english 1 essay

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Stu Dent Angelina Misaghi English 1 28 October 2018

Revealing the Truth About What You Feed Your Body

To live, we must maintain our body and health by nourishing it constantly with

nutrient-rich goods, such as food, fluids and vitamins. Food stabilizes our body and also

gives it the energy it requires to progress through one’s day. In the modern world, farms

utilize many conventional ways of growing their produce—often geared towards the

fastest way to create the best-looking produce with the longest shelf life. Consumers can

be under the mistaken impression that they chose a healthy food or product, but with a

few minutes of basic research into the company that produced it, they can discover their

mistake and determine that their “healthy choice” could have harmful effects on their

body and future health. Healthy food is the general topic I started with.

Brainstorming strategies such as freewriting and clustering helped narrow my

topic from healthy food to the specific problem of conventional farming methods. I chose

this issue primarily because of my passion for “clean” eating. While healthy foods and

their benefits have always intrigued me, finding clean and superior quality foods

produced from trustworthy companies has been a greater interest because it is much more

challenging than one could imagine. I was also interesting in this topic because my father

was diagnosed with a digestive disease that required a very specific diet. In the

beginning, it was difficult to find a place where we could all eat as a family. Since then

his disease, celiac disease, has become more widespread and gluten-free foods have

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become more common. Not only did my family and I have to find nutritious and gluten-

free food for my father, this change in all of our lives forced us to learn about the

importance of food quality and finding trustworthy companies with honest labeling.

After researching and brainstorming and realizing that my problem was

conventional farming methods, I took a quick trip to the grocery market, and

somewhere between the meat and poultry aisle I ultimately came up with a very rough

idea of my working thesis: “Although all produce might seem fresh and wholesome,

many produce farmers use conventional methods (versus organic methods) to grow

their foods to be most visually appealing, without regard to harmful—or even life-

threatening—effects they may have on one’s health and future.” I know I might need

to cut this down more, or put it into two sentences to make it clearer.

Now more than ever, it has become a trend in society to eat fresh and healthy

foods. For example, super foods like kale and quinoa are becoming more popular.

However, the problem is that not everyone inquires about the source of their kale or

quinoa prior to consumption. Consumers should investigate and scrutinize the source of

their fresh produce and other grocery items, including the reputation of the growers and

the manner in which they were grown.

I started my research process and organization by gathering articles that relate to

my topic specifically. So far, I have found four articles from the SMC database, namely,

“Association between Time Perspective and Organic Food Consumption in a Large

Sample of Adults”, “Is Eating Organic a Healthy or Safer Option”, “A Profile of the

Organic Produce Consumer” and lastly, “Aspects Regarding the Evolution the Organic

Food Market in the World.” These articles discuss the various dangerous health effects of

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conventionally grown foods on a human being, as well as the different growing process

protocols involved in producing organic versus conventional produce. In addition to the

articles, I found an incredible Ted Talk called “Why You Have the Right to Know

What’s In Your Food” which gave me a lot of information, but I am still trying to decide

what I might use from it in my essay. I also have my textbook from the Nutrition 1 class I

took last year, and I hope to find useful information in there. I know there are several

documentaries on the problems with the western diet so I will research some of those for

my paper.

The chemicals, hormones, and additives put into our produce, dairy, fish, meat

and poultry by farms and production companies are not given the attention and scrutiny

they deserve. We must be armed with knowledge in order to properly choose what we

want to feed our bodies and the bodies of those we care for. Conventionally grown foods

are a serious issue, with lasting impacts on people’s well-being and lifespan. I hope that

my research paper can be a helpful tool in providing information and evidence of the

effects of conventionally grown food as well as provide my audience a beneficial

solution.