Response to Jake Breys Blog

(Here Is a link to Jake's blog) Jake decided to make a sandwich for his meal. It sounded like a great sandwich, it made me hungry. So, I made one. I have to admit he was right by using the freshest ingredients I ate as much as I would normally, but I felt good afterwards. by this I mean I wasn't dragging and my stomach was full but not sick or queasy. he also had some great points about Michael Pollan's ideology.

Organic Vs. Conventional

I read these two articles (Conventional, Organic) and this is what I got from it. There are pollutants present inside the plant to worry about, and there are also outside health concerns to worry about. One of the outside factors to consider is the presence of certain mycotoxins, which are the by-products of molds. In organic food there is no way to naturally prevent the growth of these molds, whereas in a conventional setting there would be a fungicide used to prohbit the growth of the mold. This means organic food will be more likely to be contaminated with mycotoxins than conventional food does. Basically what needs to happen I belive is combine the two and use the pros of each to make the best product possible.

Peer Response to Mitch's Fake vs. Real Food

Mitch had a very good view on milk. Here is a link to his blog. Since he grew up on a dairy farm I feel he would have a great perceptive on the raw milk vs. pasteurized milk. He states that in this case the processed milk is better for you. It is one of the few foods that in my eyes is better for you processed.

The processed milk has vitamins infused with it and the risk of micro organisms is significantly lower than in raw milk. He also states the problem of raw milk separating where as processed milk does not.

As stated above in my eyes this is one of the few foods where fake food is better and two blogs that help my thoughts are Carrie Jo Leum's Real vs Fake food and my blog which is just below on this page titled Is fake better?

Is Fake Better?

For centuries society has used the cream from milk to make butter. The butter was used for cooking and for flavoring on bread potatoes and multiple other uses. My family has always used butter, but recently a new substitute has come on to the market with claims to be better for your health. Millions of people flocked to the new margarine substitute to have the butter taste without the dietary guilt.

Margarine is made from veg table oils so it has no saturated fats unlike its butter counter part. Unfortunately it does contain a new found fat that is worse than saturated fats. Margarine contains trans-fats. these fats cause a rise in blood cholesterol and reduce good fat levels (LDL and HDL). For a more in depth look at the nutritional facts of margarine click on this link.

The trap most Americans fall into is they can not ration there eating. this is true for the butter case and many other foods. Our society is however raised to eat whatever they like based on taste. Well fats taste good, but we have to limit these if as a nation we want to become healthier as a whole.

Response to Andrew Zwalds Blog

Andrew has very valid points throughout his blog. I agree home cooked meals do taste better and are healthier, but not just because they lack preservatives. Preservatives do exactly what they say they do, they preserve food. This makes the breaking down of food much harder which in turn makes the amount of nutrients absorbed by the body less. We can also link our “western” diet, as Pollan calls it, unhealthy because everything in our diet is bigger. If your food does not have enough flavors, add salt. Put butter on your veggies, bread, and potatoes.
Even if we eat home cooked meals we need to limit the excess additives and also cut down on our portions. Pollan points this out in his book, by saying something along the lines of, we do not eat out of necessity, we eat to socialize or to get a certain feeling from our food. As a society I believe we should only eat out of necessity. If we do so I believe we can be healthier as a nation and cut down on diseases that have popped up such as obesity and a rise in high blood pressure. If we look back at times where we ate natural, unprocessed foods we see that as a whole we were much healthier. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/7/1/91.pdf. This pdf file shows how our diets have been growing over the last one hundred plus years. This increase has been directly related to rise in certain diseases. So I believe our bigger is better mentality needs to turn to just enough is great too mentality.

Here is a link to andrews original blog (click here)

Celebrity Endorsement

Everyone needs insurance. Gieco decided to use Little Richard as a celebrity endorsement (click here to view). The Gieco uses Richard, and his flamboyant antics to highlight some consumer problems and needs. The consumer says what he has a problem or need and Little Richard translates and interprets what's said by the consumer.

I find this ad effective in the way of comedic attention. Little Richard is definitely the most qualified person to tell someone what car insurance is right for them. It does get the name stuck in your head so when the consumer thinks about getting insurance they will think of Gieco.

Now celebrity endorsments can be bad. If a company uses a celebrity and then the celebrity goes out and does something negative like get caught with drugs, or have an affair the company could be hurt. The consumers will most likely not associate their buying power on a negative product. This is expressed in this article (click here to view).

Self Eval

After viewing my speech I realized it went better than I thought. I had a couple rough patches though.

1. I should have practiced a little more. My nerves got to me.
2. I went over the alloted time but with practice I could have corrected that.
3. I should have got the audience involved showing that anyone can cook.

I noticed I got there attention because they laughed in the begining several times. I However lost the audience with a mono toned voice and too much information in such a small amount of time.

I will use these realizations as a growth point for future points. (click here for a link to see my video)

My Meal

On the night of February 28^th, 2010 I decided to make a meal. This meal started a week earlier when a friend and I were talking about cooking and we decided to make a meal the following Sunday. We planned our meal by if a food tasted good. We chose to make sirloin tip steaks baked potatoes and broccoli along with a desert, apple pie. We bought the ingredients the day before so storage was not a big part of our meals the only thing that were refrigerated were the steaks and broccoli. To make the food we started up the charcoal grill and let that warm up. While the grill was getting ready we wrapped the potatoes in tin foil and poked holes in them with a fork. We sprinkled a little bit of seasoning on the steaks and filled and began heating a pot for the broccoli. After the grill was ready we grilled the steaks and potatoes. We also, boiled the broccoli in the pan of water. After everything was cooked we sat down together and ate. We savored the food and the conversation. After we felt full we cleaned up and felt satisfied.

Pollan’s claim to eating what is scientifically right has its pros and cons. I agree that since the field of nutrition has stepped in people who eat the western diet have worse health than those who follow traditional diets, but that doesn’t mean that all nutritional science is wrong. I do think that we should not eat because it makes us feel good but rather eat out of necessity. I believe you can eat out of necessity and still have some level of enjoyment when you eat. (click on this link to go to a paper that reflects my ideas more thoroughly)

A Call for Simple

Michael Pollan's book in defense of food has sounded the alarm against the "western diet" and it's "fake food" take on nutrition. Pollan's argument is based on the fact that we view food as just "nutrients" and not as a actual food. He also argues that while the government, fueled by large processing companies, calls today's food "healthy" it has caused a rise in such diseases as obesity, coronary heart disease and cancer. Pollan is suggesting to the public that if we really want to be healthy we should eat natural foods. A call for simple food.



I agree with Pollan. It seems now a days everything you eat causes cancer or is unhealthy, but what is good for you today will be bad for you tomorrow. Why do we let our health be influenced by the companies who make our food? Any good business plan looks to maximise profits and the general public wants to be "healthy." So when companies say something is "healthy" the public jumps on that trend and profits can be maximised. If we ate simple like back in the day where the headlines weren't littered with headlines about the new "unhealthy food" and why it causes some problem what would happen to the fast food restaurants and the processing plants?

In an article on the USA Today web-page (click here for a link) an example of the resistance to Pollan's call to look at the way we eat along with an overview of his book. In my mind however the company shoot themselves in the foot by saying we use high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten food because it's cheap. Being cheap means food companies can keep costs low and maximise profits. So just think before you eat next time is it truly "healthy?"