10 Expository Essay Topics on Addictive Foods

The expository essay is one where you are asked to clarify or explain a subject. When you are asked, therefore, to write an expository essay on addictive foods, you are asked to write in such a way that you afford the reader more clarity or further explanations about addictive food. In this type of writing, your work must be based all on evidence and examples. No matter which aspect of addictive foods you select, your goal is to convey all of your facts in a coherent fashion.

When writing about addictive foods, it is important to focus on artificial chemicals used in many foods and drinks, as well as on simple carbohydrates. Understanding the role that these processed chemicals and foods play in foods and drinks can help to shed light for yourself and your readers on what foods are actually addictive and why that is. Understanding the chemical and neurological makeup of the brain is equally beneficial.

That being said, below is a list of facts that you can integrate into your expository essay on addictive foods:

1. Addictive foods are often mistake for the concept of “Food Addiction”. While “food addiction” is a serious problem, it is one whereby the individual is psychologically addicted to food. The key difference here is that addictive foods are those which trigger the addiction themselves, and are not psychologically founded.
2. What many people fail to understand about their foods is that the world of food is made up of carbohydrates. People try and go “carb-free” but they misunderstand what this means. There is a difference between simple carbs and complex carbs. By their very nature, simple carbs are simple for your body to digest which is why they can be immediately converted into useful energy which must be burned off. But complex carbs take longer for your body to process, giving you energy over a longer period of time.
3. Foods made of simple carbs are considered the most addictive foods out there because they are easily broken down by the body. When this happens, the food is converted into energy, with the help of the liver which gives your body the useful nutrients, and converts those nutrients into glucose, or blood sugar. This increases the amount of blood sugar in the body immediately. But if this is not burned off, put to use for some form of physical activity, then the body is overwhelmed by how much glucose is there, and the pancreas steps in to convert it into fat immediately and store that fat.
4. When the body continually stores excess sugar/simple carbohydrates, it regularly increases the blood sugar of your body, which releases extra insulin within the body to counter that, and it increases the amount of fat being stored. When this finishes, the immediate rush of insulin, high blood sugar, and energy is all depleted and you are left feeling fatigued not but 30 minutes after eating those foods. This causes the body to become addicted to those foods, because it relies upon them for the energy necessary to get through the day. These simple carbohydrates are found in all fake, processed foods. If it did not naturally exist in the form you are consuming, it is likely a processed carbohydrate and very bad for you.
5. Many processed foods today not only contain a great deal of simple carbohydrates and often a great deal of processed sugars, but they also contain the chemical aspartame which permanently kills off brain cells and leads to serious symptoms within the body. When consuming sugar and aspartame together, it causes near lethal consequences over the long term, and yet it also causes serious addiction. Aspartame is addictive due to the way in which is affects dopamine absorption in the brain. It interferes with the otherwise normal uptake of the neurotransmitter known as dopamine, causing huge hits that the body then regularly craves. When the body cannot get the neurotransmitter it wants, it will crave that same item which provided the hit as before. In other words, if drinking a diet soda resulted in a huge hit of dopamine, and after that your brain’s ability to process dopamine were more limited in other ways, it would send signals that you needed to consume more of the soda which originally brought the “hit” that the brain is craving so much.
6. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener found in also all “diet” or “sugar free” drinks and foods. It increases the risk of cancers, it leads to mental disorders as a result of regular damage to the body and the brain.
7. Aspartame damages the nerve cells in the brain to death, something which causes regular degeneration of brain cells until the point that each of the cells dies. This cannot be reversed which is why it is such a serious concern.
8. Aspartame, found, again, in many foods and drinks as an artificial sweetener, causes headaches, weight gain, and high blood sugar in between all that.
9. Complex carbohydrates are converted into energy over a longer period of time because they take more time to be broken down in your metabolic system. This leaves you with a longer amount of energy, no spike in your blood sugar, and no excess sugar converted immediately into extra fat reserves. Complex carbohydrates are found in whole wheats, fruits and vegetables, and almost everything that is natural in between.
10. In the process of converting food into useful energy, known as the metabolic process, if there is not enough adequate nutrients and minerals being processed by the body, then it will send signals that it needs to consume more. It will tell the rest of the body that it is still hungry, because it is actually craving specific vitamins and minerals which were not gained in the last round of eating or drinking. This often results in people eating or drinking more of the previously insufficient foods or beverages, and still never obtaining what it was they needed.

These facts will surely help you to write a very high quality expository essay. However, you also have to have a look at 20 topics on addictive foods and writing prompts on analytical essays. So, use them freely and your paper will be evaluated as one of the best!

References:

Birch, Leann Lipps, Linda McPhee, and Susan Sullivan. “Children’s food intake following drinks sweetened with sucrose or aspartame: time course effects.”Physiology & behavior 45.2 (1989): 387-395.
Blundell, J. E., and A. J. Hill. “Paradoxical effects of an intense sweetener (aspartame) on appetite.” The Lancet 327.8489 (1986): 1092-1093.
Jeppesen, Per Bendix, Morten Elsøe, and Christoffer Laustsen. “Does excessive consumption of high fructose corn syryp, aspartame or rebaudioside A affect insulin sensitivity and regulatory genes in liver and muscles?.”European Association for the study of Diabetes (2014).
Marinovich, Marina, et al. “Aspartame, low-calorie sweeteners and disease: regulatory safety and epidemiological issues.” Food and Chemical Toxicology60 (2013): 109-115.
Rolls, Barbara J., Sion Kim, and Ingrid C. Fedoroff. “Effects of drinks sweetened with sucrose or aspartame on hunger, thirst and food intake in men.” Physiology & behavior 48.1 (1990): 19-26.
Soffritti, Morando, et al. “The carcinogenic effects of aspartame: The urgent need for regulatory re‐evaluation.” American journal of industrial medicine 57.4 (2014): 383-397.
Tordoff, Michael G., and Annette M. Alleva. “Effect of drinking soda sweetened with aspartame or high-fructose corn syrup on food intake and body weight.”The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 51.6 (1990): 963-969.