Good or Bad

While looking for sources that supported my question, I came across an article that claimed process food can be healthy for us. When i first read the title of the article I thought that maybe it would be against processed food and would inform me on how they were so bad. Although I wasn't completely right, the article was not what i expected. When I thought of processed food i thought of the pre-cooked frozen meals that we find in the groceries store or the meal with pick up at the nearest fast food restaurant but from what I’ve learned from the Politics and Food topic there is so much more. In the article Processed foods… can be good for you? by Jennifer Huget it is laid out that it would be hard for use to get our nutrients if completely took processed foods out of our diets. I honestly didn’t understand or grasp the concept of this at first. I automatically thought that all processed foods were bad for our bodies and that eliminating them out of our diets altogether would help our health to improve. However, the article explains ways to to processed foods without extremely harming our bodies. There was a quote by Connie Weaver who is the head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition at Purdue University, “It’s not so easy to categorize processed foods as good or bad. We just have to be smart about it, a little more sophisticated.” With this, I understood more of what it meant by processed food not being all bad for you.

While were watching "Food Inc", two issues stood out to me, the Mansanto soy beans and the hamburger law. To me, they both have to do with attorneys and lawyers protecting these big businesses from being penalized for their wrong-doings. Maddie also brought it back to my attention when she came to speak to our class on Monday. The genetically modified beans can't all be accounted for all the time because they are in a natural environment. She also mentioned that that they get swept away by natural occurrences onto farms that produce natural or different kinds of soy beans, there is no way of keeping track of them all. I think the worst part of it all is that these farms/food producers are being sued because they are unknowingly using the Mansanto soy bean. These small farms and food producers are making their goods without the intention of "stealing" thee soy beans. Yet, because the Mansanto soy beans are mass produced, they end up everywhere. The hamburger law issue also bothered me because of the simple fact that a boy died after eating a bad hamburger. His mom only wanted an apology from the producers but that would probably admit guilt and we all know these big companies never do. As she tried to bring the issue to public attention, she was ignored by government. My point is the government and attorneys are protecting these big producers at all costs. They stay on top at the expense of the consumer. It seems like more and more, making goods quickly and efficiently outweighs our food security and the safety of the consumer.

Is junk food really making us fat?

 

This unit we are learning about food politics and it made me realize how much food is involved in many aspects of our lives. I was reading an article online this week regarding the cause of America's high obesity rate and did you know that junk food isn't the main cause? Nope it is actually us. In the article, "Is Junk Food To Blame for the Obesity Epidemic," written by Ashley Welch. Based on their studies it showed that junk food isn't what makes people obese (even though it is still technically bad for us) but it's how much food people are consuming that makes them over weight. There's a saying that says, "You are what you eat," and if you think about it that is very true. Often times many people don't eat in proportions the way we originally supposed to whenever we get hungry our normal instinct is already programmed to go buy chips at the nearest store, or grab something quick off the dollar menu at our local fast food places. Yet, we don’t realize that every dollar we spend consuming junk food is a dollar less toward what is actually nourishing for our body like a salad, or bottle of water. Reading this article made me realize that we eat while doing other things and don’t realize how much we are actually eating. For example, if you start eating a bag of chips in front of a television screen most likely you are going to finish the entire bag on your own before the show is over because your mind isn’t focused on how much you’re actually eating, you just know food is going inside your mouth and it’s pleasing to your stomach. Try to make an effort to watch how much food goes into your mouth and try smaller portions. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/junk-food-obesity-epidemic/

Alexis Mora

Period 5

The Bigger It Becomes, The More Complex It Becomes

Listening to Roger Doiron discuss the evolution of humans and our diets in his Ted Talk titled “My Subversive Garden Plot”, I began to think some more (more than I already have) about where we have come with food in our country now. By “where we have come”, I am referring to how much change has occurred. Doiron mentions how we have more food than ever before, but not as much confidence in the foods being served to us. How much did our grandparents and great-grandparents worry about the foods they were eating? Did they have confidence and trust in those who produced it?

Doiron also offers the idea that “gardens grow good food.” I believe this is a strong statement because not only are there good tasting foods that can be grown in our yards, but they are good for us. I plan to begin to garden throughout my experience with the research paper, and see how this affects my life.

FOOD for thought: What if we could come together, grow different varieties of foods, and have a buffet one day in fifth period? I wouldn’t mind giving it a thought, and I would love to see what everyone can put together. :)

Roger Doiron's Ted Talk: My Subversive Garden Plot

Food

In class we've been talking, reading, and watching videos about food. While discussing about food and learning new things about it, I think children should learn about food and what is going in their bodies. So  many kids look at these commercials about fast food, toys, and games, so they want to go to them because these commercials catches their attentions. It is the parents job to regulate these types of food and have more fresh homemade food. I think if a child is having  soda all the time or eating out constantly, then it would become a habit when they're older. A child should eat correctly and know what eat, so when they're an adult, they would be healthy and making better eating choices. If every kid is taught about healthy food and what to avoid to eat, then maybe that could make a difference in obesity and diabetes. I get food is amazing and everyone loves it because it gives a our body this comfortable feeling, especially during bad times, but eating our all the time is bad for your body. So yeah. Have a great day.

In "Big Food's" quest to kill off the human race (With Trump as a front runner, maybe that's not such a bad thing.), they've managed to find plenty of different and creative ways to bring about human extinction. We're all pretty well educated on the physical effects our food has on us. Rising obesity and diabetes rates and just over all lowered health are the wonderful benefits we reap from food. Acid resistant Ecoli bacteria swarming over the plastic filled meat we all constantly shove down our throat, salmonella coating spinach of all things, all waiting for someone with an immune system not quite strong enough to stop an infection to come along. Food companies go for the slow burn too though. It's a simple concept that they use for their long term plan; people can't survive on a planet that can't support life. Factory farming is responsible for half of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions have been directly linked to the gradual warming of the Earth. Eventually, our ice caps will no longer be able to stay frozen and the Earth will flood. This alone will kill billions of people. The food industry is also number one when it comes to throwing nitrogen and phosphorous, the leading water pollutants, into our rivers and oceans. There's whats called a 'Dead Zone', an area of water where underwater life cannot live, in the Gulf of Mexico,courtesy of our good friend Big Food. It's the size of New Jersey and shows no signs of shrinking. Our food is killing us and our planet and we pay them to do it. Something needs to change, we need to change, so that we can live without the constant threat of the end of the world looming over us.

http://www.foodispower.org/pollution-water-air-chemicals/

Future of Food

Food=Life

Currently we've all been researching about food, about how its raised, grown, slaughtered, and

processed through a machine. We have all this, but for how long? Food is obviously an important

necessity and so is water. To grow your own plants you need water, and you need plants to feed the

animals to later use them as food. In this article "Global Security Under Climate Change"

Schmidhuber and Tubiello explain the changes that will happen to food growth in the

future. Because of how much the world is almost overpopulated  we start using our natural

resources more which causes more dry land and less plants. I realize more of these 

processed foods with artificial flavors come into play because of how much natural 

resources were losing, it's a substitute. As human beings today, most of us 

don't care what we eat as long as it tastes good like seriously if something is given to us that

is processed by the government some of us wouldn't question what it would be. In the

article a prediction was made that by the end of the 21st century food will be harder to

produce due to the fact of how dry the land will be, although this is just a theory based on a

model it may be a future possibility.