We wish life to be easier and the product companies out there want to make it easier for us, as well by seizing the window of opportunity to target us with product enhancers that appeal to taste, health and travel. This causes us to rely on the products and even become addicted without even knowing it. Products are camouflaged into masking our views on normal living; such as Mio water flavoring, diet pills and GPS navigation.

Mio is a zero-calorie sweetener. It trains your taste buds to expect sweet flavors. It skews your tongue’s perception of what types of food it should want.  Enhancing the flavors, it trains your tongue to almost expect good-tasting water. It has amounts of sugar in a tiny little bottle. These days everything has to be packed with sugar for it to be pleasing to our taste buds. Thus,  people are expecting it automatically, we then find it hard to drink regular water, which then makes it hard for the consumer to go back to the original product in its natural state.

Hawaii already offers clean water. Yet, we can’t drink any water unless it is completely loaded with vast amounts of sugar and flavor enhancers instead of being able to appreciate the clean water we have. Society makes it seem we have to enhance everything.

Losing weight can be a challenge and time consuming. Now, there are diet pills, which many people choose as a “fix” to losing weight according to addictionhope.com. Many people don’t have the time to hit the gym and excersise or are just plain lazy when choosing the method of diet pills as a weight loss enhancer. This product is highly addictive because it is in a cycle. You can’t take the pills for any longer than 3 weeks and need to take a 3-week break again. Diet pills are bad for the liver and can cause liver damage and many have to get liver transplants.

But instead of damaging your liver. There is a natural and healthy way to losing weight it’s called dedication and persistence. Get a gym membership and start working out. In time people will start to see yourself in a different light. Eating healthier alone can make a person lose weight and can make you feel healthier. By cutting out soda it increases your metabolism and cut out the ridiculous amounts of sugar in soda. The diet pills enhances the chances of losing weight and increases the chances of liver damage. In consequence when building up a tolerance to the substance they start to see symptoms such as fatigue, weight gain, craving of other drugs or substances, low moods or depression, muscle aches and irritability. That’s how it becomes addicting.

Directions can be a hassle especially when you are driving. With many tasks on people’s minds GPS navigation system has made life easier for everyone. This is another product that can be addicting as well. With the children in the car and the many the lists of errands in a day, navigation has been the yellow brick road to a simple drive. However, we live on a small island and for anyone who uses GPS is unnecessary.

Nonetheless, as beneficial as is, it can cause serious brain complications. According to phys.org, GPS has proven to reduce the hippocampus in the brain. The hippocampus in the brain helps with memory and navigation. A study done by McGill University, in London showed that taxi drivers who uses navigation for 3 years has a reduction in the hippocampus of the brain, which leads to a high risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. Spatial navigation is the best navigation to use because it is a method that uses landmarks and visible cues. This helps in developing cognitive maps, which implement in our decisions in where we are trying to go. Many locals on the island use GPS to get places but is it necessary to use it all the time. The media makes us believe it is necessary for us to use these devices and make it seem like there are no consequences.

Overall, no matter sometimes how positive a product may be, the downsides may be of a greater risk than a benefit. The difficulty is looking past the enhancing effects, which can lead us into becoming addicted or reliant on a product unconsciously. With jobs, children and everything around us, we may not even realize it in the fast-paced life we all live in. The world isn’t going to stop for us, but it is important to take a step back and look at the big picture.