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)