Band nine sample essay
Fast food is increasingly popular in large cities. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of this type of food and give your own opinion.
Despite many healthy eating campaigns, demand for junk food has skyrocketed in recent years. In this essay, I will explore the advantage that this food is affordable with the disadvantage to consumers’ health.
To begin, fast food allows people to grab a quick bite to eat without spending too much money. As the world has been hit by inflation and stagnant wage growth over the last year, more and more consumers have been unable to find affordable meals on the go. If someone finds themselves in this situation, fast food can help them to afford to eat. Furthermore, for parents, who are deeply affected by price rises, many fast food restaurants have multi-buy meal deals which are suitable for a whole family and which can help them cope.
However, regular fast food consumption is damaging for those who eat it. Because these foods are prepared in bulk, they rarely use fresh ingredients and often use additives, which can have a negative impact on people’s health. Furthermore, as the quality of the ingredients cannot be high while keeping prices low, these foods often rely on sugar and fats to make them taste better than they otherwise would. For example, compared to an organic homemade burger, a burger from a fast food chain is likely to be full of chemicals, use poor quality meat and bread, and use more sugar and fat than is necessary.
To conclude, fast food is beneficial as it helps people to eat without breaking the bank. However, it also can be damaging to consumer’s health. For me, given that for many, the alternative to fast food is to not be able to afford to eat, fast food has more advantages than disadvantages.
Fast Food vocabulary
There is a lot of vocabulary you need to write an essay about fast food. I have highlighted some of the important terms from the essay below, but keep an eye out for other essays as there is more to know.
- A quick bite to eat
- This phrase is used to refer to getting something to eat quickly.
- Inflation
- The phenomenon of prices rising over time.
- A meal on the go
- Getting something to eat when you’re not at home.
- Multi-buy deal
- A multi-buy deal is when you save money by buying more than one of something. The most common of these is the BOGOF or ‘buy one get one free’ deal.
- Prepared in bulk
- If something is prepared in bulk, someone made a lot of it all in one go to save time in the long term.
- Quality ingredients
- Quality and ingredients are common collocates (words that go together). I’d use these words instead of ‘good ingredients’.
- Organic
- Made without added chemicals.
- Break the bank
- If you break the bank, you spend too much money.
