Nowadays, people in Korea, are starting to enjoy drinking coffee after their meals as the coffee drinking culture has spread all over the country with the rapidly increasing number of cafés. Also, as more people discover coffee, they are also starting to enjoy desserts with their coffee. In response to this, cafés are now offering teas and coffees with beautiful and sweet desserts. In fact, almost all cafés now function as bakeries as well. However, this habit of eating sweet desserts, most of which are high in calories, could lead to serious health problems.

If the sweets you enjoy are relatively low in calories, you should be fine. However, if you find that you can’t stop eating high-calorie desserts and you’re starting to gain weight, you should try to make changes that will help you break the habit. 

So, what changes can you make?

In her book Habit, Wendy Wood suggests that we eliminate the environmental factors that prevent us from overcoming bad habits. Moreover, she argues that we need to practice making good choices in order to change our habits.

Therefore, if we want to cut down on the desserts we eat, we should try to change our situation or environment using the principles presented in her book. 

First, we should eat our meals slowly, as this helps us feel satiated and less likely to think about eating sweets. 

Secondly, we can use mobile applications such as Starbucks Siren Order to order our drinks allowing us to avoid looking at the desserts on display.

Lastly, we can buy coffee from small cafés that do not offer seating for their customers.

You can also come up with your own creative methods, other than the three recommended above, to change your habits and help you cut down on the desserts you eat.

However, we should also consider the calories in the beverages we drink because some drinks have even more calories than pastries.

To help you avoid these beverages, it’s a good idea to carry your own tumbler and drink low-calorie beverages such as green tea and Americano. These are some of the ways in which we can form new habits to replace our old ones. If you are someone who needs to drink a beverage after a meal, I recommend following these guidelines.

To find out what people think about this issue, I interviewed someone who enjoys eating desserts and someone who doesn’t. 

Jeong-won Lee, who doesn’t usually eat desserts, said that the desserts on display in cafés are so beautiful that she just has to buy them even though she does not really want to eat them. Moreover, Lee said that her standard for a good café is one with a nice interior design rather than good desserts.

Junwon Park, who often enjoys having desserts, said that he usually goes to only cafés that also operate as bakeries. He also mentioned that he doesn’t go to cafés that don’t serve desserts.

By talking to these two people, I found out that those who enjoy sweets usually seek out cafés with a wide variety of delicious desserts. Surprisingly, people who don’t enjoy having desserts are sometimes inclined to buy desserts that are beautifully displayed in cafés.

Therefore, since we, regardless of whether we like desserts or not, are strongly influenced by environmental factors, we need to make efforts to control our environment and circumstances in order to stay healthy or succeed at dieting. Moreover, we need to practice making good choices until they become strong, healthy habits.










Shinyong Park
Sophomore (Grade 10)
Korea International School Jeju Campus

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