Peer Review: Erin "Real Food" vs. "Fake Food"

I recently read Erins blog post about "Real Food" vs. "Fake Food". She starts with talking about how she never liked eating fruits or vegetables as a kid like most children. She was constantly nagged by her mom until she was tricked into getting her daily servings through fruit and vegetable drinks. She thought they were juice comparable to apple and orange juices that tasted very good.

She goes on to talk about how she figured out that these drinks were not very nutritious as simply eating fruits and vegetables. Just as her mom had tricked her, these companies selling these products were trying to trick the consumers. She then finished by explaining that these juices are not really 100% juice and that they lack nutrients.

I do agree with the overall stance in the article that these juices are not as nutritious as simply eating fruits and vegetables. However, I would take it one step further and say that these juices are not very healthy. They do supply a good amount of vitamins but they are also very high in sugar. Also, juices do not have the skin of the fruit or vegetable in it which has the most nutrition and minerals of fruit and vegetables. A person would get so much more benefit out of eating natural vegetables and fruits everyday than drinking these juices.

Prepare a Meal

The meal I planned for myself was breakfast. I prepared this meal about three weeks ago when I went home for Easter. The meal that I wanted to eat was a large bowl of cereal and maybe some fruit and toast. However, after reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, I decided to take on the challenge of making a meal that was a little bit more healthy for me.

The parts of the meal I was going to make consisted of an egg-white sandwich, oatmeal, fruit and some toast. I first heated up the stove in my kitchen. I separated the egg-white from three different eggs and then poured it on the pan. While that was cooking, I took out a container of Quaker oats we can in our cabinets that looked like they hadn't been touched in years. I placed a good amount in a bowl and added low-fat milk until the bowl was 3/4 full. I then placed this in the microwave and set the time for about 3 minutes.

Next I grabbed a banana that was sitting on the counter and some strawberries that were in our refrigerator. I washed the strawberries and sliced them and the banana into a bowl. Also I put the toast in the toaster. I returned to the egg-whites and cooked them until they were ready and then placed them on a bagel. I took the oatmeal out of the microwave and the toast out of the toaster. I added a little brown sugar to the oatmeal and I toasted the toast with margarine. I then put it all on the table and began eating.

While I was eating I was pretty proud of myself for how good everything tasted. After the meal I felt pretty satisfied but then I asked the question to myself, "Was that really that healthy?"

I realized that it was a step up from my usual breakfast in and out, but the foods I was eating were mostly unhealthy. The eggs were from a local farm about a county away from our neighborhood and the banana was healthy but not much else. The margarine has high trans fat, the oats from Quakers was high in sugar, and I found out that the strawberries had been exposed to all kinds of chemicals to enhance their size. Overall, my meal was about 50% unhealthy. In Kim Evan's article, Take a Look at the Chemicals in Processed Foods, she talks about the dangers of these chemicals and how they are related to other illnesses like cancer.

Peer Response

Mari posted a blog recently about a meal she prepared for herself and a few friends. She said she prepared gnocchi pasta with Italian red sauce, Cesar salad, and garlic bread. She cut up the gnocchi pasta, boiled it, and drained it. She then heated the red sauce and poured it in a bowl with the pasta. She put the garlic bread in the pasta until golden brown and tossed the salad. This makes me hungry just writing this.

As I do agree with Mari that the meal would definitely be enjoyable and very appetizing I think that after reading Michael Pollan's book I would probably have to rethink a few of the sets of preparing a meal. I understand that most people do not want to or cannot eat strictly healthy meals, as defined in Pollan's book, all of the time. However, I think I would have looked more carefully in the ingredients of all of the things I bought. Maybe that is what Mari did and just did not add that fact in her post. I definitely have made similar meals with I believe to be very healthy but I think that next time I will be a little more cautious about what I perceive as truly healthy.

Demonstration Speech Evaluation

I think that the introduction section of my speech was most likely the worst possible beginning I could have started off with. I did not capture the audience in an effective manner. I was not very enthusiastic which in turn did not make my audience very interested in my topic. However, I think I did explain the basic relevance of my topic.

In terms of my physical presentation, I think that some parts were bad and others were good. Like I said, my energy seemed to be very low and I did not convey much enthusiasm. However, I think I had good enough volume for being partially ill with a sore throat. I did not have very good body language with my hands and I think my eye contact could have been better. At the same time, I think my physical demonstration of the topic was satisfactory.

I believe I used my visual aid in a positive way that was effective. I think my visual aid probably produced more interest than the speech itself. The organization of the speech was good. I think I presented the steps of the demonstration in an organized manner that was east for the audience to remember and effective in explaining my topic.

If I had to do a demonstration speech over, I think I would keep the same topic because it had some interest from the audience. I think that I would keep the introduction shorter so that I would not forget part of it and stand in silence for ten seconds. I would keep the visual aid but maybe prop it up a little higher for the whole audience to see. The biggest thing I would change would be having a positive attitude and have better body language.

Two Opposing Online Articles on the Morality of Abortion

The two articles I found on the Internet have to do with the topic of abortion. The first article puts forth a nonreligious argument against why abortion is immoral. The author of this article, Don Marquis argues that we have to start with the question of if we are actually killing a person or a thing. He says that we must evaluate whether a fetus has the right to live. In his main argument, Marquis states, "having a future of value is the basis for the right not to be killed and fetuses have a future of value, therefore fetuses have the right not to be killed." This means that he believes that abortion is immoral because we are when a person aborts a baby, they are actually killing the future aspirations of a human adult.

The second article is in opposition to Marquis statements. It points out various flaws in the support that Don Marquis has put forth in his article. In this article, the author, C Strong, points out that a fetus does not necessarily have a "future value" that Marquis bases his article on. He says that there is no interruption of ongoing plans for the fetus and states, "a morally significant part of the wrongness of killing an adult is that it deprives the person of the continuation of projects of value." From this he says that since a fetus is being deprived of something different than this, a fetus can not be related to an adult or in sense a human being.

I think that the first article is more convincing because uses more support and has an overall better argument. I think that the second author uses the petitio principle which means he uses a lot of circular arguments.

The articles overall did not really change my stance on the controversial topic but rather made me think about it in new, different ways. If I had to add to the argument I would pose the question to Marquis, when he says we are taking away from the fetus "future value" asking (1) how do we measure that value and (2) if that fetus contributes negative does that put itself into the equation?

Post 1: Response to Michael Pollans In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, highlights many delusions American food companies try to portray. The main delusion that Pollan focuses on is the delusion of nutrients vs. food. On the cover of Pollan's book it says "eat food. not too much. mostly plants." The first part of his book talks about the first part of that phrase: "eat food." What Pollan means when he says "eat food," is that a healthy omnivore should eat real, actual food. This portrays the idea that the food that most Americans eat today is not real food and mainly processed food or food injected with things that we undoubtedly as normal.

What Pollan does in the first few sections of his book is to explain how we got to this problem. He says that when obesity rates and chronic diseases related to food began rising, a committee was set up to set dietary goals for the United States. What they found was that certain foods were causing all of these problems. However, when they brought this to the public's attention, there was an uproar from the food companies. This is why when the committee redid their report of dietary goals, they used wordings such as "limit saturated fats" instead of eat less animal fats.

I also thought an interesting point that Pollan pointed out was that one can never use the phrase "eat less" of some food when informing the public on healthy eating. I thought of all of the countless medical journals floating around in our country and how we use ideas of substituting a certain food group rather than "eating less" of it.

The only way for me to justify Pollan's words was for me to apply them to my own life. I realized that when I have to go shopping for food, I am also tricked into telling myself that I am responsible when it comes to my eating by looking over the nutritious facts. The act will clear my conscience until the next time I am dragged to the supermarket to get more food. I found that many of the products I buy are mainly bought because of the phrases like "good source of fiber" or "full of antioxidants" which sets my conscience at ease. (See New York Times article for more recent meaningless phrases on food labels.)

Overall, I think Pollan makes a lot of good claims in the first part of In Defense of Food. He seems to back up most of his ideas with findings from reasonable sources. However, I think I will have to read on to be completely convinced.