A TOEFL Essay Requesting Feedback

I do not feel satisfied with my writing as follows, but it is hard for me to tell where is wrong or improve it. Thank you for reading and giving me advice.

Prompt: Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this changed improved the way people live? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Food has become easier to prepare. It only takes frozen prepared food or prepared dried food a few minutes to be served, while even the simplest dishes, such as regular homemade salads, used to take half an hour to train in the past. When people enjoy the service speed, a question is accompanying: has this change improved the way we live? I believe that it does not improve the way we live, but causes lots of troubles for our health. I think this way because of the following reasons.

First, to save time, most people choose frozen food and fast food. Frozen food is easy to prepare, but it does not taste as good as when fresh. It is because below-zero temperatures usually change and destroy food’s texture and reduce its flavor and smell. To keep them a strong flavor when unfrozen, food suppliers tend to add extra seasonings such as salt and sugar to them. Consequently, when our body consumes too much salty or sweetens food, our blood becomes sticky. It is how diseases as blood clots and diabetes form.

Similarly, fast food is another culprit. It is over-processed using a large amount of oil, very unhealthy. To be more easily stored and have a more extended expiration date, food factories add food preservatives, which entails obesity even cancers. In other words, we do save time from cooking while we live in a poor health condition. Therefore, it is hard to say our life way is improving thanks to shortening food preparation.

Second, we do spend less time preparing food than before due to food and kitchen appliances. However, do we use the time we saved appropriately? If we had more social interactions and physical activities using the spared time, it would be different. Well, the reality is people are most likely to dive into Facebook, twitters, WeChat, watching dramas, and return to their work. Seemingly, food technology spares people from long-time cooking. Other technology, such as the i-phone and portable computer, immediately occupy the time saved in an unhealthy way by distancing us from each other and reducing our physical movements. Therefore, shortening food preparation is not helping people have a better lifestyle.

Based on the above information, food has become convenient to cook. However, it has not improved our lifestyle; even somehow, it has lowered our life quality in many ways, such as bringing about diseases and dragging us away from healthy social activities.


I’m sure you will score high marks on the TOEFL exam.

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Thank you, Torsten! It is very kind of you to say so.

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