Reflection Blog

This course made me see that food is marketed like any other product. Companies goals are to sell us food, not provide the healthiest product that is most beneficial to our health. Our desire for food has made us lose any control we once had over food. We allow companies to manufacture, control, and hide the truth about the food we are eating. I had never previously noticed how much I fall for companies advertisements without looking to the reasons/health consequences for eating the food I do eat and how little I actually knew about my food and eating habits. With this knowledge I hope to make healthier and less impulse based eating decisions, not simply falling for a new advertised product and being aware more aware of the changes in my eating habits to hopefully make positive changes.

Our diets issues today

The ideas of a perfect food and perfect diet have never been set on one thing. Society keeps changing what a perfect meals consists of based on current studies and it has done it for centuries. But as a study comes out with one conclusion a similar study can come out with a different one. Because of this our diets keep changing based on what science thinks is healthy. Since there can be studies to prove anything is healthy or not, it is hard to base new diets off a couple studies. These diets also change based on companies’ desires. A product can be marketed well to consumers as a new healthy food or good for ones diet, but this can be sparked because it is cheap for a company to produce. But our diets also come from our “right” to eat what we want. As Americans we do not want to be told we cannot eat something. If we like a food we are going to eat a lot of it even if it’s unhealthy because we can. With all these factors that play into creating a perfect diet, it will probably never be reached. There will always be stubborn people who will eat unhealthy because it tastes good and is what they like. There will always be a new product supported by one study and marketed as healthiest thing you can eat, but shortly after another study will attempt to disprove it. People have survived for thousands of years on our “unhealthy diets” so why must the healthiest diet be force on us.

Interesting food/health/nutrition facts

One interesting post was on snacking. It talks about how snack by itself is not unhealthy as it has been argued that eating 5 small meals a day is healthier than 3 large meals. But most everyone snack in the wrong manor. If you snack, the meals should be made smaller to account for the extra snacks, but this does not happen often. Because snacks are an addition and other meals are not adjusted, often our snacking is unhealthy. Another interesting fact was the amount of nutrion that we consume daily. The recommended daily consumption is 2400 mg or less, but a restaurant meal, like sodexo, can have between 2400-4600 mg of sodium per meal. having to eat there 2-3 meals a day, we cannot go without eat double or more of the recommended sodium per day.

SE5

Adam Clark Writ 1133 – Erik Leak 5/16/2012 A surprisingly Healthy Breakfast Eating breakfast is a dilemma for many college students. Eating breakfast requires getting up early for class and either making breakfast or stopping somewhere for it. Making breakfast can require a lot of time and having food available while the other, quicker option, stopping somewhere to get food, requires time and money. Neither time nor money is something many college kids have endless amounts of so breakfast is often skipped. This can have many negative effects on both school performance and health. Looking at our classes eating habits, it was clear that many people skipped breakfast on a daily basis. This is not shocking as the options offered in dinning halls are often not worth getting up early for. There is little debate against the benefits of eating breakfast, but new research has showed that eating certain things for breakfast can maximize the benefits. Cereal, a food always available in the cafeterias and an easy food for students to store and makes a quick meal form, is shown to large health benefits. The amount of daily nutrients consumed can vary greatly depending ones choice of breakfast. A study done by the British National Diet and Nutrition Surveys, which recorded all food eaten by participants for a 7-day period was analyzed to find correlations between breakfast and the daily nutrients consumed. The goal was to see if breakfast, or more specifically cereal for breakfast, had more health benefits than no breakfast. Non-breakfast eaters consumed on average fewer calories daily than those who ate non-cereal or cereal breakfasts, but eating breakfast was associated with a lower daily fat intake (Gibson 82). The analysis showed that skipping breakfast led to the lowest daily intake of micronutrients. The intake of micronutrients was 6-18% higher for non-cereal breakfast and 30-90% higher for cereal breakfast (82). Even though more calories were consumed daily when breakfast was eaten, these percentages still show that the food eaten was more nutrient dense, up to 14% more dense when cereal breakfasts were eaten (83). This analysis just offers some light into the benefits of cereal for breakfast, and is simply reporting on the data collected by the British NDNS, but the results do show significant nutritional benefits from consuming cereal for breakfast. Cereal is an easy food for a college kid to have for breakfast. There is no preparation needed and I can easily by made in a dorm room. A simple breakfast cannot only provide morning class performance benefits by providing energy for the mind; it can lead to the consumption of healthy food later in the day. Cereal is not always though of as the healthiest option as they are seen full of sugars and carbohydrates which may be why it was not common breakfast item in our classes eating habits. But all of today’s cereals are filled with numerous nutrients that cannot be provided by many other breakfasts. Starting the day with cereal can provide the body with vital nutrients early in the day and often leads to more nutrient rich food to be consumed later in the day as well. Cereal can provide the beneficial breakfast that all college students should have. This quick meal that is healthy and can be prepared and eaten in 5 minutes should have a large appeal to college students who focus on maximizing time and performance, but the negative assumptions that cereal is not that healthy limits cereals occurrence in breakfasts. Works Cited Gibson, S. A., and P. Gun. "What's for Breakfast? Nutritional Implications of Breakfast Habits: Insights from the NDNS Dietary Records." Nutrition Bulletin March 36.1 (2011): 78-86. Web. 16 May 2012. .

Commonalities in our eating

There was more variety in foods and places people ate than i expected. It was common for people to skip breakfast a couple of the days. The days recorded were weekend days so many people often get up late, past the time for "normal" breakfast so it is not convenient for them to eat it. Some of the breakfast were instant meals or quick things grabbed from a dininng hall, not a full meal. Most people get up around lunch so either a small snack of just waiting till lunch makes the most sense. It was also a common theme to see snacking in peoples daily eating habits. For many people a couple quick snacks spread out during a day is easier than sitting down for a meal.

What I ate this weekend

Thursday night- 730-strawberries, salad, burger, milk 10-kettle chips, Friday- 9 am – 2 glass of cranrasberry juice 2 nutrigrain bars 11 am- chips and salsa and turkey, iced tea 3- turkey sandwich beef stick, iced tea 5:30- pizza(cheese and sausage) 3 side servings of sausage, 2 cans of orange crush 8- multiple servings of pretzels Saturday- 9:30 bacon and 2 glasses of apple juice 11- kettle chips and turkey 5- cheddar cheese and wheat thins, strawberries, blueberries, rasberries, root beer 630- salad with lemon dressing, bread and steak, water 10:30 2 cookies, can of orange crush Sunday morning 10- eggs benedict, bacon and apple juice 12-turkey and lemonade 5-5 piece chicken strip from BK

SE 4

Adam Clark Writ 1133-Professor Leake 5-9-12 Industrialized Chicken Poultry has always been a large part of Americans diets. In the early 1900’s it was common for farms, which were often less specialized, to have a flock of chickens for eggs and meat in addition to many other animals and crops. As society grew, though, these farms that produced a little bit of everything were not efficient enough to meet societies needs. Farms began to specialize in a single or closely related product to maximize efficiency. This cut down the numerous farms that once had a couple hundred chickens, to fewer super farms that can house hundreds of thousands of birds. With this now vastly available resource, society is changings its dependence on chicken away from mostly eggs, to more meat. Not only have these super farms becoming very efficient, chickens have been bred to grow ideally in certain conditions allowing for rapid growth of larger chickens. Chicken farming which was once common in local farms and houses has evolved into a very efficient industrialized process, maximized in every way possible, reflecting societies needs for efficiency. Early farming was not specialized farming; it was common for farms to grow a multitude of products. Having many products limited the farms to small flocks of chickens. Data collected by the UDSA Agricultural Resource Management Study shows that in 1910 roughly 88 percent of farms in the US raised chickens. The study showed though that by 1992 that number had fallen to 5.6 percent (Poultry Production 3). It is clear that farms needed to become specialized to a certain product, chicken, to stay competitive with societies demands for the product. The specialization also focused on chickens raised for laying eggs versus chicken for meat. The demand for chicken meat and eggs has increased as society has grown, but growth of chicken farms for meat has increased significantly more than chicken farms for eggs as the per capita consumption of meat has increased while the opposite is true for eggs. In an USDA study, during the 1940’s the per capita consumption of chicken meat was 24 pounds and 320 eggs per year, while by the 1990’’s meat consumption had risen to almost 50 pounds while eggs dropped to 236 per year (Poultry and Eggs 1-2). This jump in consumption of chicken meat is a result from it becoming much more affordable through specialized farming and genetically superior chickens. This new availability of chickens turned the public away from eggs because raising chickens had become as easy as collecting eggs. It was not only the farming process that got revamped to handle mass quantities of chickens. The chickens had been altered to grow faster, with bigger breasts, all while eating less food. In the 1940’s it took 12 weeks and 16 pounds of feed to grow a chicken 4-pound. By 2000 it took only 6 weeks to grown a bigger chicken that only took 6.4 pounds of feed to grow a 4-pound chicken (THIRUVENKADAN 310). This has allowed for double the production in the same time period with the same amount of food. These genetically superior chickens that grow faster with less food also have higher percentages of societies preferred meat, breast, through genetic modification and breeding. The mortality rate of raising chickens also fell by over half in the same time period from 10 percent to 3.6 percent (310). These high levels of efficiency have allowed society to consume more chicken meat as it has become significantly cheaper to produce. This industrialization of raising chickens has not had all positive results though. The percentage of chicken labeled as processed has risen significantly as more chickens are produced. 85 percent of chickens produced during the 1940’s were sold as whole carcass chickens while only 2 percent were sold labeled as processed. Shockingly by 1995 only 11 percent of chickens were sold as whole carcass, and there was an 18 times increase of processed chicken to 36 percent (Poultry and Eggs 1-2). This large change reflects societies desires though. Society craves for efficiency and speed, and the increase in processed chicken achieves this. Fast food restaurants have sprouted everywhere across the US and the desire for this and quick meals has increased the need for processed chicken. This adds to the ever-growing amount of processed food Americans unknowing or caringly consume. A once very localized natural farming of chickens in early America has developed into a multibillion-dollar industry. Farms have come to house hundreds of thousands of birds at a time to be more efficient. These super farms have eliminated all the small local chicken farms America once had. These super farms have been able though to develop a genetically superior chicken to maximize its efficiency. Chickens can now be raised in half the time with half the food allowing for chicken to be much more available to the public. This industrialization comes at a cost though like the industrialization of many foods. The amount of processed chicken has risen severely as part of efficiency. Processing chicken allows for more of the chicken to be used further raising the efficiency of the farms. This development of the chicken industry comes as a reflection of societies demands and needs to maximize a products’ availability. Works Cited THIRUVENKADAN, A.K. Broiler breeding strategies over the decades: an overview. World's poultry science journal 67.2 30 Jun 2011: 309-336. World's Poultry Science Association. 08 May 2012. < http://jc3th3db7e.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Broiler+breeding+strategies+over+the+decades%3A+an+overview&rft.jtitle=World%27s+Poultry+Science+Journal&rft.au=A+K+THIRUVENKADAN&rft.au=R+PRABAKARAN&rft.au=S+PANNEERSELVAM&rft.date=2011-06-30&rft.issn=0043-9339&rft.volume=67&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=309&rft_id=info:doi/10.1017%2FS0043933911000328&rft.externalDBID=WPSC&rft.externalDocID=2378963091> USA. US Department of Agriculture. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Poultry and Eggs. Web. 8 May 2012. . USA. US Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. Poultry Production in the United States. Broiler Farms' Organization. Web. 8 May 2012. .

The production of our food today

These pieces trace the history of our food and us in a similar manor. The main point being there has been a disconnection between our food and us. Food is all about mass production and visual appeal to a consumer. Because of this, everything but the final product is hidden from a consumer. Very few people today could say where their food came from and the process it went through to get to them. Very few people think of how they have fresh strawberries all year round, when, especially for me being from Minnesota, it is clear to tell it is not a local strawberry season. All types of food are available all year round as that’s what the customer expects. Because of this want from the costumer, our food is now chemically altered, preserved and produced in the most efficient ways possible. Food once had a must more personal connection, this can more easily be seen with fruits and vegetables but can still be applied to meat products. It was once very common to have a small garden at home to grow some fresh vegetables when they were in season, this much more natural process allowed people to actually see what went into the product, and it was most chemical free. This has grown less common creating a loss of connection to the process of getting food. This commercialization of farming food is made clear through Cook's piece "fowl trouble." Animals are now raised in poor conditions, pumped full of chemicals that maximize growth with no concern for health. The processes of storing and transporting food have improved drastically to transport this commercialized food. One can find fresh Alaskan salmon or crab from Maine in a restaurant in Minnesota. No one questions how this is possible, they just expect this luxury. This transportation and processing of food has not only broken foods connections to regions and season, it has created chemically filled and genetically altered food to help with these processes. People only know the food by its name, and nothing about the process of getting it. The most troubling part of both pieces was to think no one cares or asks about what is truly in our food and how industrialization of our foods has effected them and us nutritionally.

Our National Eating Disorder

Our nations eating disorder comes from the massive amounts of food available and not ethnic identity to guide us to good food. The quantity of food available has brought back the omnivorous dilemma. Americans have lost their senses to pick good food from a lack of ethnic background and lack of use of the senses before. American’s are too health conscious. They only want to eat “healthy” products so companies cater to this. Whatever the latest health craze is, companies can manipulate their product to fit the needs. Low carbs, high omega-3’s all can be added to make Americans feel like their product is healthier. Americans pick food by the numbers not by taste or smell, which previously were used to pick out micronutrients and toxins. Visually appealing food is good food for Americans. Pollan’s most interesting analysis was that of the Americans and French. The French eat what Americans see as an unhealthy diet, yet the French are skinnier and healthier because they know how to eat the foods in moderation. This moderation is not based on numbers, just simple guidelines they have always had, no snacks, no seconds, eating together and small portions. Americans lack similar guidelines, as it is hard to identify with a specific ethnic group, which can help establish them. I chose what I eat mostly off convenience and what I have already eaten through out the day. If I had a large meal earlier, I try to make my next meal smaller to balance my eating. But the common American habit of snacking is hard to resist. Snacking I ignore everything I may have had that day and treat it too much like a meal, but snacking is always something I have remembered doing so it is hard to resist.