Week 4 Assignment #1: Barriers & Solutions The purpose of this assignment is to analyze various barriers to eating healthy, and then identify solutions for overcoming those barriers. There are many challenges to improving health and wellness through diet and cooking including: Time Budget Lack of Cooking Skills/Confidence Availability of Food Convenience Age/Generation And many more… Assignment requirements: Introduction, main body, conclusion, works cited. Follow general MLA formatting. The information presented in your assignment should be detailed and supported by a minimum of three credible sources (CRAAP). Any science based statistics or information that you include to support your thoughts, must have in-text citations. For complete assignment details, please review the Week 4 Assignment #1 Instructions (docx). Week 4 Assignment #1 Instructions (docx). - Alternative Formats Note: This assignment uses Safeassign. SafeAssign compares submitted assignments against a set of academic papers to identify areas of overlap between the submitted assignment and existing works. SafeAssign originality reports provide detailed information about the matches found between a student’s submitted paper and existing sources. Both instructors and students can use the report to review assignment submissions for originality and create opportunities to identify how to properly attribute sources. For step-by-step instructions on how to submit an assignment in ulearn, please refer to this user guide (PDF).

Answer

Barriers To Eating Healthy

Introduction

Eating healthy is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish today in our societies. Individuals continue to complain that they find it difficult to eat healthily for several reasons that seem out of their control. Research on the issues reveals several barriers that primarily prevent individuals from having healthy eating habits.

Barriers to Healthy Eating

At bedrock, the biggest hindrance to eating healthy is time. Time has been known to affect multiple events; however, little had been thought that the factor would also affect the eating habits of individuals. Research conducted globally has indicated that a lack of time has mainly after their healthy eating drastically. The research indicated that over 70% of the world’s population are individuals hooked up at work or school (Mc Morrow et al.). The two activities have been identified to consume more of their time, as they tend to stick to their duties for extended periods, thus making it impossible for them to prepare a well-balanced diet (MD Anderson Cancer Center and Alexander). First, with limited time, individuals can't access the grocery stores in time and buy their groceries or supplies, thus making it difficult for them to prepare healthy meals. Additionally, these individuals often leave late at work, making them resort to eating junk food upon arrival at their homes. Most employees in Silicon Valley in California claim that although they earn good salaries, eating a healthy meal is one of their biggest challenges as they lack time to prepare the meals.

Another barrier to healthy meals is a lack of enough funds to facilitate healthy eating habits. Eating healthy, as mentioned earlier, is one of the most difficult tasks today. Reports around the globe have indicated that they all want to eat healthy meals; however, their budget or funds are too little and cannot support the much-needed lifestyle. A report from different grocery stores has indicated that the cost of purchasing healthy foods, primarily organic meals, has greatly increased (MD Anderson Cancer Center and Alexander). The high cost of organic foods has not made many individuals globally settle for organic food materials that, in most cases, do not provide the vital ingredients available in organic meals (Mc Morrow et al.). For instance, the cost of purchasing vegetables from groceries has greatly shot since the pandemic as the supply has reduced, which now makes it impossible for those with lower incomes to afford the meals.  

Lack of cooking skills is another barrier that makes it difficult for individuals to eat healthy meals. Preparing healthy meals is usually not a walk in the park for individuals who are always in a hurry or lack cooking skills, as it requires an individual’s full concentration when preparing the meals. Preparing healthy meals primarily requires individuals to know the art of cooking in a step-by-step process, thus not missing any vital deal that would now hinder the proper cooking of the meals (MD Anderson Cancer Center and Alexander). Research around the globe also proves that most individuals today do not know how to prepare healthy meals as they mostly grew up eating junk food. The lack of skills to prepare healthy meals now proves to be a huge hindrance to healthy eating today.

Solutions to over the barriers to healthy eating

To overcome barriers to eating healthy, individuals would now be required to perform the following. Individuals are now urged to learn time management skills to overcome the time barrier. The action would now enable them to develop a create a time for cooking and working or studying (Content map terms). Furthermore, individuals are also urged to create a timetable that clearly defines when they should come home to prepare their meals.

To overcome the barrier of low capital or funds to purchase organic foods, individuals are therefore urged to reduce their spending on non-essential commodities and transfer them to their eating habits. For instance, an individual should reduce the amount of money they spend on leisure activities and transfer it to healthy eating (Content map terms ). Additionally, individuals should look for part-time work or roles which would now prove vital in improving their earnings, thus providing cash for healthy eating.

To overcome the barrier of having poor cooking skills, an individual can register for training in a restaurant, thus proving vital in helping them learn better cooking skills. Again, an individual can hire a professional chef whose role would now be preparing healthy foods for their employer.

Conclusion

Eating healthily is one of the habits each individual should ensure that they possess as it plays a critical role in our health. Individuals who eat healthily would rarely fall sick since their bodies have access to vitamins and proteins that support their immunity, unlike those who eat junk food. Barriers that lead to unhealthy eating have been found to include lack of time, inadequate funds, and lack of cooking skills. All these can be overcome if the affected persons learn time management skills, learn to cook from professionals and take part-time jobs to supplement their earnings.