● What are the top four illnesses that can kill you and are linked to diet?
○ Heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes
● What three food components are we biologically adapted to crave because they were
sparse in nature?
○ sugar, and salt , fat
● What is one reason corn, soy beans, wheat and rice are so prevalent in our diets today?
○ Government subsidies keep prices low and supply high
● What is the difference between whole wheat flour and white flour in terms of their
nutritional content?
○ Whole wheat contains the entire seed, including the bran and the germ.
○ White flour doesn’t have the bran or germ, which is the most rich in nutrients.
● How did the food industry try to avoid deficiency diseases caused by nutrient-depleted
processed foods?
○ Sell the “miracle” vitamins. Market vitamins.
○ Add vitamins to different foods/drinks.
● What essential nutrient is less available in seeds compared to green leafy plants?
○ Omega 3
● What is believed to be the most important factor as the cause of the diabetes and
obesity epidemic we face in the US today?
○ Sugar sweetened beverages
● What is insulin? What is its primary function?
○ A hormone, necessary for life
■ Lowers blood sugar,
● Blood sugar rises when you’ve eaten
○ various cells take up the glucose to come back down to
normal levels in blood
● Type 2 is too much glucose in blood
● Why is identifying specific nutrients as good or bad not an effective way for deciding
what to eat?
○ Nutritionism
■ It is an ideology that understanding the nutrient means you understand
the food
● Since nutrients are invisible, the experts tell us what we should eat
○ Kind of like a religion (doctors, nutrition scientists)
○ Divides the world into good and evil nutrients
“Eat food” “Not too much, mostly plant”
- Grains, fruit, vegetables, fish, meat
Other foods are edible food like substances
1. What are the two main reasons for the decline in the nutritional value of our crops today?
a. Soil Depletion
i. There are less nutrients in the soil
b. Improve traits other than nutrition
i. make it bigger, grow faster, etc
2. What are some nutrients that were consistently found in many studies to be decreased
in crops grown between the years 1950 to late 1990s?
a. protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C
★How do we generally get exposed to pesticides?
○ Most people are exposed to pesticides because they are on or in our food, or we
eat them.
★What are some health outcomes of chronic (long-term) lower-dose exposure to some of
these pesticides?
○ respiratory problems, memory disorders, skin conditions, depression,
miscarriage, birth defects, cancer and neurological conditions such as
Parkinson's disease
★What age groups are more at risk for adverse health outcomes? Why?
○ Fetuses, infants, growing children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and women of
childbearing age are most at risk for adverse health outcomes from exposure to
pesticides
■ Children eat more
★Can pesticides affect fetal development? How are the fetuses exposed?
○ Yes they can affect fetal development
■ They are exposed through the mother’s diet
★Is there any evidence that eating organic foods reduces our pesticide exposure? If so,
how was it demonstrated?
○ Yes
■ Children’s urine concentration when eating organic had lower amounts of
OP pesticide metabolites
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
