This has been a great week for interesting little articles about nutrition and food culture in the US. This post is dedicated to pointing a few of the highlights out. If you're sitting at work and you're board, I highly recommend these articles. (I suppose I would recommend them even if you're not bored and you're not at work... but who really reads blogs when they have something better to do?? ha!)
Tear Up the White House Lawn!
This comes from TakePart.org... a neat site that has articles on a ton of different topics. In this article they suggest that the next president should tear up the White House lawn and plant a garden in order to set a better example for Americans. Gardening, after all, not only encourages people to eat their fruits and veggies but it also forces people to get outside and get active. I would love a president with a green thumb, but could it ever happen? Would the large veggie corporations in California and Florida send hit men to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and replace a strawberry patch with a neatly packaged container of organic spinach? I don't know...
Explosive Truth about Twinkies
This article, also originally posted on TakePart.org but the link is from the repost on EatingLiberally.org, talks about the book by Steve Ettlinger called Twinkie, Deconstructed. It also has a great You Tube clip of a 1960 Twinkie commercial in which a mom talks about how important it is to serve the children Twinkies. "They're only young once!" she says... I thought this was really interesting especially after reading the chapter in Wansink's book about comfort food and where we develop certain predilections towards snacks, desserts, or entrees.
Free Lunch
This article is from the New York Times this week and is can be tied into my last post on conspicuous consumption and how it affects food choices. In the article they talk about how many students who receive free lunch do not eat it because they don't want to be seen eating it. Free Lunch is not cool. This makes perfect sense. Certain food is seen as a status symbol so despite the fact that these students may be hungry, they will pass. Very interesting.
Showing posts with label Food Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food Science. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Made to order nutrition bars
You Bars - This is a site that allows people to custom order nutrition bars. They have a pretty wide selection of ingredients and supplements that can be added. The small, family owned business is located in California, produces the bars there and then sends them to the customers across the country. The bars are individually wrapped, can be named by the person who places the order, and come with a nutrition label on them.
Great things about this idea: I am quite familiar with the nutrition and meal replacement bars that are on the market right now. I really like the convenience of such products, but I'm usually turned off by the extensive list of ingredients. It's difficult to find a bar that offers the calories, protein, and whatever else I am looking for without tons of additives that I would like to avoid. You Bars seem like a great alternative. I can order these bars so that the carbohydrates are coming from honey and oatmeal instead of cornsyrup and sugar... and make sure they still have some protein in them. This is a great thing. Throwing a nutrition bar that is made from real food into my bag on the way out the door seems like a much better idea than reaching for a vitamin enriched candy bar.
Questions about this idea: Even if they are made with whole foods and organic ingredients, these are still meal replacement bars... supplements. These are designed to be eaten quickly and to specifically optimize what we are putting into our bodies. They are also made in California and shipped across the country... definitely not local for the majority of us. This product promotes and caters to the same patterns of convenience eating and nutritionism that so many other products on the market sell to, it just does this with higher quality ingredients.
Ultimately... I love having snacks readily available and if I could afford to pay the $40 for a box of 12 bars, I would order some "Becky Bars" right now. I don't think that expense is going to be very high on my priority list right now, BUT... I sure would love to get my hands on the recipes that this family uses! (And congratulate them on a great business idea)
Great things about this idea: I am quite familiar with the nutrition and meal replacement bars that are on the market right now. I really like the convenience of such products, but I'm usually turned off by the extensive list of ingredients. It's difficult to find a bar that offers the calories, protein, and whatever else I am looking for without tons of additives that I would like to avoid. You Bars seem like a great alternative. I can order these bars so that the carbohydrates are coming from honey and oatmeal instead of cornsyrup and sugar... and make sure they still have some protein in them. This is a great thing. Throwing a nutrition bar that is made from real food into my bag on the way out the door seems like a much better idea than reaching for a vitamin enriched candy bar.
Questions about this idea: Even if they are made with whole foods and organic ingredients, these are still meal replacement bars... supplements. These are designed to be eaten quickly and to specifically optimize what we are putting into our bodies. They are also made in California and shipped across the country... definitely not local for the majority of us. This product promotes and caters to the same patterns of convenience eating and nutritionism that so many other products on the market sell to, it just does this with higher quality ingredients.
Ultimately... I love having snacks readily available and if I could afford to pay the $40 for a box of 12 bars, I would order some "Becky Bars" right now. I don't think that expense is going to be very high on my priority list right now, BUT... I sure would love to get my hands on the recipes that this family uses! (And congratulate them on a great business idea)
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Techno-phobe?
Recently, I had a great conversation about food with my good friend Aaron. Both of us have experimented with different diets that advocate for supplements, specifically high protein supplements. Personally, the diet worked well for me; I lost some weight and felt pretty great about what I was doing for myself. Aaron was also a fan of the diet. Since then I have read books by Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan, both of whom advocate for whole foods and are critical of food science. Even though I enjoyed the nutrition program that I experimented with, I now find myself much more critical of anything that tells me I need to supplement my diet with "edible food-like substances." I agree with the idea that whole foods can provide me with everything I need, and I also find it to be a very romantic perspective to have.
As I was expressing this view to my friend, a very intelligent, scientifically minded man, and he accused me of being critical of innovations just because they are new and different. Food science had already brought about helpful things such as preservatives and different supplements for people with debilitating allergies. Why judge a protein bar that conveniently provides important vitamins and minerals just because it comes from a lab instead of off a tree? Well... good point. Where is the line between arguing that we should still be running around naked, eating berries and wild animals because that's how we used to do it and arguing that certain things just don't need to be improved upon? I'm not sure I have an answer to that totally, but I have a few more arguments after reading the first part of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
As Michael Pollan points out in his discussion of the FDA's decision in 1973 to allow modified foods to be marketed without the "imitation" label that was previously required, Nutritional science and food science is assumed to have a thorough understanding of how foods nourish our bodies. This, however, is not always the case.
1) Margarine. Margarine was introduced in the last century as a way to avoid saturated fats. Food scientists used hydrogenated vegetable oils to make a substance that was similar to butter. Americans ate this for decades before we all realized that the trans-fats created by hydrogenating vegetable oils were twice as bad for us as the naturally occurring saturated fats in butter were. Ooops... We clearly hadn't figured it out at this point.
2) Snackwells and the Fat Phobia. More recently, in another attempt to avoid fats, Americans became obsessed with low fat alternatives. The vast majority of foods engineered to be lower in fats are much higher in refined carbohydrates; for example, Snackwell products. The reduction in food fats accompanied with the increases in refined sugars has increased the obesity problem in the United States instead of decreasing it. Ooops again!
3) Baby Formula. I haven't read much about this specifically, but Pollan refers to it multiple times. Apparently the trial and error food scientists have gone through in creating infant formulas that adequately replicate breast milk is a great example of how much we still don't know about the intricate nature of food and health.
These might partially justify my "techno-phobia" and I will keep you updated as to whether my friend finds these reasons valid. Ultimately, the best reason I have to eat real food and avoid "food-like substances" is that human science is flawed and will continue to be so for a long time. Nature, on the other hand, produces some pretty delicious dishes if I do say so myself... and I'm pretty sure they won't make my pee smell like chemicals. That's a good thing in my book.
As I was expressing this view to my friend, a very intelligent, scientifically minded man, and he accused me of being critical of innovations just because they are new and different. Food science had already brought about helpful things such as preservatives and different supplements for people with debilitating allergies. Why judge a protein bar that conveniently provides important vitamins and minerals just because it comes from a lab instead of off a tree? Well... good point. Where is the line between arguing that we should still be running around naked, eating berries and wild animals because that's how we used to do it and arguing that certain things just don't need to be improved upon? I'm not sure I have an answer to that totally, but I have a few more arguments after reading the first part of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
As Michael Pollan points out in his discussion of the FDA's decision in 1973 to allow modified foods to be marketed without the "imitation" label that was previously required, Nutritional science and food science is assumed to have a thorough understanding of how foods nourish our bodies. This, however, is not always the case.
1) Margarine. Margarine was introduced in the last century as a way to avoid saturated fats. Food scientists used hydrogenated vegetable oils to make a substance that was similar to butter. Americans ate this for decades before we all realized that the trans-fats created by hydrogenating vegetable oils were twice as bad for us as the naturally occurring saturated fats in butter were. Ooops... We clearly hadn't figured it out at this point.
2) Snackwells and the Fat Phobia. More recently, in another attempt to avoid fats, Americans became obsessed with low fat alternatives. The vast majority of foods engineered to be lower in fats are much higher in refined carbohydrates; for example, Snackwell products. The reduction in food fats accompanied with the increases in refined sugars has increased the obesity problem in the United States instead of decreasing it. Ooops again!
3) Baby Formula. I haven't read much about this specifically, but Pollan refers to it multiple times. Apparently the trial and error food scientists have gone through in creating infant formulas that adequately replicate breast milk is a great example of how much we still don't know about the intricate nature of food and health.
These might partially justify my "techno-phobia" and I will keep you updated as to whether my friend finds these reasons valid. Ultimately, the best reason I have to eat real food and avoid "food-like substances" is that human science is flawed and will continue to be so for a long time. Nature, on the other hand, produces some pretty delicious dishes if I do say so myself... and I'm pretty sure they won't make my pee smell like chemicals. That's a good thing in my book.
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