Final Manifesto

Writ 1133: Eric Leake

Extended Essay 2: An Eater’s Manifesto

April 24, 2012

-       Zach Quinn

All Natural and Balanced

Though exercise and stress free mind are important for health, the food that we eat has the largest impact.  It comes down to what you put in is what you’re going to get out.  Taking into consideration what I’ve learned from documentaries, articles, books and conversations with others on the subject, I have narrowed down my beliefs on what I consider healthy eating.  To maintain good health in an era where corporations and marketing teams have taken over the food industry is difficult. Regardless, many still achieve it.  To do so, it is necessary to eat a balanced amount of the right nutrients, intake the appropriate amount of calories for your weight and exercise routine, and eat the whole ingredients rather than the processed ones.

Finding balance is the most important step to creating a healthy lifestyle.  Too much of anything is not good for you.  Sticking to only fruits and vegetables, which are the healthiest part of a meal, would leave you out of the nutrients provided by grains.  Humans are not simple organisms and for us to live long healthy lives we need a good balance of nutrients from different sources.  The United States Department of Agriculture maintains a website devoted to nutrition and health.  Though a “MyPlate” has replaced the classic food pyramid, the same principles remain.  The emphasis is on balance, with sections of the plate portioned out for vegetables, protein, fruits, grains, and dairy.  It aims to represent how much of each food group should be on your plate. (Herring) This is quite different advice from what specific diets will tell you to eat.  It seems every year that there are new diets marketed to consumers that consist of avoiding a specific nutrient.  Eating too much bread won’t be good for you but not eating carbohydrates altogether will have a similarly negative effect. 

Ignoring the current diet fads is a good idea.  Though some might help you to slim down, they don’t support good health.  We should be able to base our diets off of calorie intake and output.  No one will call Michael Phelps unhealthy, however, his calorie intake is extremely high.  Jon Henley, a writer for the Guardian writes in his article that Phelps consumes around 12,000 calories per day.  If you saw an average sized male that exercises 3 times a week, eat 14 eggs for breakfast; you might then see him go to back to bed right after.  Henley tried eating what Phelps eats as a challenge in writing his article.  Midway through lunch he wrote, “Afterwards, six colleagues pile in and eat their fill for lunch, and it still doesn't look like a dent has been made in the insane, obscene, illness-inducing mountain of food that America's 11-time gold medal winner ploughs through every single day of his life” (Henley 3) Phelps can consume his daily 12,000 calories without a problem because he burns them off in a work out.  A balanced diet is of course relative to the individual.  If people want to lose weight they should eat less or work out more, not choose the non-fat or sugar-free version.

An imbalance in the nutrients we take in is the main cause of obesity, heart disease and other illnesses.  Eating too much sugar, fat, or salt is the main dietary problem that we face.  That being said, why are we setting ourselves up to eat these in high concentration?  Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and meat all come from nature and their nutrients are balanced the same way that they have been for thousands of years.  Though apples and bananas have sugar in them, they are still good for you because the concentration isn’t too high.  Fruit Loops Cereal and Coca-Cola on the other hand, are made with high fructose corn syrup, a scientifically produced sweetener that contains high levels of sugar.  Eat too many apples or bananas and you’ll probably start feeling sick before you’ve consumed more than your recommended daily intake of sugar.  If you drink two cokes on the other hand, this can be accomplished easily because of the high sugar concentration.

It is important not to replace healthy foods with junk processed material for the sake of losing weight.  Take into consideration the words all and natural.  These are two simple words that in recent times have been taken over by marketing teams for the food industry.  They have been placed in bold lettering on cereal boxes, jars of peanut butter and chips.  But what do these words really mean?  The Food and Drug Administration takes no responsibility in regulating what is necessary for a food to be “all natural.”  It becomes difficult to derive their meaning when corporations place these words wherever they please on processed foods and on foods that have been genetically modified.  What they should mean is something far different than what they are currently being used to describe. Mike Adams writes, “Anything derived from plants, animals or elements found on planet Earth could earn the ‘all natural’ label. The key is in understanding that it's the process that's unnatural, not the source. When you chemically or structurally alter food ingredients into a form that no longer appears anywhere in nature, it's no longer natural” (Adams 1).  Natural should imply that something originated from nature and all natural should imply that its important genetic features were left unaltered.  Given this, “all natural” should mean that aside from being chopped up, spiced, flavored, cooked, steamed, fried, or broiled, a food item has not been altered.  A study done by researchers in Netherlands concluded, “The idea of ‘naturalness’ can be used to characterize organic agriculture and to distinguish it from conventional agriculture, but only if naturalness not only refers to not using chemicals but also to ecological principles and respect for the integrity of life” (Verhoog 29). Though foods appearance and flavor should be able to change while remaining “all natural,” its nutrients and genetics should remain the same.  Adams humorously remarks, “Claiming MSG is natural because free glutamic acid appears in tomatoes is sort of like saying cocaine is natural because it's derived from ingredients found in the coca leaf” (Adams 1). 

We currently face a problem with how products are labeled but also with the processes behind them.  The industry is currently going on a binge of creating genetically modified plants and animals.  Imagine a scientist working to create avocados with less fat in them.  Maybe avocados contain too much of this nutrient but our response should not be to modify the genetics of avocados in an attempt to lessen its fat content.  If we take that route, we could potentially do something to ruin the avocado forever.  Instead people should choose to eat less of them or strive to get more exercise.  We’ve gotten to the point of reengineering the chicken to have bigger breasts so that the poultry industry can make more money.  A non-profit website working to defend animals states, “Broiler chickens are selectively bred and genetically altered to produce bigger thighs and breasts, the parts in most demand. This breeding creates birds so heavy that their bones cannot support their weight, making it difficult for them to stand. The birds are bred to grow at an astonishing rate, reaching their market weight of 3 1/2 pounds in seven weeks” (Katz).  It’s disgusting to think that a majority of the chickens that we consume were unable to walk in their lifetimes because their own bodies weigh them down.

So all of this begs questions about my eating habits and health.  If I believe people should balance their calorie intake and output, avoid non-fat and sugar free foods, eat real foods instead of processed foods, and avoid GMO’s, what do I do with my own diet?  I’m not perfect and can admit to the times I’ve passed through the McDonald’s drive through.  If I could create the perfect meal plan for myself it would look something like what I’ve witnessed in traveling to Italy or France.  Though supermarkets have begun to sprout up around Europe, most Europeans still have the options to buy meats from the local butchery, produce from an open-air market full of self-employed farmers, bread from the local baker and cheese from an experienced shop owner that makes it himself.  These are the raw materials, the food that will later be chopped up, sliced, sautéed and baked into what we call a meal.  This process has a feeling of balance to it.  It employs hard workers with specific skill sets rather than turning the creation of a meal into a job for an assembly worker.  It focuses on the aspects of foods that are inherent in their nature and emphasizes what makes them great.  It is the opposite of scientists meddling in a lab to change the genes of an organism.  That a majority of our food in the U.S. is processed, we eat so damn fast and we're obsessed more with nutrients than taste has always bugged me.  In the food industry I think Americans have it backwards, it's nice to know that someone agrees.  Michael Pollan remarks, "Oddly, America got really fat on its new low-fat diet — indeed, many date the current obesity and diabetes epidemic to the late 1970s, when Americans began binging on carbohydrates, ostensibly as a way to avoid the evils of fat" (Pollan 5).  In America's attempt at becoming healthy, it created far more health issues than it solved.  On the other side of the spectrum, you can look at French culture, which makes no attempt at being healthy, yet French people have ended up far healthier than Americans.

It is probably quite obvious that I belong far away from the brightly lit aisles of supermarkets filled with processed foods that brag about what scientists have put into them or taken away.  I’d much rather taste a peach or a tomato in a market sliced by the hands of the farmer that grew it than read a label on packaging with bold lettering about how few carbohydrates a product has per serving.  Have we become lab rats? We have allowed the innate act of eating a meal be taken over by scientists and marketers that think they know what is best for us.  Why are we more swayed by the colors and bold lettering on the packaging of a frozen meal or a cereal box than the color and smell of a ripe tomato?  Maybe in the past I haven’t followed exactly what I preach.  In fact, as I write this paper I look up to see the bright colors on a box of Lucky Charms sitting on my desk.  I’m a college student and healthy, unprocessed food is expensive.  Not to mention, what am I to make without a kitchen?  My health is left in the hands of restaurants surrounding campus and most of all, Sodexo.  I’m not a great eater, though I do choose to create a salad for myself with grilled chicken rather than picking up the ready to eat cheeseburger in the cafeteria.  I hope that my slip-ups in healthy eating are due to what is around me, that this state of affairs doesn’t remain the same for the rest of my life.  In fact, I can’t take Sodexo food much longer at all.  It remains to be seen whether or not I will make it to Europe for good and be able to stick to my “all natural” diet but for now I will try to do as Pollan recommends, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” (Pollan 1).

Works Cited

Adams, Mike. “’All natural’ claim on food labels is often deceptive; foods harbor hidden MSG and other unnatural ingredients.” Natural News: Real News Powered by the People, Naturally. Natural News Network, 2012. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.naturalnews.com/‌005778.html>.

Henley, Jon. “The Need for Greed.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 14 Aug. 2008. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/‌lifeandstyle/‌2008/‌aug/‌15/‌foodanddrink.michaelphelps>.

Herring, David. “Choose My Plate.” USDA Choose My Plate. United States Department of Agriculture, 2012. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.choosemyplate.gov/>.

Katz, Elliot M. “Factory Farming Facts.” In Defense of Animals. IDA, 2012. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.idausa.org/‌facts/‌factoryfarmfacts.html>.

Pollan, Michael. “Unhappy Meals.” The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times, 28 Jan. 2007. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/‌2007/‌01/‌28/‌magazine/‌28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=all>.

Verhoog, Henk. “THE ROLE OF THE CONCEPT OF THE NATURAL (NATURALNESS) IN ORGANIC FARMING.”   (Apr. 2002): 29-49. SpringerLink. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.springerlink.com/‌content/‌r2uk524282088445/‌fulltext.pdf?MUD=MP>.