1
Topic Post 2 Instructions:
Thank you for sharing with everyone in the first discussion board one of the packaged food items you
like eating. I hope you looked at many of your classmates’ first posts. I wanted to bring to your
attention the common characteristics of some of the foods most of us like to eat; not only the ones
in the posts, but other common foods we generally like to eat as well. And I have to admit I am no
exception; I used to like the taste of most of the commercially prepared foods and craved them often.
However, there are a few things that are important for us to be aware of when choosing our foods,
especially if we eat large quantities or eat them frequently. So, liking the taste is different than
making the choice to eat them.
Have you noticed that the main ingredient in many of the foods we like to eat are grains like wheat,
oats or corn? These are foods that we would not normally eat much of if they were put in front of us
in their natural form, just picked off of the plants they were produced on. Who likes to eat a handful
of raw, plain, whole wheat or oat grains? Especially if they still have their brans on… Our digestive
systems cannot handle raw grains; granivorous animals like many birds can but not us. Grains are a
relatively recent introduction to our diets and we need to cook them to make them edible. In nature,
these would not even be readily available to us to eat, except for in small quantities and during a
short season once a year. Grains are the seeds of all different types of highly cultivated grasses whose
native ancestors were drastically smaller and different than the domesticated varieties we have
today (wild varieties pictured on the left side of the figures). We started cultivating grains about 10
thousand years ago and now have vast quantities available year-round through our agricultural
practices because they are easy and inexpensive to grow and they can be stored very long term,
especially if their germ and bran are removed, the
parts that have the most nutrients but cause the
grains to go rancid much more rapidly. Moreover,
the most common varieties we have today (bread
wheat) are drastically different than those we had
just a decade or two earlier and might compound the
problems with wheat consumption.
If they are not the foods we are instinctively tempted
to eat, how do they end up on our “favorite foods”
lists so frequently then? Remember those three
things we naturally crave because they were scarce
in nature? Sugar, fat and salt. Look at most of the
packaged food items in stores; you will see these
three ingredients added to most of these foods to
entice us to eat them. No wonder we are so drawn to
them and like eating them, to the point of being
addicted. Besides the added sugars that make many
of these foods taste sweet, many are also starchy,
high-carbohydrate foods, which when digested and
converted to simple sugars, increase our craving for
sugars even further. Corn and potatoes are also very
starchy and have the same effect even if eaten in their
whole form.
Corn
2
To make matters worse, in many cases these processed foods are not even made with whole grains
(not that I am a big fan of eating large quantities of grains, whole or otherwise), so the most nutritious
parts of the grains (the germ and the bran) are removed to increase their shelf life and palatability,
especially for wheat and rice. What is left is the starchy endosperm, which releases a lot of glucose
and raises our blood sugar levels. But as you saw earlier, that is not a good outcome even if it might
give us a feeling of satisfaction initially because of the burst of energy we feel.
Then there are the numerous extracted and separated components added to these items. You saw
how many of these things are in many of the foods, some of them are even made entirely of these
separated components. Remember, whenever we use a separated component of food, rather than
the unaltered whole food, we are changing the natural balance of the nutrients they contain, so then
we obtain too much of one or two of the components, like the starches or the oils in most cases, and
miss out on a lot of the other beneficial nutrients that were contained in these foods in their whole,
unaltered forms.
What about the various flavoring ingredients, many of which are synthetic
chemicals? A lot of them are also very deceptive; my favorite is the “peaches
and cream flavored” instant oats, but it doesn’t have any peaches or cream;
it has artificial-peach flavored apple pieces and the cream is not real cream,
but a thickener made from chemically modified starches. As for many other
products, it is probably done to reduce the cost of production and to
increase its shelf life. Even though they do not have the same nutritional
value as they are made to sound, it is hard to resist these products and all
their fake temptations. The food industry puts in a lot of money and effort
into creating these fake flavors people like and get hooked on as you saw
earlier.
Then there are many coloring agents that are added to make foods take
on the colors we are attracted to because they look more like the fruits
we are genetically programmed to seek and eat, like the red, purple,
yellow, etc. colored pieces that are in cereals. And many preservatives
and stabilizers are added to slow down microbial growth and change in
the texture of the products. Most are chemicals our bodies have to
spend extra resources to remove from our systems, not to mention
their possible negative effects on our gut microorganisms that are so
critical for our health.
So, what is the problem with some of the ingredients in these processed foods? First, they are not
the foods nature intended us to eat to get our main nutrients from, so they don’t do much good for
us in that sense. They actually can do more harm because they tend to alter the proper ratios of
nutrients we obtain and can become an additional burden for our bodies to detoxify many of their
artificial components. They are probably not too detrimental in small quantities and when consumed
infrequently, but they can affect our health significantly if consumed too often or in larger quantities.
We just have to accept that these are not the right foods for us to get our nutrients from, no matter
how much we like eating them.
If we are not instinctively attracted to eat a handful of plain whole grains, such as whole wheat grains
(which suggests we are not genetically and physiologically designed to handle these foods), should
3
we be eating so much of them just because they are intentionally made appealing to us by using our
attraction to sugar, fat and salt? Think of all the cookies, cakes, breads, etc., they are mostly wheat
in disguise. How do you think our metabolism responds when we eat so much of something we are
not designed to eat?
Our bodies have the capability to stay healthy as long as we give them what they need and avoid
things that are damaging to them. There are countless number of people who have made changes
to their diets and improved many health conditions. However, we have serious challenges to
overcome when it comes to convincing some people to make similar changes in their diets to improve
their health. One of them, as many of you are aware, is the higher cost of real food; many people
simply cannot afford it, assuming it is even available to them. When people are hungry, the primary
concern will of course be eating anything that is affordable and stopping the feeling of hunger. It is
unfortunate that we are surrounded by so many very enticing, inexpensive and tasty commercial
food products that we love and got accustomed to eating regularly. Even if affordability is not a major
concern, sometimes we become so emotionally attached to these foods that we do not consider life
enjoyable, fulfilling or even worth living without them. It might sound extreme, but it is true for many
people. You probably have some foods that even the thought of not eating them ever again is enough
to make you feel sad.
It is very hard to convince some people to stop eating foods that are damaging to their health and to
eat real and nutritious foods instead. Because real food is not engineered to give us the taste-high
like some of the commercial products do. People who are young and not yet have many health issues
generally resist accepting the fact that most people are damaging their health gradually by
consuming these processed foods regularly. In their denial, they might give examples of people who
eat whatever they want without any apparent health consequences, not realizing those people are
only a very few lucky exceptions and most people do not fall under that category. And many people
who otherwise look fit and healthy might still be struggling with serious health conditions.
Unfortunately, many people are not willing to make any long-term changes to their diets until they
start facing serious health problems themselves. Even then, many will not give up their favorite
foods, sometimes because they are unaware that these foods are causing their health problems, and
other times giving up their favorite foods is too hard and is therefore not an acceptable solution,
until it becomes a matter of life or death. Research in psychology shows us over and over again that
we have a tendency to choose pleasure or reward at the present time over avoidance of a possible
danger in the future. And when medications are offered as an immediate solution to their problems,
many people will choose to take medications without making any changes to their diets. Sadly, in
most cases medications are not good viable choices and do not
correct the underlying causes. Medications usually just reduce
some of the symptoms, making people falsely believe that their
health problems are solved, while their specific health condition
gradually progresses because they haven’t dealt with the
underlying causes. Medications also make matters worse because
of their unavoidable side-effects, so we get locked into a declining
health state with no progress toward true recovery.
In some of the videos you watched you might have noticed the anger or frustration felt by the health
experts towards commercial junk food producers. We do not have an easy way out of the public
health crisis we have today, even though we have a pretty good understanding of the causes and
4
possible ways to reverse the trend. Most of the packaged foods are just products created by the food
industry to generate profits. They are carefully designed, packaged and advertised heavily to increase
consumption, leading to larger profits; this is indeed big and powerful business.
.
This second topic post has two parts that need to be included in your submission. Your total essay
(Part 1 + Part 2) should be between 300-400 words; do not exceed 400 words.
PART 1:
For the first part of this post, reflect on what you read above (~100 words). Then, select ONE of the
two related questions below and write your answer in a separate paragraph (~100 words).
1. What are some ways you can think of to convince people to improve their diets before their
health declines prematurely? I felt I could make my individual contribution to the solution
by developing this course and I hope that many more people will benefit from the information
in the future. What can you do as an individual? For family members or friends you probably
have who are not paying much attention to the foods they are consuming? Or, for your
community?
2. What is one new piece of information you learned in this class that made a significant
difference in how you think about food? What was your previous belief about this particular
subject? How many others around you do you think are aware of this information, and should
they be informed as well?
PART 2:
Read the New York Times article Big Business and Obesity and watch the embedded video on that
site. Many food companies sell inexpensive and poor-quality food products that often lead to chronic
diseases to impoverished populations, claiming they are providing food and preventing hunger in
these societies. Share with us whether you agree with these arguments or not (~200 words).
.
This is a time for reflection; we all have our opinions based on our experiences and we can all learn
by sharing them with each other, so please take some time to read your classmates' posts and
comment on as many of them as you like.
.
