Author: thelegendonline

By Trisha Trinh

 

Vaping become increasingly common among middle and high school students, leading to increased smoking rates among the youth. Whether kids think vaping is cool or hip, it’s dangerous. There’s a common misconception about vaping or e-cigarettes being deemed more “healthy”. This is in fact a myth. Young people that aren’t smokers that recently start vaping will have a short-term sensation or calmness, according to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. However, the nicotine wears off quickly, leading to the urge for another hit of it. This could slowly lead to addiction. In a 2015 launch campaign, JUUL labs were “aiming at adult smokers in the 25 to 34 demographic, featuring models from that specific age group.” JUUL are now being widely used among the youth especially in the demographic of middle school and high school students due to their different flavors of nicotine.

In schools, there have been stricter rules to prevent students from vaping or smoking. For instance, Palo Alto High School administration installed more cameras on campus and has staff patrolling usual vaping spots, according to Palo Alto Online.

“Everytime you go into the bathrooms, you are hit right away with a giant scent of vape and it’s disgusting,” expresses senior Tammy Ngo.

This epidemic of vaping spreads rapidly amongst teens that are being experimental without knowing what they’re putting into their bodies. A study done by National Institutes of Health in 2017 discovered that more than one in four high school teenagers reported vaping.

Most of the youth who vape do not even know that the attractively flavored vapor pods contains highly addictive nicotine. The same product found in regular tobacco products.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) last year gave e-cigarette companies and vaping companies 60 days to submit a plan to prevent the youth from vaping.  The major e-cigarettes and vaping companies succeeded in creating a label or a warning to alert of how addictive it is. Failure to do so resulted in pulling their products off the market, according to USA Today.

“Vaping has turned the youth in a widespread epidemic that needs to stop because it’s not cool,” says senior Christine Vu.

 

By Devonna Dang

Going on a diet means to restrict or minimize oneself from consuming certain types of foods or products. In our modern, sedentary culture, we no longer have to physically work for our food. Because of this, people are now restricting their diets in different ways to gain various health benefits, lose weight or help the environment.

Paleo Diet

The Paleo diet, short for the Paleolithic diet, is the predominant consumption of foods presumed to have been available to humans during the Paleolithic era, which began about 40 thousand years ago.

These foods include meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds herbs, spices and healthy fats and oils.

Those on the paleo diet avoid sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (soft drinks, fruit juices, ice cream), grains (bread, pastas, wheat, spelt, rye, barley) and highly processed foods (everything labeled “diet” or “low-fat”). Essentially, if the food looks like it was made in a factory, they avoid it.

Benefits of this diet include the following: increased weight loss, improved glucose tolerance, better blood pressure control and better appetite management.

However, there are dietary concerns with this diet.

“The primary difference between the paleo diet and other healthy diets is the absence of whole grains and legume, which are considered good sources of fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients. Also absent from the diet are dairy products, which are good sources of protein and calcium,” writes Mayo Clinic on their website.

High-Protein Diet

The high-protein diet is exactly what it sounds like. The diet includes eating mostly beans, meat, nuts, grains, eggs, seafood, cheese and vegetarian sources like soy. Things that should be avoided are carbs (cereals, grains, fruits and possibly vegetables).

“When you cut out carbohydrates, you lose weight quickly because you lose water. Then, with no extra carbs, the body begins burning more fat for fuel. This can lead to ketosis, which may make losing weight easier because you feel less hungry,” writes Webmd on their website.

                However, some negative effects of ketosis include headaches, irritability, nausea, bad breath and sleeping problems for certain people.

Ketogenic Diet

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate protein, low-carbohydrate diet. The diet forces one to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. In medicine, it is used to treat difficult-to-control epilepsy in children.

This diet typically includes a lot of meats, eggs, processed meats, cheeses, fish, nuts, butter, oils, seeds and vegetables. However, this diet is generally restrictive and thus hard to follow through with in the long run.

“We also do not know much about its long-term effects, probably because it’s so hard to stick with that people can’t eat this way for a long time,” according to health.harvard.edu.

This diet raises concerns among health professionals, as it could also actually worsen health, especially if one has kidney issues.

Vegan Diet

The vegan diet has been getting increasingly popular for ethical, environmental and health reasons. Essentially, this diet excludes all animal products such as meat, fist, dairy, eggs, bee products and animal-based ingredients (whey, lactose, fish-derived omega-3 fatty acids).

Some foods that are included in their diet are tofu, legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

“Vegans tend to be thinner and have a lower body mass index (BMI) than non-vegans,” writes Healthline on their website.

However, the risks of nutrient deficiencies may increase, in some cases, because it is a diet based exclusively on plant foods.

 

By Andrew Wong

 

School lunch has always been underrated by PHHS students. Students complain about the quality of the food every time and always say that it should improve. However, for the school, this is not as easy as it sounds, as guidelines always have to be met.

The most common complaint given about school lunch is its price. Many claim that the $3.25 lunch price is too high, considering that school lunches do not serve enough to fill a student’s appetite.

“Currently at the price the food is being sold, I do not think that it is worth buying. Because of the lack of quality the lunch offers, we should not have to pay to eat some frozen food that they just heated up,” claims senior Joseph Chung.

In fact, the money that students pay for lunch becomes a part of the school’s budget for lunch, and with a low budget also comes low quality.

“A lot has to do with the cost of the food, we only have a limited budget so we don’t spend a lot of money of the food. If the budget was a little higher, then the quality can go up,” explains cafeteria cook Bryan Enos.

Even if many seem to claim school lunch is not the greatest, the lunches are usually handmade by the workers themselves. As ingredients are mostly frozen foods, workers work hard to hand make the food.

“We do a percentage by hand and another percentage already being pre-prepared. I would say it’s half and half, but we would like that to be more handmade,” says Mr. Enos.

If school lunch is always set to be underrated based off its quality and price, the question lies in how the food can be improved from both its price and quality.

“We hired a new field supervisor who’s focused on culinary, foods and colors. And I’m excited for what direction he’s going to push us in. Get us new scratch made food,” explains cafeteria staff Raquel Vargas.