Argumentative essay (junk food) draft 1

Argue either for or against the banning of the sale of junk food in school canteens.

Owing to parents’ fear regarding children’s health, abetted by nutritionist and media, whether the schools should or should not ban the sale of junk food in school canteens has been getting more contradictory among the public. According to Family Journal (2005), junk food refers to any food that is perceived to be unhealthy and of low nutritional value. The nutritional value of food eaten by Australian children has been dropping continuously over the past 3 decades. (Weekend News 2005) According to the statistics provided by Health Foundation (2005), 6 out of 13 most popular snack foods are of low nutritional value and the other 3 are of moderate nutritional value. With the increasing consumption of junk food which will lead to various drawbacks, I strongly believe that the sale of junk food in school canteens should be banned.

Firstly, the primary effect brought by the consumption of junk food can be linked directly to childhood obesity. Junk foods such as potato chips and chocolate bars can raise the kilojoules intake, leading to weight gain. (Weekend News 2005) By supplying foods high in fat and sugar, school canteens are actually contributing to youth weight gain. (Reynolds 2005) According to the statistics published by Australian Nutrition Journal (2004), percentage of Australian children aged 12-14 that intake sugar more than level of recommended is far outweigh the percentage of children that consume in optimum level. This can lead to even serious health problems such as heart disease, osteoarthritis and some cancers. (Weekend News 2005) In short, the sales of junk food in school canteens should be banned to prevent the worsening of obesity among youth.

Consequently, junk foods intake provides no benefits but lead to unhealthy growth and development among children. The chemical additives, ingredients in manufacturing junk foods to enhance flavour and colour has been experimented to trigger various behavioural problems in children, such as hyperactivity and poor concentration.(Family Journal 2005) According to Caputo (2005), research shows that there is improvement on children’s behaviour by having reducing amount of unhealthy foods in children’s diet. Students became calmer after lunch and showed improvement in their behaviour after the removal of junk food and soft drinks from school canteen. (Green 2005) Therefore, to further hinder such behavioural problems, junk foods should be banned in school canteen.

Furthermore, the selling of junk food at school canteens should be banned as it is the major contributor to litter problems. Cans, crisp packets, cartons and plastic containers are scattered all over the school compounds with the increasing availability of junk food at school. Schools that have reduced the sales of junk food have also reduced their litter problems. (Family Journal 2005) According to Green (2005), the reduction in litter has benefited the school groundsman by helping them to spend less time on cleaning the grounds, enabling them to contribute more time on maintenance projects that improve the school. Overall, in order to provide a better environment for schooling, sales of junk food in school canteen should be banned.

As a conclusion, the sales of junk foods in school canteens has leaded to various serious problems such as childhood obesity, unhealthy growth and littering problems. Although it does generate profits for the school, but again, I would like to strengthen my stand of going against the sales of junk food in school canteens as the future of healthy children is much more important than the profits that it can generate.

text production draft 3

The brilliancy of human beings well equipped with technology in modernising the world, to speak truly, though apparently a paradox, is vanishing the world bit by bit by leading to global warming. Theoretically, global warming refers to the increase in average temperature of Earth caused by greenhouse gases mainly CO2 gas. In fact, since 1900, planet Earth has warmed up by around 0.8 degrees centigrade and this figure is estimated to double for the following centuries. (Woodford 2006) All these will definitely cause inevitable effects on climate changes which will bring devastating consequences to the world and therefore, possible strategies must be undertaken to overcome the anthropogenic global warming.

Firstly, the most significant effects of global warming on climate changes will be the tremendous increase in sea level. Increase in global temperature will melt the glaciers and ice sheets as well as expand water volume, leading to rise in sea level. This is supported by Lonnie Thompson who studies glacier says that there will be no more snow in Kilimanjaro within a decade. (An Inconvenient Truth 2007) According to Chris Woodford (2006), the world's sea levels are currently rising at 3cm per decade and it is estimated to reach 1 m by 2100. Consequently, increasing sea level will lead to terrifying consequences such as erosion of coastlines and flash flood. (Riebeek 2007) Hurricanes, tornados and typhoons will likely increase in intensity due to warmer ocean surface temperatures. (An Inconvenient Truth 2007) Overall, rising sea level causes various dreadful consequences which may lead our mother earth to be permanently uninhabitable.

Global warming also influences the biosphere - interactions between Earth and living creatures. Warmer temperatures have shifted the growing season in many parts of the globe and this causes animals that cannot migrate or adapt to face extinction. (Riebeek 2007) Expanding of tropical temperature zones leads to the outbreak of various infectious diseases such as malaria and SARS. Due to hot weather, pine beetles fail to be killed and this has sacrificed thousands hectares of pine trees. More intense rains and rising sea levels create calamitous impacts on human population. On some predictions, climate change flooding could make around 100-200 million people permanently homeless by 2100. (Woodford 2006) Significantly, the world will be walking more steps further to its end if this issue is left unsolved in such deteriorating situation.

To prevent the destructive consequences from taking place, efficacious measures should be taken into consideration. Each of us is the causes of economy, with the thing we buy, electricity we use, cars we drive, and we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emission to zero. The solutions are in our hands. (An Inconvenient Truth 2007) You could bicycle, walk, or take the bus instead of using car, open your windows instead of using the air-con, and drive with better fuel economy in mind. (Woodford 2006) To achieve stabilization and reconstruction of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, many countries has now joined the Kyoto Protocol, contributing by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

As a conclusion, global warming is endangering the earth, putting our life at risk and causing the extinction of living creatures. As part of the world, should we acknowledge the existence of global warming by just nodding or waiting for tomorrow to deal with it? No! It is absolutely a no as we should bear in mind that it is our responsibility and as human beings, we have the righteousness to conserve and preserve the globe. Rather than contributing knowledge into vaporising the world through modernisation, we, human beings should do our best to achieve the optimisation, so let’s put your knowledge into action (An Inconvenient Truth 2007) for a better tomorrow.