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.