EE2 RoughDraft

You Are What You Eat; A Healthy Eaters Manifesto

Never before in history have humans had such an abundance and variety of food to choose from. It is becoming harder and harder to maintain a healthy diet. Grocery market shelves are lined with thousands of products, the majority of which did not exist fifty years ago.  I like to consider myself an informed eater, especially at the tail end of 8 weeks filled with research on food. Yet with so many choices available there is always a temptation. Every individual has food values that are a product of their past and subconsciously guide them when making food choices. Many Americans possess values that inform them to eat out or buy the cheapest food. Habits are constantly under revision and values you had before may not always inform your choices. After writing and reading about food and culture I can sense that my food values have shifted away from the norm. My food choices are based mainly on prescribing to a healthy diet. To accomplish this I have identified certain food values to follow; eat local, avoid processed food, eat fruits over meat and consume smaller portions. It is almost impossible to strictly follow this regime with what’s available at DU. But merely identifying these values is a crucial step towards a healthy diet.

In his essay “Unhappy Meals” Pollan leaves the reader with an interesting perception of modern food. He relates that food is not food any more. What we buy at the supermarket has been created in a lab by combining different chemicals and ingredients under heat and pressure. Names like High Fructose Corn Syrup and Benzoate have propagated across nutrition labels. The advent of processed food has fundamentally changed the way humans eat across most of the world. Gone are the days where local fields supplied the town’s grain. Today food is cheap, delicious and always closes by; this abundance has manifested health concerns for many Americans.

One of the most apparent effects of processed food is the growing obesity rates among Americans. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicate that 35.7% of adults are obese (Ogden, Carroll, and et al).   Processed food has increased the choices available to consumers as well as increasing the convenience of obtaining food.  Today food is more available and affordable than ever before, this increase combined with a lack of nutritional education has led to the highest obesity rates the United States has even seen. As a culture we have gravitated away from the idea of a meal and more towards “eating on the edge" a term coin by the author Jamie Horwitz to describe “occasions when food is an additive to a situation, such as a cigarette would be, rather than being definitive” (Horwitz 42). Instead of wholesome meals we consume processed snacks multiple times a day. It is so easy for many American’s because they readily available to us. In terms of food culture our obsession with easy and convenient meals has proved to be unhealthy in the long run. Yet despite the evidence against processed food we stick to our firmly entrenched values and keep eating it. Processed foods can cause more harm than just obesity, in a study published by the journal Clinical Epigenics scientists found a possible link between synthetic additives such as high fructose corn syrup and increasing rates of autism (Dufault, Lukiw, et al ). As a culture we now pursue easy and convenient meals at the expense of our health.

Eating local is one of the healthiest choices you can make. Meat or produce grown locally has no preservatives and does not go through intense processing. Humans have evolved to eat fruit off the tree and meat off of the closet animals. Consuming these “wholesome” foods as oppose to processed creations has a large impact on your health. A study published by the American Journal of Public Health describes an “an increase of 5-6 years in average lifespan among Americans who ate only food they grew themselves” (Moreland). Not only did these subjects live longer, they lived better as well. All test subjects had stable cholesterol and not one showed any signs of coronary weakness or disease. The choice to eat locally grown food is not just one of the healthiest decisions you can make, it is also one of the most environmentally conscious decisions

Today you would be hard pressed to find any local items in your supermarket. This change has led to our desensitization towards the environment as our food source becomes less and less apparent. If you ask the average American child where their food comes from most of them would answer, the grocery store, not even considering the fact that it had to be grown and processed somewhere else. We are more inclined to preserve our land when we gather food from it every season. American culture is pulling farther away from the source of our food and as a product we are losing our connection to the earth. In place of this connection we once shared with the land now stands the modern industry

The processed food industry has one of the largest carbon footprints in the world. Raw ingredients must be transported to processing facilities and then to stores across the nation. This is accomplished primarily through the use of fossil fuels. A Carnegie Mellon study was conducted in 2008 to study the climate impacts of American food sources, they estimated, “the average household’s climate impacts related to food to be around 8.1 t CO2e/yr”(tons of CO2 emissions per year(Weber, Matthews ). Much of this footprint was attributed to the production plants where raw ingredients like corn become Frosted Flakes and other familiar products. The food conglomerate is one of the least likely industries to reign in its carbon footprint because food is considered a necessity. The only way to mitigate its impact is to reduce consumption of processed food by choosing to buy local. This footprint impacts American’s health more than one would expect. Studies have linked an increase in atmospheric toxins to rising rates of asthma and even birth defects (Weber, Matthews).

Healthy eating is not just about what you eat, but how eat as well. America has had an increasing obesity rate for as long as I have been alive. That is not surprising considering we love to eat snacks throughout the day, we eat 3 large meals each day and the idea that “bigger is better” is pretty much an American value. These habits can be contrasted with the French, through the lens of the “French paradox”. The fact that the French suffer dramatically lower rates of coronary disease and obesity, despite the fact theirs diets are high in saturated fat. Author Dr. Will Clower and his family lived in France for two years during which he noticed all of his family lost weight. In his book “The Fat Fallacy” Clover proposes that fat isn’t the cause of epidemic level obesity rates, instead it is the difference in food culture. In France meal portions are dramatically smaller, meals last longer and there is a lower incidence of snacks between meals. These factors combine to make the French much healthier than their American counterparts. Japanese native to Okinawa practice “Hara Hachi Bu” the cultural habit of eating until you are 80% full. Not surprisingly Okinawa’s live longer, healthier lives as a result (Clover 2003). This value, to eat smaller portions, is perhaps the easiest to manage as a college student and is something I have taken to heart this quarter.

Eating right is hard. Who can say no to an Oreo, brownie or my personal favorite, Flaming Hot Munchies? Your food intake dictates your health more than anything else; in a sense you are what you eat. How does one healthily navigate the grocery aisles filled with such bountiful yumminess? I have found that the answer lies in each individual’s food values. I have identified certain values that, while hard to remain strict to, can have a lasting positive effect on my overall health. First and foremost, avoid processed foods whenever possible. These manufacture goodies contain a hoard of ingredients that over time can lead to an earlier death. Second, eat local. Eating locally grown food ensures that your dinner is not full of preservatives and that your meal has been grown or raised in an environmentally positive way. Third, eat smaller portions. By practicing “Hara Hachi Bu” one can easily start improve their health. With over 1/3 of the United States population overweight now is the time for us to move forward as a country and improve our national health. People will not respond well to being told what to eat nor will the like an end to corn subsides, in effect raising the cost of processed food by over 100%. The key to fixing our obesity epidemic is through education. Only through education will young American’s begin to change their life style. To start this process it’s as easy as instilling them with five simple words, you are what you eat.   

Sources

Dufault, Renee, Walter Lukiw, et al. "A macroepigenetic approach to identify factors responsible for the autism epidemic in the United States." Clinical Epigenics. n. page. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.clinicalepigeneticsjournal.com/content/4/1/6/abstract>.

Ogden, Ph.D., Cynthia L, Margaret D. Carroll, M.S.P.H, et al. "Prevalence of Obesity in the United States, 2009–2010." NCHS Data Brief No. 82 January 2012. (2012): n. page. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db82.pdf

Horwitz, Jamie . "Eating at the Edge." Gastronomic. 9. (2009): 42-47. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://blackboard.du.edu/bbcswebdav/courses/2017.201230/Eating at the Edge - Horwitz.pdf>.

Morland, Kimberly, Steve Wing, and Ana Diez Roux. "The Contextual Effect of the Local Food Environment on Residents' Diets: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study."American Journal of Public Health 92.11 (2002): 1761-7. Print.

Weber, Christopher L., and H. Scott Matthews. "Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States." Environmental Science and Technology . 42.3508–3513 n. page. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es702969f>.

Dr . Clower, Will. The Fat Fallacy. Three Rivers Press, 2003. Print.