Coures evluation

This quarter, I took the writing class 1133, the instructor is Eric Leak. During the whole quarter, we had a main topic, the food culture. Fortunately, it was not very hard for me, because I come from China, a country full of different kinds of food. The whole quarter was divided into two parts; each one included some blog post, short essays and a long paper. We learned different kinds of methods to get resources, like observing personally, using the sources in Penrose library, recoding and analyze our own lives. There were many methods I don’t use before. The fantastic part is that after we have did many researches for my short essays, it made me feel much easier to write the long paper. This taught me that if we divided a big project into different parts, and finish it step by step, it will be easy to finish them. Besides, just for writing, if we did a good pre-work, like thing out the outline, doing enough researches, we can feel much better when we start to write. The most challenge thing for me is the resource part. Because the different writing customs in China and America, it seems like very hard for me to use outside resources. My professor often told me try to use more resource to support my idea in the comments. I felt very hard at the first, but finally, I found that actually I have already used some resource. The problem was that I always like to say in my own words. It was because many kinds of sources like personal blogs, newspapers, could not be included in the “works cited” part. This thing told me how rigorous in American writing. People must be responsible to every world they wrote and at the same time, could find enough effective evidence to support their idea.

Though there were a lot of writing works in this class. It was not very difficult. I found I learned unconsciously in the end.  

My Eaters Manifesto

Writing 1133

Naitong Li

May 22, 2012 

My Eaters Manifesto

            In the modern word, we would never be worried about there is no enough food for us, but following with the evolution of the food, there still many problem of choosing food. Whether the food we eat includes enough nutrition for our body? Will it make our figure out of shape? What amount should we eat? Can we choose other thing healthier? Should we eat following our heart or the suggestion given by the authority? Or eating for happiness and for heath, which is better? There are hundreds questions coming with the question “What should we eat today.” So in order to eat better in today’s world which is full of materials, everyone must build eating rules for himself. For myself, eat moderate and natural food are two important things.

            Whenever you open newspapers and websites, you can many reports about food research in the life or health part. For example, on today’s New York Times, there is an article called “Some Fats May Harm the Brain More” which try to remind us to be cautious when selecting meat. New York Times even has a section called fitness & nutrition which is special for this kind of news. There seems are millions of scientists who are dedicated to the study of food nutrition. The reports update day by day, telling us what we should eat and what we should not. They are usually sounds very reliable and serious, often open with some sentences like, how some experts and scholars did experiment on a lot of people for many years finding some components of one kind food we eat every day is really harmful to our health or some nutrition of a particular food is very good. The influence range can be very stupendous, on matter for the positive or the negative aspect, like harm the intelligence, keep perfect figure, improve the sexual ability or cause insomnia.  But sometimes, we can easily become confused by the reports. For example, one day a report may say the “newest reach” says eating chocolate will not only make us fat, but also can led to diabetes; it can destroy the absorption process of calcium in the milk. It sounds like we should immediately stop to have the tasty sweetness. But a few days later, there would be another “newest reach” says that, it is good to eat chocolate, because it can easily delight you, enhance the ability of memory, and the antioxidants of it can slow down the speed of aging. At this time, it seems we should take a chocolate bar each day.  Then what should we do now, following the first report’s suggestions or the second one’s recommendations? It makes me feel like standing on a narrow road, with cliff on both sides. No matter deviates to which side will both make me fall into the abyss.  As a result, I built the most important theory of choosing food. Since I have already stood on the narrow road, the best choice is keeping balance on it.

            No matter for which kind of food, there must some benefits for eating it, and there must be some dangers for eating too much. The important is how find the balance point of it. So I think the most important try of choosing food of is moderation. You can eat everything you want, but the amount must be scientific. For example, I really love yogurt. I know it is very for girls.  It contains two kinds of good bacterial cultures, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophiles, which can help me to keep the balance in our intestinal tract. It is also very useful to keep figure and in additional, yogurt is good for my skin. It contains a big mount of Vitamin A, B1, B2, E and carotene, which can slow down the speed the oxidation and decomposition of the cells. So they can protect my skin from keratosis and senescence. They are also effective to protect my skin losing water, which help us looks young and energetic. But I never use yogurt as dinner, or just eating yogurt to lose weight. I know eating too much yogurt can harm our digestive system instead of protecting it, and it will destroy the electrolyte balance of our body. Besides, there are a lot of nutrition that yogurt can’t supply, like vitamin C and Omega 3, which we must absorb from vegetable or meat. So I just take about 125g per day.             Another example is about the fish. There is a fashion theory say that eating withe meat is far better than eating red meat, and among the withe meat, fish is the best one.  It is low in fat and high in omega 3 fatty acids, which can prevent the heart disease and is good for our brain developing. But an article on JAMA also refer that eating too much fish can accurate the amount of mercury in very body, which is a poison element. It is true that there are many advantages of eating fish, but it is still not a sensible choice of using fish to replace other the other kinds of meat and eat too much every day.  So it is not clever for us to decide never eat one thing, just eat one thing, or eat one thing as much as possible just according to a report on the newspaper or on the television.

            Blindly follow the trend and be credulous are very dangerous. For an example, about one year ago, there was one people was very famous in China, named Wuben Zhang. He claims that he is a nutritionist, and he wrote a book called “how to solve the heath problems caused by eating just by eating” to tell how to eat more heath, like eating raw eggplant and having green peas soup can help people defend cancer. There are many people believe him, and following what he said. Suddenly, green peas became the most popular food in the supermarket, and the price increase about 30% at that time. A reporter wrote that he interviewed randomly a custom who was buy green peas at during that special period of time told him that she would buy at one kg green peas one weak. But in the end, many scientists demonstrate that he has no solid evidence to support his ideas, and meanwhile he has no license for nutritious. The event is showing that we must be calm when we hear those magic suggestion for food, we should build our own believe for food, and just to use that news to make our menu more scientific. Whatever, we must remember that just like other things in the world.  Each kind of food contains what we our body need and what will harm hour heath, the best solution is try to eat more kinds of food, and keep balance when choosing what to eat.

            Another theory of food of mine is trying to choose food growth or made naturally or the organic food. “Natural” becomes one of the most important label of our food. Nearly every food producer use ads to emphasize that there is no artificial thing in their product. To be honest, I also think it is important. We can hardly image at 70 years ago that we can create an orange juice just with the pigment tartrazine, some sweeteners like aspartame, sodium cyclamate, and some other artificial things. The fake juice can be looked and tasted really like the real one, or even better. This sounds horrible for me. I believe that even that food may looks and taste greater but eating food with a lot of these artificial additives can hardly achieve the real goal of eating food. This kind food is less nutritional and lacking important elements that we need, because the additives destroy the nutrition structure of the food. They may cheaper but they make us illness and fat at the same time. I think problems of these artificial additives are serious in the modern time all over the world.

             Except the artificial things, food produce become more and more industrial is another problem. We use many new technologies like using ripening hormone to let our food grow faster; using various pesticides to keep the crop grow healthily and using transgenic technology to get more ideal species. The industrial transform of agriculture make it can satisfy more people’s demand, with can match the quick growth of population, and bring more profits of this industry. Following with the changes of food, there are also some problems, for example, the rice planting of China. For a long time, the rice planting mainly depended human. It was a labor intensive job. Otherwise, during the past twenty years, the quick development of agriculture technologies changes the rice planting a lot. Big mount of agriculture chemical like pesticide and fertilizer are used in the planning process. “China is currently the world leader in chemical fertilizer production, consumption, and imports. With food security firmly in mind, the Chinese government has been promoting the use of chemical fertilizers since the early 1960s, and China is currently ranked 4th globally in   chemical fertilizer use intensity (Zhang et al. in prep).” (Josephine Williams). “At the same time, the super hybrid rice (transgenic product) replaces the normal one gradually. The field per-mu has already doubled. In September, 2011,the leader of this study research, Longping Yuan, declared that in Guizhou, “the yield of the experimental field has already got to 936 kg per-mu, and there was a hope to get more than 1000kg per-mu.”(Xinhuan news) But after a short period of happiness caused by the high yield, people become worried again. Initially, people began to suspect that weather the chemical fertilizer is harmful to human’s healthy. After all, accelerating the ripening is a process that against the nature. Many people began to worry about that whether the chemical fertilizer contains hormones, just like what we feed to the animals and make they become dangerous for us to eat. Then the anxious about the super rice arise, as a genetically modified food, if they are harmless are still not be detected by the authority. Besides, the taste of it was not as good as simple rice. In other to solve these, people especially the quality who can pay more money on food start to choose eat organic food, which growing more naturally compared to the normal one. Though many people don’t believe in the organic food, especially when it sales two times higher as the normal one, I choose believes the function of Organic.

             After all, we have already read Cook’s article “Fowl Trouble”, in which writes that”… seemingly harmless broiler chicken may in fact be the most dangerous animal in North America.”, and the “strong” tomato brought back by the write of the book “On the tomato trail”. The image he describe “It (the tomato) rolled off the counter and fell on our newly refinished pine floor, it hit and traveled for a few feet but incurred no damage. No one can say loudly that they have no ham to our health, which sounds so terrible and strange. So at this time, try to eat organic food become the only solution for us. It closely the natural food our ancestor had already eaten for thousands of years most, meanwhile it includes more the nutrition we need in the daily life and tasted more like the “real” thing.

            In a conclusion, eating moderate and natural food are two primary theory of my eating habit. The other things are built on this, like eating something to make me happy or relax. Whatever, the final goal of eating for me is getting a more wonderful life.

                                                      Works cited

Zhou, Furong, ed. "Yuan Long Ping: The New Goles of Super Rice Can Achieve in the Future."

            22 Sept. 2011. Web. 08 May 2012. <http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2011-                                   9/22/c_122075201.htm>.

Williams, Josephine. "Understanding the Overuse of Chemical Fertilizer in China." 1-2. Web. 8    May 2012.

Food Standards Agency (2002) McCance and Widdowson's the Composition of Foods, Sixth          Summary Edition. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.

Janet, Torpy M, Lymn Cassio, and Glass M Richard. “Eating Fish: Health Benefits and Risks.”

            The JAMA Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 15.May 2012.    http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=296&issue=15&page=1926.

Estabrook. "On the Tomato Trail." Introduction. Print.

Cook. "Fowl Trouble." Print

Lead by nutritions and nutritionists

            Food revolution has never stopped during the time. Actually, in the past time, especially in China, just like the war period in America, the biggest problem of food is we don’t have enough food to eat. But at time, our satisfaction with food was very high. We will be very happy just because we have food to eat. We would be appreciated if we have food to eat. The index of happiness of food is much higher than today’s.  Because at that time, we never worried whether the food we eat contains much pesticide, whether it was added by a lot of artificial things, and whether it has a lot of Clarions and will make us fat.  Just as Pollan and Dupuis writes, people now try to follow variety of suggestion of eating so that can be healthier.  In my mind, people today have more food to eat, and should be healthier than the past, but it seems like that we have more problem of eating. Our world is building and re-building by one and one piece of suggestion given by variety of authority. For many times, we follow strictly a suggestion; in turn found it was totally wrong. For an example, there was one people was very famous in China, named Wuben Zhang. He claims that he is a nutritionist, and he spends a lot of “eating” about eating, like eating raw eggplant can help you defend cancer. There are many people believe him, and following what he said. But in the end, many scientists demonstrate that he has no solid evidence to support his ideas. The event can reflect a fact, people now have the power to choose what to eat, so everyone wants to be healthier and keep nutrition balance. It is good a trend, but the problem is whether we are too strict by these. Can we really choose the right suggestion to follow? The eager of heath sometimes let us lose a lot of happiness. We must try to eat less to keep figure, and eat many things we don’t like instead of what we like. After read the two articles, my question is that, in the modern time, how we can balance the nutrition of food and the favor of food.

In class writing --- May 16

The first blog I read is written by Shelby. She writes one kind of important meat in our daily life, fish. She is a pescatarian. She compares the benefits and the adverse effects. She finds some medical articles which are focus on the fish eating topic. These articles show that eating fish is good, because it provides Omega 3 fatty acids, plenty of protein, a lot of energy, and at the same time it prevents heart disease. On the other hand, she also writes the bad effects of eating fish. It includes a toxin element—mercury. It will go through the chain and accumulate in the fish body. So it is not good to eat predator fish. She also estimates that pregnant women should pay more attention when eating fish.  But in the end, she says no matter those academic articles or herself. The benefits are much overweight compared with the adverse effects. I learned thing from her blog. I never think there will be some bad influence on our body by eating fish. It demonstrates a theory. There is no thing is absolutely good in the world. The next blog I read is written by Bobby, he discuss the bad effect of caffeine. “At higher doses caffeine can lead to periods of inexhaustibility, as well as rambling speech and thought and rapid heartbeat. People can become addicted to caffeine and experience symptoms of withdrawal, including insomnia, neck cramps, headaches, nervousness and mild-depression.”  I don’t often drink Coffee, because these drawbacks are very obvious of me. I think maybe we can use tea to instead of Coffee or create a kind of drink that can keep us awake and don’t hurt our health at the same time.          .

Yogurt

Writing 1133

Naitong Li

5/15/2012

                                                                        Yogurt

            Yogurt, which is also sometimes spelled yoghurt, youghourt or yourt, is a food made from milk fermented by healthful bacterial cultures. It has been eaten throughout the world for at least 4,000 years, reported Susan M. Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., L.D., in the 1994 edition of Medical and Health Annual.

            In the last two decades, people gradually realized the great benefits of yogurt. At first, it contains two kinds of good bacterial cultures, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. These two good bacterial cultures can help us to keep the balance in our intestinal tract. The lactic acid bacterial in yogurt can restrain the reproduction of those pathogenic bacteria in our intestinal tract, like coliform and dysentery bacteria, thus reduce the possibility of human to infect with the intestinal diseases. On the other hand, as these good bacteria can promote the motility of gastrointestinal and the secretion of gastric acid, drinking yogurt can help us solve the constipation problem. It can seed up our metabolism and help us eliminate the toxin in our body.

            According to the table from food standard agency made in 2002, we can find it includes a lot nutrition which is good and important to our body. It includes 300mg Ca, 170mg Mg, 20mg P, and 1mg Z per 10og.   These elements are the primary contents of our bones and teeth. So drinking yogurt can help us protect our teeth and make our bones fitness. This is very good for the older, who often trouble with the osteoporosis problem. Besides, Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, and the methionine can prevent hair loss and promote it regeneration. In additional, yogurt is good for our skin. It contains a big mount of Vitamin A, B1, B2, E and carotene, which can slow down the speed the oxidation and decomposition of the cells. So they can protect our skin from keratosis and senescence. They are also effective to protect our skin losing water, which help us looks young and energetic. At the same time, the Vitamin C, as a reducing agent in human body, it can slow down the activity of enzyme so that can reduce the pigmentation in the human body. People can get rid of the trouble of freckles and melisma. Long-term consumption of yogurt can make our skin elastic and shiny. 

            Another good thing is that Yogurt is especially for girls. Because it was made by milk, it contains a lot of protein, which can provide us a lot of energy.  Meanwhile, the better thing is, it includes less carbohydrate and fat than grain and meat. So for the girls who want to keep figure and lose choice, it is one of the best choices to take every day. It fabulous taste and wonderful look with fruits also make the eaters happy. Yogurt can work as chocolate and any other sweeteners, but with much less calories. In additional, it can prevent some women disease. For example, a 2003 Finnish study, also published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed a correlation for women who frequently consumed probiotic-fermented milk products plus fresh berry juice and a lower recurrence of urinary tract infections.

            Yogurt, which is already a part of many people’s daily menu, is very good for our health, and this is demonstrated by the scientists from many aspects. So, trying to have a cup of yogurt can be a cheap method to keep us young and healthy.

Works cited

Food Standards Agency (2002) McCance and Widdowson's the Composition of Foods, Sixth          Summary Edition. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.

Kleiner, Susan M., Ph.D., R.D., L.D. "Yogurt: A Culture in Itself," Medical and Health Annual.        Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1994, pp. 462ff.

Table 1.  Nutritional compositiona of common varieties of yoghurt (per serving) 

Nutrient Whole milk,plain(150 g)/ Whole milk,fruit(150 g) Low-fat/plain(150 g) Low-fat/fruit(150 g) Virtually fatfree fruit(150 g) Greek style,plain(150 g)/ Twinpot(175 g)/ Drinkingyoghurt(200 g)

Food Standards Agency (2002)

 Protein (g)   8.6   6.0   7.2   6.3   7.2   8.6   7.2   6.2

Folate (µg)  27  15  27  24  12   9  23  24

Niacin (mg)   2.3   1.3   1.7   1.7   1.7   2.5   2.0   1.6

Riboflavin (mg)   0.40   0.24   0.33   0.32   0.44   0.20   0.33   0.32

Thiamin (mg)   0.09   0.18   0.18   0.18   0.06   0.18   0.11   0.06

Vitamin B12 (µg)   0.3   0.5   0.5   0.5   0.3   0.3   0   0.4

Calcium (mg) 300 183 243 210 195 189 228 200

Magnesium (mg) 29  20  24  23  20  20  23  22

Phosphorus (mg) 255 144 215 180 165 207 186 162

Zinc (mg)   1.1   0.6   0.9   0.8   0.6   0.8   0.7   0.6

Observations of others' food journal

It is really hard for me to follow other’s food. I need to look for the dictionary to refer the name of those foods. But this is the cultural difference, isn’t it?  Though what we eat is different, there are still many similar things of our eating habit. For example, I found that nearly everyone in the weekend doesn’t take breakfast, or we all take the brunch. I know it is good for heath to have breakfast on time, and in my heart, we should take it near 8:00 o’clock. But actually, I often sleep late in the night, so I can hardly get up at that time. Through looking when others take their breakfast, I find I am not the only one take brunch. Besides, I find except the vegetarian, people usually try to different types of food to keep their nutrition balance. Most people eat meat, carbohydrates, vegetables, and fruits

Record of what I ate these three days.

Wednesday afternoon, 16:00—a hot dog, Italian sausage flavor, the food stall near strum.

                       Evening:   21:00—half of fried rice noodles with seafood. Brought back by my roommate from Jason Thai.

Thursday Morning.  9:00, another half of fried rice noodles with seafood.

                  Noon:   12:30, flammulina,fans,Dougan. Boiled together with the sauce left yesterday. At  home. Cook by myself.

                Afternoon  17:00,  Frozen yogurt. Plain and green tea flavor. 14 ounce.  Near campus, when waiting for the bus.

                Evening: a pancake, brought from market and heated by the microwave.  An apple. A cup of yogurt, plain flavor.

Friday  Afternoon: 13:00,  Eggplant fired with pork. Onion fired with eggs. A bowl of rice

              Evening: A cup of fat-free milk. A strawberry bread.

Saturday afternoon: 14:00, braised chicken wings, beef fried with flammulian, Stir-fried chicken gizzards, ribs and yam soup. Cooked by roommates and I. We ate together.

               evening: 20:00 about 13 glutinous rice balls.  An orange.  A cup of green tea.