Video

Watch it, you know you want to...it'll only take 6 minutes!

http://www.minds.com/blog/view/201538/quite-possibly-the-most-eye-opening-six-minutes-ever-on-film

Salt Sugar Fat - Fat

This week's reading consisted of Michael Moss's novel Salt Sugar Fat, focusing on fat and its effects. Early on in the reading, Moss makes a comparison between sugar and fat; he says that "if sugar is the methamphetamine of processed food ingredients, with its high-speed, blunt assault on our brains, then fat is the opiate, a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious but no less powerful" (148). This comparison captures not only the drug-like effects these substances have on our bodies, but also the mental effects of their addictiveness. Although this is a less intense comparison, the following are two self portraits done by an artist, Bryan Lewis Saunders, under the influence of crystalmeth and morphine - a methamphetamine and an opiate...

1 "bump" of Crystalmeth

Morphine IV (dosage unknown)

We know that sugar and fat do not have these kind of side-effects on our bodies - that would be ridiculous. However, their addictive quality and known/unknown bliss points contribute to the obesity of our society. It's shocking to realize that based on 2003 statistics, "the average adult was 24 pounds heavier than [they were] in 1960 ... and one in three Americans - and nearly one in five kids, aged six to eleven - were classified as obese" (238). That's outrageous!

With regard to addictions, I find it morally wrong that tobacco and food companies (such as Philip Morris and Kraft) will continue to market their products to optimize desire and sales. The food company even acknowledges that in order for them to do well as a business, they much cater to their audiences desires, but that the right product for us - one without sugar and fat - would not sale (249). Therefore, companies rely on our addictions in order to perpetuate our desires so that they will continue making money.

For more information about Bryan Lewis Saunders, click here.

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Part 3: The Forest

Michael Pollan's novel, The Omnivore's Dilemma, explores the gatherer aspect of man's consumption. Part 3, the Forest, raises many concerns over the ethics behind eating animals. Culture has been telling us that animals are "both good to eat and good to think" (305). After just reading that line, my thought was "that's debatable." I would like to think that it is good for us to eat lots of meat, but this course as well as a general knowledge, has taught me that most food we eat now-a-days really isn't that healthy for us. Natural food, meat for example, doesn't contain as many nutrients as it once did. The beef, chicken, and pork our grandparents and great-grandparents grew up on would have been much smaller, more lean, and "better for you." However, I'm also learning that the "healthiness" of something isn't even fully scientific anymore. I have a lot of faith in science to discover many things about humans and our desired behaviors (including how to become the most "healthy"). So I have really started to wonder whether the argument that protein is so good for you is really valid, or if it's just temporarily valid...

Back to the idea that animals are "good to think"... When I think of an animal, I imagine one of the many cows or goats I pass when driving around Boiling Springs. I assume these animals are happy because they're more or less in their natural habitat, doing whatever they want (except leaving the property). However, I realize that these aren't the animals that I will be consuming day in and day out. Those animals know nothing of a 'free' life. The animals I eat are most likely the ones Pollan illustrates as ignorant slaves that are bread to be just to be fattened and killed. The latter is so "good to think."

Pollan also explores this discussion about physical and emotional pain with animals. Can they feel physical pain? Duh! But can they feel emotional pain? Possibly. As a whole, our society doesn't care. We treat animals as "production units" - we assume they can't feel pain, not because they can't, but because we don't care. We want our meat, no matter how poor quality it is. Man will find reason (or lack of reason) to do whatever he wants to do. Ben Franklin even once said, "the great advantage of being a 'reasonable creature' ... is that you can find a reason for whatever you want to do" (310).

I believe that animals were ONCE "both good to eat and good to think," but I think our growing society is taking nature out of the equation to the point that this is no longer true.

I'm not saying I agree with the mass slaughter of animals, but I can't fully deny it either. I'd prefer that my meat was more environmentally nature, but I also realize that in order to efficiently feed the amount of people on this planet, we must industrialize the process. Unfortunately, however, this comes at a cost - and part of this cost, arguably, is ethics.

Salt Sugar Fat: Sugar

Michael's Moss's "Salt Sugar Fat" was this weeks focus - specifically the section entitled Sugar. Beginning with our bodies desire for sugar and sweet, Moss explores approximately how much harm our consumption of large amounts of sugar-loaded food does to us. He also narrates a lot of the history of food scientists and company's battle over the health risks of sugar. Moss mentions how kids are the demographic of people that love sugar the most. When discussing the marketing of these sugary products, Moss specifically notes how companies would target their advertising to children because they would be enticed by the product and beg their mothers to get it for them. Because "hunger is a poor driver of cravings," food processing companies can attract consumers on the premise that their products just taste good and feel good and they should eat them - not because they are hungry, but because they are tasty (39). (Which is terrible and wrong, but true).

As I was reading, one thing I kept noticing was the language used to describe the competition between companies. The tone and vocabulary used was one of a military battle or war - things like cereal unit, marching orders, combat, offense, top-secret, war room, enemy's position, target, etc. But later to find out, this was not a war against companies; this was a war against the consumer - the consumer who purchases the opposing company's products.

The fact that sugar is such a large problem was not what disgusted me about reading this section of "Salt Sugar Fat." What is frustrating is the marketing and things companies would do just to sell more, without concern for consumers' health. From things like targeted our young, to exchanging a "product component for another that wasn't ... as high on the list of [medical] concerns," to tapping into people's emotions, specifically happiness, to get them to associate an event with consuming their product. The food industry's methods of marketing are so annoying, because I see these things, but know that so many people do not care, and even more do not even know!

My final thoughts on "Sugar" ...

Jeffrey Dunn, a previous Coca-Cola employee, had an idea for a healthy snack food. He described it as a product with personality; it was "bold, irreverent, confident, clever," and playful - the "ultimate snack food" (119). He talks about how it is ideal for busy mothers needing to feed their children, busy college students (like myself), and others whom this 'ultimate' snack could benefit. At this point, I'm thinking "Man! What could it be?!" As it turns out, the entire time Dunn is marketing for baby carrots?! I did not expect this. He goes to explain... "We act like a snack, not a vegetable. ... We exploit the rules of junk food to fuel the baby carrot conversation. We are pro-junk food behavior but anti-junk food establishment." (120). What he's saying is we could market healthy food just like junk food. Which in my opinion is a great idea. His description and wording of baby carrots definitely did not sound like he was trying to convince me to eat baby carrots, but it would have worked.

So, the fact that (in theory) the marketing of healthy alternatives could be equally as effective as the marketing of sugar-dense substances leads me to wonder, why then must our species (and many more) have such a strong desire for sugar? Why can we not rid ourselves of these unhealthy food?

Cooked - Earth

Part four of Michael Pollan's "Cooked" is entitled "Earth." Rather than being about soil and growth in that manner, it was about microbes and fermentation. Within this section, Pollan focuses on three main ferments - plant, animal, and alcohol (although alcohol comes from plant matter). Fermentation has always been present; it was the original preservative. Humans aren't the only to attempt to manage the microbes which ferment Earth's beautiful products; many animals seek ferments - largely for their nutrient, 'shelf life', and their flavor. Even when it comes to alcohol, there are a great many animals (humans included) who desire and seek it. Personally, I enjoyed the anecdote about elephants and their methods of finding large enough quantities of alcohol - even if it meant "busting into buildings suspected of housing a still or stash of booze" - in India (374).

One statement that didn't come to a surprise, but i still had never thought of it was the fact that humans contain an immense amount of bacterium and other microorganisms. Most of our cells and DNA don't belong to us, but to them. We house a "community of several hundred co-evolved and interdependent species" (323). That brings in perspective. I live in a community of other people which also live in a community of other species, all while having communities of microorganisms living inside all of us and in most things.

• "We have changed the human diet in such a way that it no longer feeds the whole super-organism, as it were, only our human selves. We're eating for one, when we need to be eating for, oh, a few trillion." (333)

Just a thought...If we can't reduce our foods to the summation of their constituent parts, then couldn't the same be said about us?

Cooked - Air

According to Michael Pollan, "Agriculture - which consists mainly of growing edible grasses like wheat, corn, and rice - is our term for this revolutionary new approach to getting food from the soil and the sun" (206). "Those in this industry "succeed not by dictating to them, as a carpenter might to lumber, but by aligning his interest with theirs" (218).

In this week's section of "Cooked," we dove into the effect air has on bread baking. As a species, we have the desire to understand and control everything we interact with. Food scientist continue to try to reduce food into a summation of its parts. This reductionist science doesn't work. In the situation of bread, specifically, "science can't reduce this complexity to a simple answer" - nor does it need to (262). Personally, I like to be able to have complete control over everything I'm responsible for. Baking, especially, has too many free radicals for my liking. Pollan's outlook is one that settles my need to control. 

• "The baker is the conductor of an intricate symphony of transformation that takes in everything from the grass seed to the millstone, the microbial fermentation to the pressure-cooking, and culminates in the salivation that a well-baked bread inspires in the mouth." (241)

I like this because it almost sounds like the baker isn't playing God for baking; he's more of a facilitator for learning (like a professor) - allowing various elements such as soil, sun, and air to explore and create, rather than telling them what to do.

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Part 2: Grass

This week's reading of "The Omnivore's Dilemma Part 2: Grass" was especially troubling. The following are just a few quotes from this section that really stood out to me, in which I will elaborate.

[1]"Everything eventually morphs into the way the world is." (168)

[2]"But in an agricultural system dedicated to quantity rather than quality, the fiction that all foods are created equal is essential." (178)

[3]"I'm just the orchestra conductor, making sure everybody's in the right place at the right time." (212)

[4]"This farm is more like an organism than a machine, and like any organism it has its proper scale." (213)

[5]"It was all of a biological piece, the trees and the grasses and the animals, the wild and the domestic, all part of a single ecological system." (224)

[6]"The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss described the work of civilization as the process of transforming the raw into the cooked - nature into culture." (264)

The first quote was especially bothering because, like I've expressed in a previous blog post, the human race makes things adapt to us. We make the world and all things in it revolve around us. This is dumb. Rather than referring directly toward nature, this time it was directed toward industrialization of farming and selling food. Quote [2] also sparks some conflict, we've made everything adapt to us to the point that all we care about is having a lot. Quantity is now more valued than quality. In order to make our industrialization of food "equal" to the natural way of growing truly "organic" (if I can still use that word as it's intended), we've began telling our country that all foods are created equal.

I appreciated [3][4][5] because they express how the growth of food is a natural process, one that we (humans) aren't the divine force in; we are merely "the orchestra conductor." Our ecosystems know what to do to optimally create nutritious life as it were intended; they really are their own machine. This machine is the same machine that we think we are better/smarter than (referring back to previous rants about humanity).

[6] is just food for thought. Raw : Cooked :: Nature : Culture

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Part 1: Corn

This week's reading consisted of Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." The first section focuses on the impact of corn in our diets and lives. The following sentence really stood out to me...

"In the third age of food processing, which begins with the end of World War II, merely preserving the fruits of nature was deemed too modest: The goal now was to improve on nature." (91)

I can understand wanting our food to last a little longer - for storing and shipping reasons, even for marketing reasons. However, what I cannot understand is why we think we're smarter than nature! For our entire existence (or any species existence for that matter), we adapt and evolve based on our environment. Then we begin thinking we're smarter and better than the world in which we live and rather than adapting to it, we decide we're going to make it adapt to us. Maybe I don't understand evolution, but this doesn't seem correct to me. Granted, we are still going to be evolving, because now our bodies have to adapt to our new food-like substances. This just seems like an unnecessary process to me.

Just a thought.

TED Talk

Check out the following TED Talk. "Andras Forgacs: Leather and meat without killing animals" Runtime: 9:03. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gXq1ml6B1E

Cooked - Fire

Michael Pollan's "Cook" begins by discussing the element 'Fire' and how it interacts with our relationship with food. He focuses his discussion on barbecue; arguably the best food around. I really appreciated the part which talked about the sacrifice of the pig and the gods' love for the smoke. Barbecue is definitely God's gift to humanity! Many times, he mentions how fire has tended to be a man's toy. Whenever food was to be cooked with fire, men would do it; some because it was outdoors, but mainly because they wanted to hangout, eat, and drink their alcohol. So to begin, cooking with fire was a man's job.

An interesting quote made by Sy Erskine was "[Barbecue is] the mystic communion among fire, smoke, and meat in the total absence of water." Pollan admits he doesn't quite know why this pit master mentioned water, but speculates that it may be because it is the enemy of fire or because it's a feminine principle and barbecue is a man's. Either way, this quotation brings the idea that food has not only a relationship to us (humans), but also to other ingredients and even the elements. 

Also, I feel that the following quotation goes along very well with everything Michael Pollan has been stressing to us so far...

"'You see, this cooking is really all about interdependence and community, and that extends to the farmers who grow the food and the little slaughterhouses they depend on. That sense of interdependence is what we've lost.'"

Through reading these books and having discussions about reconnecting with our food, I'm seeing relationships that should be present that aren't. I don't mean just the relationship between us and our food, but the relationships we hold with each other through food, as well as the relationships various "foods" have with each other.

In Defense of Food

After reading "In Defense of Food. An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan, I realized that as his ideas progressed, what I took from them changed. It wasn't until the last paragraph of the entire book, pages 200 and 201, that things completely clicked. After reading and reflecting on everything Pollan wrote up to that point, the line 

"food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on the other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight"

I feel that this climatic point expresses everything he was trying to get across throughout this work. Food isn't about eating; it's not about disecting the whole to see what exactly we're putting into our bodies and trying to determine optimal health. Food is about much more than that! The emphasis Pollan puts on relationships is really how our lives should be as well. More than when it just comes to food, our society is growing away from intimate relationships with one another. We don't grow together, cook together, or even eat together. In addition to food providing nourishment and sustenance, food provides an environment where we can spend time with others; we can develop a relationship via food. In other words, food takes on many forms of relationships that we miss out on due to our industrialized, instant gratification, fast-paced culture. 

An example Pollan provided was that mom cooks and eats, while dad and kids fix themselves (microwave) food that's more appealing to them. So while everyone might eat at approximately the same time, there's no communion being shared. To exaggerate, that's like, four related people living in the same house - not a family of four. Pollan offers the following.

"If a food is more than the sum of its nutrients and a diet is more than the sum of its foods, it follows that a food culture is more than the sum of its menus - it embraces as well the set of manners, eating habits, and unspoken rules that together govern a people's relationship to food and eating." (182)

Foods are not just a congregation of many things; they're a communal fellowship of nutrients and ingredients that complement and improve each other. Take, for example the Greek city-states called poleis. A polis was a political entity ruled by its citizens. The community within a polis mutually work together for the betterment of the entire city/town/village. Food, though not human, does not greatly differ in this concept.

Granted, no relationship is perfect, but relationships can be nurtured and grown and even rebuilt. Our relationship with food is no exception.

Thirteenth Rule Challenge

The 13th rule in "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan is "Shop the Peripheries of the Supermarket and Stay Out of the Middle." Throughout he book, he emphasizes to eat Food, not food-like substances. Myself and a few others were challenged to go to the grocery store and find three foods from within the isles of the store. Pictured below, are the items and their ingredients list that I found. 

(Whole Almonds, Natural Raisins, and Oats)

Food Rules!

Most approaches to diets begin on the nutrient level. Take the food pyramid (or whatever the updated version is called) for example. Grains, veges, fruits, dairy products, meats, and sugars. Michael Pollan's thought process is quite different. The idea to first be sure you're eating "real" food (as compared to food-like substances) is not something I've ever considered. I try to eat well, or at least the best I can. I go to the grocery store and get items like granola bars, crackers, almonds, and greek yogurt. I like to think I'm being a smart and healthy shopper, but I'm receiving the impression that this may not be as I thought. Rule number 13 "Shop the Peripheries of the Supermarket and Stay Out of the Middle" really stood out to me. I thought about the truthfulness of this rule and realized its validity. At the same time however, I also very quickly came to terms with how it's (almost) impossible to shop healthily even staying around the outer layer of the grocery store. Pollan's suggestion to combat this is to shop at Farmers Markets and Whole Foods places. I can't speak for everyone, maybe I'm just not a trusting person, but I find the thought of purchasing non-fruits and vegetables from local Farmers is a little risky. As I'm writing this, I realize the reason I'm okay with buying fresh fruits and vegetables from local Farmers is because I've grown up eating fruits and veges from my grandfather's garden, as well as deer, bear, and turkey that he's brought home from his yearly hunting adventures.

As I think about it, I can't actually rationalize why I trust prepackaged foods. Yeah we have the FDA and USDA and other organizations, but I know they're not the most strict on their regulations. There's really no guarantee that my processed and packaged foods are going to be as trustworthy or more so than locally grown and sold foods. The more I reflect on this, the more I realize that if anything, excuses are made for not going to Farmers Markets and places of the such. If anything, many of us go to the Grocery Store primarily for its convenience.

5 Fav's:
(57) If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're probably not hungry
(73) Do all your eating at a table
(40) Make water your beverage of choice
(24) When you eat real food, you don't need rules
(71) Eat with other people whenever you can

5 Disagreements:
(37) Sweeten and Salt your food yourself
(26) Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food
(70) Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dine like a pauper
(61) Serve your vegetables first
(45) Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself

My 5 rules:
1. Don't starve yourself, eat when your body tells you to
2. Don't rely solely on food to make you healthy
3. Eat what makes you physically feel well
4. Try new things
5. NEVER skip meals

Buzz Buzz... "The Plight of the Honeybee"

In a previous week's edition of TIME Magazine, they showcased a story about the dwindling honeybee population. Initially, my thought was that it wasn't a big deal; it was just another specifies that was on its way to extinction. What makes the honeybee so special? Yeah, bees pollinate fields and help the expansion of crops, but I didn't realize how much they influenced the economic status of our agriculture.

The fact of the matter is that the decline in amount of honeybees could severely affect our planet, leaving "the planet poorer and hungrier." I don't understand how we, as intelligent creatures, can't find an alternative to our honeybee pollinators. I do however understand the implications of the diminishing honeybee population. We don't know why they're disappearing, but we assume it's something that humans are causing. If this is the case and our actions are killing off other species, then we really could have a massive issue to deal with in the near future.

One theory behind the honeybee disappearance is the fact that they're not native to the US and we're destroying the habitat that they need to severe. We keep advancing as a species, which means industrialization of previously natural areas. In the scenario that we're merely taking away the honeybee habitat, we will most definitely be doing similar damage to many other species. The underlying issue here is that humans have taken over the entire planet and declared it ours. Since we're the most advanced and arguably the most developed, we've granted ourselves the executive right to do with this planet as we choose. 

This idea that we're the dominant species and do whatever we want (more or less) with the planet is ethically unfair. Under what authority do we, as humans, have to claim the earth as ours to rule and make executive decisions for? I guess one could pull from a religious (specifically Christian) arsenal and say that when God created the earth, He created man in order to take care of the earth and all living creatures inside it. Assuming you're one who accepts Scripture as infallible truth, then this is enough for you; however, if you're not quite convinced, we must propose another hypothesis for the origin of our Earth-managing authority. I have not been able to think of another argument to validate our domination of this planet, besides the fact that over time we have grown as a species and populated the entire world and industrialized much of it as we have grown.

To re-address what I mean by "ethically unfair," I would like to provide the following. According to Dictionary.com, ethics are the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc. Also, unfair can be defined as disproportionate; undue; beyond what is proper or fitting. Based upon these definitions, "ethically unfair" would mean that based on humans' commonly accepted code of conduct, our actions are directly or indirectly affecting another group in such as way that is undeserved.

In the case that the human action is the reason why honeybees are diminishing, it is our responsibility to avoid this from continuing. What this exactly entails, I do not know. Regardless of the solution to this problem, the fact of the matter is we rely on each other for survival. This is something that we cannot afford to forget.