxidative stress, and better cognitive performance than healthy subjects of any age consuming low amounts of fruits and vegetables”. We can say the healthy foods that assist our quality of life by cognitive improving. For university students, the cognitive performance is very important to critical thinking that is able to enhance their academic performance. To have a higher quality of meals, students need to perceive their time, which is a big problem for university students.

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Time management is a considerable problem, which could decide how many times students have time for cooking or choosing foods. Time allocation is necessary to have the ability of managing time, but many students are not doing well this skill. Most university students are always rushing their tasks because of a lack of time managing skills. They allocate most of the times to do their bad habits rather than cooking or choosing healthy foods. Pelletier and Laska (2012) state that healthy eating and well time allocation of matures could be enhanced by time administration skills. Students who have well-allocated schedules will be sufficient time for healthy meals or choosing healthy food. These students perceive the importance of time and they also have responsibility for their health and academic results. Because they are highly perceived of health and university performance, therefore, these students try their best to discover the reasonable ways to be sufficient time for cooking and studying. Moreover, their brain could receive nutrition from healthy foods, which will assist the brain work more efficiently. That is not surprised that the higher perceived time in students can achieve high results in their academic terms. In this problem, instilling student how to use their time that is very necessary.

To balance university student’s time, they need to create their time table. This time table will assist students who do not use time effectively follow and control what they are doing and will do. Nasrullah and Khan (2015) point out that the behaviors of setting out schedule is crucial for using time effectively. Keeping time log, establishing short-term and long-term targets, arranging tasks orderly, setting out the daily schedule and streamlining workspace that does not make people busy. Because every task that is organized with the reasonable time for executing. Therefore, the time table helps university students to have enough time for daily activities. Academic students who spend most of the time at university should have cooking time for breakfast and lunch in their to-do list in the morning. Because cooking does not take time too much. In the short-range goal, university students need to spend time buying healthy food at the weekend. Since they have much leisure time at the weekend, instead of spending a lot of time playing video games or going out with their friends, they can go shopping for healthy food. To save time for the following week, they can also prepare food at the weekend.

In conclusion, consuming junk food or unhealthy food affect negatively to university student’s performance. The bad habit life style and lack of time managing skills are the main reasons lead academic student consume more junk food or unhealthy food. In order to improve the quality of food intake, university students need to change their habits, such as no skipping meals, choosing healthy food for their meals like vegetables, fruit, and milk. To have time for preparing healthy food, academic students have to plan their daily life as well as set their goals. To make sure that every task is working well.

References

1. Adolphus, K., Lawton, C. L. and Dye, L. (2013) ‘The Effects of Breakfast on Behavior and Academic Performance in Children and Adolescents’, Frontiers In Human Neuroscience, 7, p. 425. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00425.
2. Toni M., B. and Charles H., H. (2011) ‘A Narrative Review of Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Obesity to Cognition and Scholastic Performance across the Human Lifespan’, Advances in Nutrition, (2), p. 201S. doi: 10.3945/an.111.000331.
3. Cabrera, J. C., Rodriguez, M. C., Karl, S. R., & Chavez, C. (2018). In What Ways Do Health Behaviors Impact Academic Performance, Educational Aspirations, and Commitment to Learning?.
4. Nasrullah_PhD, S., & Khan_PhD, M. S. (2015). The Impact of Time Management on the Students’ Academic Achievements.
5. Pelletier, J. E. and Laska, M. N. (2012) ‘Balancing Healthy Meals and Busy Lives: Associations between Work, School, and Family Responsibilities and Perceived Time Constraints among Young Adults’, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 44(6), pp. 481–489. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2012.04.001.
6. Polidori MC et al. (2009) ‘High Fruit and Vegetable Intake Is Positively Correlated with Antioxidant Status and Cognitive Performance in Healthy Subjects’, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 17(4), pp. 921–927. doi: 10.3233/JAD-2009-1114.