Smart Choices or just Sneaky Business?

A major part of writing a blog is sifting through the topics and interests of other blogs to see what the hot topic is bombarding the web. After looking at the LSC Comm. class blog, I found one article which interested me in relation to my previous blog on health claims. This article, “Smart Choices,” talks about the troubles that the FDA has with the “Smart Choices” health labeling company. Although this may not sound familiar, I’m sure all of us have seen this companies little bright green checks on the boxes of our favorite Kellogg’s cereal, and other select products. This company is supposed to insure nutritional benefit from the products in which its label is upon, but the FDA negates to think this the case. The criteria for Smart Choices seems to reflect a vague rubric of federal dietary guidelines, which even I question, I mean come on, do you really think that something as sweet and artificially flavored as Fruit-Loops is a smart choice, over something like Honey Bunches of Oats? I think the FDA is testing the waters for the benefit of us as eaters and consumers; Yes! Finally, an association/company that isn’t trying to sell us false information. With further investigation, I found that many other bloggers have made the “smart choice,” of writing about this hot topic. One posted article I found on the subject, Smart Choices Label fails Industry Consumers, agreed with the FDA and me on the matter. This article spoke on how this supposed “Smart Choice,” company ran as soon as the FDA began reviewing health claims, could they make their falsehood any more obvious?! There is much hopes that the FDA will revise this system that Smart Choices set up and create their own health labeling system across the board; with no favored connections to specific brands or money takers. Although I can’t lie, I will probably still be eating some sugary Kellogg’s Cereals, at least my spoon won’t be flooded by false advertisement along with the already sugar coated food!

& as always lets not be so Sweet and Sour

Debunking Health Claims: SpaghettiOs

In the generation of recipe-less minds and tradition converted into easy bake ovens, many young people whose parents work late nights, or college students who don’t have the time or resources; products such as Campbell’s Spaghetti-O’s is the idea of a full meal. I recently purchased a can of Spaghetti-O’s original at the local university food housing store; which I have failed to eat due to the fact that I don’t have a can opener, hence lack in resources. When actually looking beyond the classic Campbell’s label and the exciting cartoon like image of the product, one may also see on the label a decoration of health claims. This canned food product, which can be ready in just three minutes, claims to have a “full serving of veggies” as it reads in bold blue letters on the front of the label. It also claims to have 6 essential vitamins and minerals within it, although that is hard to believe amongst its ingredients of citric acid, spice extract and high fructose corn syrup, what is that doing in there?!

As Doctor Zimney says in his article, Improving the environment and your Health,“We need to eat more food and fewer food products. What then is this thing I’m calling food? It’s fresh food that your great-grandmother would recognize as food. It’s not Go-Gurt. It’s not Vitamin Water. It’s not Slim-Jims, Snickers or Spaghetti-O’s.” Spaghetti-O’s is not a legitimate food, it is as he said simply a product; so what are we doing eating it? We don’t eat our clothes and those are products too, but of course Spaghetti-O’s is an American favorite right along with those snickers and Slim-Jims, (which might I add, aren’t making us any thinner!) On the actual Campbell’s webpage,they rebute arguments against them not being a food with the proud facts such as containing “a good source” of Vitamin A, Iron and Fiber.

So who could deny one of America’s “mMm MmM Good” favorite products for the our mouth watering , fast paced lifestyles? Well after looking at the fine print on the back of the label, underneath the rather small table of nutrition facts, it says that those claims on the front of the label of a “Full serving of veggies,” is really only a ½ cup of vegetables and 1 ounce equivalent of grain! Yet non-the less I couldn’t seem to find what vegetables this can may be talking about, unless of course those are just assimilated through that spice extract they put in it?! This product makes me say HmMm more than MmMm after debunking these stretches for health claims. Maybe I won’t hunt down a can opener and crack open this can after all, it is a true "Uh Oh" for buying these Spaghetti-O’s!

Remember get some real grains and veggies,
beef & asparagus

College Students can be Chef's too!

Has America lost it’s interest in cooking and enjoying a meal?, Would we rather jump from McDonalds to the eloquently proportioned, and separated into sections, microwavable TV dinners? Well, at least we can watch “Top Chef” while we eat those TV dinners, right?! No, no, no, we have it all wrong. The preparation and fostering of ones own meal, makes for a more healthy eating ritual and an accomplished belly. While reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, I realized that in the United States of America, we are minimalists, and often do anything to eat less, but this doesn’t mean we should forget about a good home cooked meal. I think Pollan makes a point that scientific eating through diets and the “less is more” theory, has taken away from the tradition of benefiting from a full meal, as food is the key to culture. In an article called 10 Affordable Meal Ideas for College Students, I was reading, I realized we are almost designed to eat unhealthy, due to the pressure of money and lack of time. Many of the foods they listed in this article, were both unhealthy, and something I admit I’ve eaten since I’ve been in college. Both This article and Pollan’s words inspired me to challenge my college-student habits, and prepare and eat my own meal.
As a college student, I suffer from a hectic schedule, which usually can only fit in a “To-Go” pizza from our campus dining areas. But I was inspired to set up a date with a friend of mine to go to his house and utilize the kitchen! Who would have thought to use the stove over the microwave? My friend and I decided to make breakfast, so he went to the store and bought eggs, bread cheese and a pack of assorted deli meat, I brought a frying pan, and we were ready to cook! First we cut holes into the middle of 4 slices of bread, I put butter on the pan, and turned the stove on medium heat. I placed one slice of bread on the pan, and cracked an egg in the middle of the hole. I fried the egg on that side until it was almost plastered to the bread, then flipped the bread over to allow the yolk from the other side to fry. Then I added cheese on top, and fried some turkey slices on the side and added it on top, then took that slice off the pan and made the others. After all four slices where done, he had two and I had two, making an fried egg, cheese and turkey, toasted breakfast sandwich. We took the time out of our busy day, me utilizing my free time between my two classes, to sit down to a homemade meal. We were so inspired that we even started seasoning some chicken breasts for later that night. So call me Chef-girl Marne, and forget the Easy Mac and Chef-Boyardee!



Until next time make Popeye Proud!

Would you eat Plastic Food?: "Real" v. "Fake" Diets

Tofurky freaks out there, why are you eating imitation turkey—a type of meat, if you chose not to eat meat in the first place?! Okay, sure, it’s supposed to be more healthy, as says the vegetarians out there, who understand that majority of the turkey and other meat in the United States today is filled with millions of hormones, processed, and genetically modified, making it far from natural. I have never been too fond of Tofurky or turkey, unless it’s Thanksgiving of course; but my diet has definitely changed with the shift in American dietary, and within the food industry.
One item I am guilty of possessing in its “fake” form rather than in its original and more “real” form is more frequently is, cheese. Although cheese may be argued to be a processed food because it is often pasteurized to kill excess bacteria, I have had cheese in so many “fake” overly processed ways then I can think of. The “fake” form of cheese that I have eaten in the past few days is both Keebler cheese sandwich crackers, and Goldfish. Although, some of these products claim to have been “baked with real cheese,” this usually just means a high sodium count, and ingredients of cultured milk and salt enzymes, as stated on the nutritional facts. These two products seem to be more sodium and calories, than nutrition; but not all processed food are unhealthy like these. Both containing 0% vitamin A and C, they both have calcium and iron—I wonder if this is from the acclaimed “real cheese?”
These products are often snacks during a busy day, when one doesn’t have time to slice real cheese on to their crackers, or to eat a full sandwich. But the “real” cheeses are always more enjoyable in my opinion; just as I’m sure turkey is more fulFILLING than tofurky! For more information on the American diet and the harmful ingredieants that you may be eating in packaged food check out this article called 4 Harmful Ingrediants in Packaged Food from Reader’s Digest, enjoy and remember don’t eat plastic, its hard to digest!

Toodles & Homemade snicker doodles

Will Michael Pollan be the American diets savour?

If you didn’t already know that food in America is more of a commodity and scientific proposal than a pleasure and practice, Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food, establishes this point. While reading through Pollan’s thoughtful and conversational style introduction and first four chapters of this “Go BIG READ” book (a UW campus wide suggested read), I was introduced to a flamboyant argument against the western diet. Pollan argues that we live in an age of nutritionalism, which has converged our eating habits down to pure nutrients and scientifically modified foods. He speaks on the idea of taking food back to its original purpose, which is not only to survive, but to know what exactly one is eating, and to maintain a healthy diet through the development of self-grown food and as Pollan puts it “common sense.”

Our culture clashing society has resulted to either fast food frenzies, or nutrition/ vitamin based diets, which lack the essential idea of enjoyment and importance in actually sitting down to a home cooked meal. I agree with Pollan’s argument to escape the industry of food base, because this is what has created habitual obesity and/or dietary downfall. Food needs to stay out of the lab and make way back to the garden and then the kitchen. We were once hunters and gatherers, now we are TV surfers and shopping cart criminals walking through frozen food and canned food isles like zombies.

CHECK THESE GREEN GUTS OUT!

One resource i foudn on a website, which agrees with Michael Pollans arguments as well, is an interview with Julie Guthman, in "Globalization, neoliberalism, obesity, local food and education", which speaks on the production and commercial strategies of food in America, which ultimately has resulted in making food a commodity and reduced it to a material need rather than a bodily necessity.

EXCERPT: Julie Guthman is an Associate Professor in the Community Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz. Her pressing and rigorous work has dealt with the ways in which organic farming movements and reform in California strain the boundaries that obtain between nature and capital and between the local and the global (Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California), with governmentality, embodiment and resistance in the age of neoliberalism (“The Polanyian Way? Voluntary Food Labels as Neoliberal Governance,” “Embodying neoliberalism: economy, culture, and the politics of fat” [with Melanie DuPuis]), and the racial assumptions that impinge community projects for the distribution of local, organic food in African-American neighborhoods (“Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice”). Her developing research examines the biopolitics of obesity in terms of race, embodiment and the evolution of alternative food practices. Among other difficult questions, in this interview Dr. Guthman offers critical perspectives on the intersection of alternative food and political subjectivity, the social, cultural and bodily impact of neoliberalism, and the possibility of responsible food criticism and radical food pedagogy in a time of crisis.

- Until later with another dose of beef & aspargus

Sincerely,

Marne Bruckner