The Future of My Nutrition Meter - Toptal Scholarships

What good is a 4.5 GPA with diabetes and risk a heart attack at 35? In my book How a Teenager Fell in Love with Healthy Eating, I shared that diseases do not occur overnight and that plaque in the veins of our heart starts building up even as a child, but by the time they turn 35, it becomes visible. However, students are rarely taught about the long term impacts of what they eat. Schools and parents usually do not consider the harm of offering children and teenagers junk foods often.

In this super competitive world influenced by large corporates selling processed foods, it is difficult for families, schools, and communities to understand the importance of teen health, which is a huge epidemic. Currently, the number of children who struggle with obesity, diabetes and other health issues are at an all-time high.

Through my blog, My Nutrition Meter, I question why schools and many parents only encourage a high academic GPA and ignore encouraging a high health GPA. I educate children and teenagers about the importance of maintaining Health GPA instead of solely focusing on their school GPA. Focusing on improving one while ignoring the other will result in a disaster.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I was a chocoholic. It is easier for me to confess this now because reigning in my sweet tooth came from necessity. I never imagined gooey brownies, chocolate lava cakes, and cookies destroyed my health. I did what all the other kids were doing. My weight increased and dad lovingly urged me to eat his nutritious dishes. Releasing the junk food addiction was challenging, until dad said, “Our family suffers from diabetes.” This remark startled me, but not knowing what this meant, frightened me more.

I was twelve-years-old. Connecting the dots between my family’s health risk to my life was confusing, but health classes began to unravel the mystery of how my food choices influenced my weight and health. Armed with this information, I began to spend my free-time reading books such as Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, following Dr. Dean Ornish’s interviews and watching Netflix health documentaries. My interest in health shaped my family’s conversations by sharing my findings and preparing healthy meals. This led to a marked improvement in my skin, attitude, and body. I fell in love with the new me and felt empowered to share this new lifestyle with others. How you might ask? My Nutrition Meter. Ted Talks such as Jamie Oliver’s Ted Talk, “Teach Every Kid About Food” and new dietary strategies gave me content for my blog.

Several months of blogging led me nowhere. Immense research, few followers, and rare engagement led me to believe that my efforts were futile. I need to attract more people, not just for my blog, but also in my personal life as my family relocated to California for better job opportunities.

As a new student in a competitive school board, I was overwhelmed trying to adapt to the new community and curriculum. When a classmate shared how “dumb” his sister was for “only” having a 4.2 GPA, I felt hopeless.

My perseverance allowed me to excel - but not in my peers' terms. Although I was improving academically, I was nowhere near the “perfect” GPA.

Whenever I wanted a break from the stressful environment, I came home and created a post or recorded a video for my blog, My Nutrition Meter. After help from Facebook analytics, I started interviewing other kids, parents, and experts in my interactive Facebook Group/Page.

A few months after the conversation with my classmate, I had an epiphany and changed the name of my blog to My Nutrition Meter- What Is Your Health GPA? My main focus went from sharing health tips to encouraging teenagers, children and their parents to live balanced healthy lifestyles. Instead of focusing solely on the grades you receive at school, start grading yourself on how balanced your diet is and understand the importance of a health GPA.

I never imagined others would find value in my words as a high schooler, this showed me that my grades did not make me inferior.

After months of blogging, my book How A Teenager Fell in Love With Healthy Eating came out. I shared how juice companies hire fragrance and flavor companies to ensure

that flavor and the fruit smell is added back to the juice to create a fresh taste. These store-bought juices have no nutritional value as they are filled with chemicals.

Large corporations spend millions of dollars and hire scientists to discover the perfect level of crunch in a potato chip and for the perfect amount of fizz in soda. These factors combine, to create the sensation that your brain and subconscious associates with a food or drink. Huge corporations also fill their drinks with artificial sweeteners to trick customers into thinking they are consuming fewer calories, however, there are many studies showing that diet soda causes you to put on more pounds. The artificial sweeteners increase appetite and sugar craving.

So, the psychobiology of junk food is working against us. When we eat a snack, like a bag of chips, our brain registers it, so the next time we see or smell anything related, we will immediately start craving the food.

With all of these marketing tactics and flavors, I wondered how I could help people stop excessively eating unhealthy foods because of cravings. As a young student, I attended a part-time weekend spiritual school where I studied the spiritual concept of Body Mind and Intellect. I found its application on our health and nutrition. I learned that everyone draws their emotions and preferences from their mind, while their intellect gives them the ability to reason, rationalize and think for ourselves.

Through learning about the role the subconscious mind plays in cravings, I wish to build and market technology that helps users understand their cravings, detect hidden messages of corporates and stop them before the messages reach the subconscious mind. It will help people be aware and not succumb to cravings due to the onslaught of marketing by large corporations. Our own education and the understanding of the impact on our health will prevent us from getting sucked into the mind’s sudden impulses. The knowledge and awareness would be able to steer your mind away from consuming the processed foods even after your body starts to crave them. With the help of a mentor, we can pitch this idea to the university for funding and research team.

My goal is to be able to positively impact millions across the world so that kids and teens build their life on the strong foundation of health and be disease free. This education will also address the parents. After all, the best gift a parent can give their child is strong health habits.

This mission can not be completed by just one person. With the help of a mentor, my goal is to create a team of ambassadors around the world that can help me reach out to more teenagers, kids, and parents. These ambassadors will educate parents, teenagers and children of the importance of a Health GPA, rather than just for school GPA.

Recently, I have been studying concepts of direct marketing and the power of the internet to reach out to teenagers worldwide with my free content.

It is a fascinating process to see how your story can change the life of someone else. I never imagined others would find value in my words as a high schooler. My Nutrition Meter is a lifelong commitment that serves me, my family, and the communities around me. Nutrition is a new medicine, and I am representing this era.

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Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/mynutritionmeter/