Alternative Essay Topic
In a 1,000-word essay, analyze the causes behind the link between poverty and obesity. Use In Defense of Food and at least 2 other sources. Be sure to have a thesis that maps out the causes of obesity for poor people.
Introductory Lexicon:
1. lipid hypothesis: The idea that foods rich in cholesterol spike cholesterol in the blood resulting in plaque build-up in the arteries, which in turn "clog the heart" and result in heart attacks.
This idea is NOT scientific. As Donald G. McNeil writes in the New York Times, his plus 300 cholesterol only scored an 11 (400 is the danger mark) in a plague test done on a coronary angiogram. Further, some lipid fats are necessary for absorbing protein and for ultimate brain activity. Your brain craves lipid or saturated fats for a good reason.
2. dogma: The "teachings" of the scientific authority, which goes unquestioned by the underlings, the younger scientists, those who know that if they question the dogma, no matter how wrong it is, their careers will be squashed like bugs.
3. groupthink: you compromise your critical, individual thinking skills to conform to the group's prevailing views and opinions so that you fit in with the group rather than seek the truth.
4. save-your-butt and make-money science: Never assume R&D (research and development) searches for truth and the improvement of society. Decisions are based on two things, self-promotion and funding. Take an example of bacterial research. No money in antibiotics because you only take the drug for a week or so. In contrast, cholesterol drugs are taken until you die. Which drug gets funded more? Which drug is more urgently needed? So don't be naive and say you're going into medical R&D to help the world. In reality, you're a slave to forces you can't control.
5. trans fats: processed vegetable fats that your body can NEVER get rid of. Equally as bad, trans fats took the place of animal fats, which are needed for brain function and protein assimilation.
6. nutritional reductionism: good definition from American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:
The approach of looking at individual nutrients rather than the food as a whole, and the entire lifestyle. Reductionism stimulates the 500 billion-dollar supplement industry.
7. Placebo Effect and the need for control studies in the face of nutitritionism claims: If you tell people they will enjoy improved health from taking supplement or food X, they will feel better because of the placebo effect.
8. Consumer gullibility based on failure to discern causation from correlation. You take a supplement and "feel better" after catching a cold, but you would have felt better anyway. That's correlation, not causation.
9. The Western Diet: an abundance of addicting refined carbohydrates and sugars that convert into triglycerides, which convert into fat and clog the arteries.
10. The rise of corn syrup. As Americans ate less lipids, they ate cheaper forms of sugar, corn syrup, which can not be broken down in the liver without harming the body.
Part One. The Dangers of Nutritionism
1. What has happened to Americans’ health as nutritionism has grown and grown? See page 40.
2. What is the driving force behind nutritionism? See page 40. The lipid hypothesis. We ate less animal fats and more vegetable-based trans fats, which are even worse. New data shows that the argument for a low-fat diet has been wrong. Eating less fat, people eat more carbs, which makes them even more fat. Fat fills us up. Carbs don’t. Carbs make you more hungry. The appetites become inflamed on a low-fat, high-carb, high-sugar diet. See page 59: Refined carbs interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that stimulate hunger, promote overeating, and fat storage in the body. This results in obesity and diabetes.
3. Gary Taubes is quoted from Good Calories, Bad Calories in which he shows there is no science behind the lipid hypothesis, which is nothing more than an ideology, the "beliefs" of a few powerful scientists.
4. Without scientific evidence and with consensus upholding bogus nutrition recommendations, we can blame groupthink, the phenomenon in which the group compromises critical thinking and in fact is frightened to voice opposition because conformity to the group is the first priority. Nutritionism rests upon groupthink. Consensus based on conformity, not scientific rigor. People “saving their butts” by conforming to the system rather than voicing intelligence and critical thinking. Not just nutritionism, but educational standards in the public school system are created the same way. Business people, lobbyists, and administrators, not educators, lay down the “standards” that are not based on sound research or experience but based on groupthink.
5. As Americans followed the bogus low-fat recommendations after World War II, heart attacks went up. Animal fat intake went down from 84 pounds to 71 pounds per capita and this resulted in increased heart attacks. More trans fats were consumed. All of this was recommended by nutritionism.
6. Nutritionism made a huge error in making a simple link between fat intake and increased cholesterol. Causation is not so simple. Against nutritionism, real science shows that fat is needed to absorb essential vitamins.
7. In Chapter 6, Pollan chronicles how as Americans obeyed the rules of Nutritionism they got fatter and fatter. While eating less fat, they ate more sugar, corn syrup and low-fat Snackwell’s cookies. In 1977, fat was 42% of total calories. In 1995 fat was down to 34% of total calories. But the TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF FAT DID NOT DECREASE. WE JUST ATE MORE OF EVERYTHING. By following the dogma of “eat more low-fat” foods,” Americans just ate more of everything else and got fatter.
8. One of the evils of Nutritionism, we read at the end of Chapter 5, is that disgusting processed foods can be injected with nutrients (polyunsaturated fats, “whole-grain”) and be marketed as healthy food. Rubbish.
9. One of the key characteristics of Nutritionism, we read in Chapter 9 (Bad Science) is that it embraces scientific reductionism, breaking down food into nutrient components rather than looking at the food as a whole and how that whole interacts with the human body. This reductionism is partly a result of groupthink. For example, reductionism says ingest lots of the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, but the body doesn’t assimilate beta-carotene when it’s isolated in a pill or injected into some processed food. We need to eat it from the original plant to assimilate it. See page 64.
10. Too much of Nutritionism is based on the Placebo Effect. One third of Americans are “responders.” They respond to any new program because they think they’ll improve. But this change isn’t based on science. See page 69.
11. One of the Great Lies of Nutritionism, we read on page 71, is that lifestyle choices determine our health. Wrong. Social class does. The poor get fatter and die younger for many reasons.
Why the Rich Get Thinner, the Poor Get Fatter
Does Poverty Make People Obese?
Southern culture predicated on fried foods
"Fill an empty stomach" mentality
affordable calories are processed foods, not real foods
"feeling poor," which is depression, makes you fat
Depression affects fat hormones
Fatness gives brain fat signals, which creates a vicious cycle
Poor have no nutrition education
Poor have little or no access to fitness centers
Poor live in a obesogenic environment
Fat discrimination leads to learned helplessness (giving up and depression, leading to more obesity and thus a vicious cycle ensues)
Part Two. The Causes Behind Americans’ Tendency Toward Overeating
1. The sheer abundance of food makes Americans eat in a perfunctory, mindless way. Eating slop. Not really eating but feeding. The difference between being human and animal.
2. Our religious, puritanical history makes us suspicious of eating pleasure. We are more comfortable equating eating with nutrition. We escape our repression and become gluttons.
3. Low-fat, high-carb, high-sugar foods marketed as healthy allowed us to eat like pigs and feel okay about it.
4. We have a history of being gullible to food faddism all the way back to quacks John Harvey Kellogg, Horace Fletcher the Masticator and other charlatans. See page 56.
Qualities of an Eater and a Feeder
The eater is engaging in
1. social interaction
2. bonding
3. the making of culture
4. slow appreciation of fresh ingredients
5. savoring food means actually thoroughly chewing your food
A feeder
1. eats in a rush, perhaps in the car.
2. does not chew, but inhales food, resulting in dyspepsia.
3. eats in darkness or even a closet in a state of shame.
4. consumes food mindlessly like an animal.
5. consumes food alone to be anti-social like a partitioned restaurant with TVs in every booth.
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