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
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