There are two parts to your initial post. In part one, you will be talking about what you normally do to make choices about food and nutrition. In part 2, you will be talking about what you may or may not change about making food and nutritional choices. You will also describe your thoughts about what problems you believe exist in the food/nutrition industry and why.
Part 1
Pick a meal: breakfast, lunch, dinner
Describe what you ate
Talk about why you ate what you did — what factors influenced your eating choices?
- Do any current nutritional fads, promotions, or diet claims influence your choice of foods? If yes, talk more about these sources of influence. If no, talk about what does influence your nutritional/food choices.
- Part 2
- Watch this TED Talk about food and happiness
- Link (Links to an external site.)
Now for the Part 2 of this Discussion Board –
After watching Maccolm Gladwell’s TED Talk and reading from your text and other materials in Module 3, will you to consider changing the way you will make nutritional choices? If yes, why? If no, why not? Provide specific examples from the video, other materials, websites, and text to support/describe your answers.
Finally, what do you think is the biggest problem area in the nutrition/food industry in the United States? Be specific and detailed in your description.
Part 1: I eat breakfast every single day, there is no way I can skip it, if I do, I will end up with a headache by ten in the morning. I ate strawberry banana activia yogurt, but I always spice my yogurt up with real fruits. I added chopped strawberries, cut in half grapes, and almond nuts that are already pre-sliced in a package I buy from Wal-Mart. In my home we eat a lot of fruit, instead of snacking on chips, we snack on watermelon with chili powder, or my sons favorite is cucumbers with lemon. Factors that influenced my food choice were fruits because they are healthy, nuts because of the texture in my yogurt, and activia over other brands of yogurt because it contains a probiotic and helps with my stomach problems. I used to get the parfaits from Mcdonalds with strawberries, berries, and granola, but when they stopped making them, I started to make my own. There are no fads or promotions that influence my diet. I must like what I eat, and it must be in my budget to afford it. I do like trying new things. Last year a friend of mine was growing persimmons which I was a little hesitant to try but it was so good, it had a cinnamon peach flavor to it. I started to research bread recipes to add this good flavor to the bread. Both my parents and older brother are diabetic, and my mother passed away not too long ago from the complications of the chronic conditions it causes so I try to keep my weight down and try to be careful what my food choices are. The only thing I struggle with is soda’s, I just love having a soda with a good dinner and I know soda is like drinking pancake syrup full of sugar. Part 2: The TED talk for this module was funny, after being newly inducted into the statistics society from the TED talk, yes, I believe in, “show me the data”. I have been battling hypertension since my early thirties and have been working on getting off medication or at least trying to bring it down to just one instead of three. I take medication for hypertension, a second for water reduction, and third to slow down the heart rate. After seeing my family physician, they did labs to make sure kidneys are okay but medication and high blood pressure can damage your kidneys and liver. Now that I know I am normal range, my next goal is to get off the medication, through diet, exercise, and mental control over my stress. What I started doing was taking my blood pressure every day and trying to see if the medication I am on is working and not bringing it down too low. Over the summer I have been moving away from salty foods, becoming more of an outdoor person, and exercising regularly. We need to take ownership of our own data, become on expert on yourself. When we walk into a doctor’s office be skeptical about their opinion on what’s best, ask for the numbers and not just their wordy advice on your health, but do not deny the facts. The biggest problem we have in the United States in our nutrition and food industry is that obesity, chronic conditions like diabetes type two, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia can be avoided if we made a better choice of food options. We live in a society where we are always rushing to move to the next step instead of slowing down, which causes us to eat lots of fast food. The other is portion control, we are learning to eat as much as we are served which is overeating causing obesity which causes chronic conditions. We are also eating low in fiber and high in fat foods.
Part 1:Growing up I could always just skip breakfast and go straight to school or if I did eat, I didn’t want breakfast foods. My mom would try to make all kinds of things, but breakfast was something I just did not care for. As I got older, I realized the importance of breakfast and I guess my body did as well because if I skipped breakfast, I would get a headache but worst of all hangry. My go to is typically a bagel with boiled eggs, granola with chopped up strawberries drizzled with honey, or acai bowls with chopped up fruits, seeds, and honey. I don’t like a lot of greasy breakfast foods as they upset my stomach. I think with aging and having children my body has changed so breakfast meats are never a good idea. I don’t drink coffee because that as well makes my stomach upset. I normally just stick to water with my breakfast or on occasion have a small cup of OJ or chocolate milk. I like to eat these things over other breakfast foods because they are a heather choice and cheaper than sausage biscuits or breakfast tacos. Also, it allows my family to eat a healthy breakfast as well. I wouldn’t think that any nutritional fads, promotions, or diet claims have influence my food choice. I try to have myself and my family eat on the healthier side especially went it comes to snacks because I feel like we are always eating snacks in between meals. We love sliced cheese with grapes and strawberries, popcorn with pickles, and pineapple & mango with tajin sprinkled over it. We are a family that eats just about anything so its easy to have these health snacks. We make our own energy balls, fruit roll ups, and smoothies. Don’t get me wrong we sometimes will throw in a rice crispy treat or chips but not as much as the healthier snacks. I want to show my family good healthy habits and since breakfast is so important, I want to make sure they are well energized, have a full tummy, not raising their cholesterol in the process, but still having food that taste good.Part 2:After watching the TED talk and really taking in the information I have conclude that I would consider changing the way I make nutritional choices. I will ready labels more often and not just trust what people or advertisement is saying. It can say that it is healthy and good for our bodies but unless we are reading all the ingredient, we don’t know what really is in the foods. Malcom Gladwell ends with “embracing the diversity of human beings, we will find a surer way to true happiness.” I take away from this that it is okay to not always eat what the TV is showing or what other people are eating. Just because it works for that person or because the person on TV is getting paid to say certain things doesn’t mean that that’s the proper nutritional choice, we all need. I think this fall into everything in general not just about picking the correct coffee or spaghetti sauce and just going along with it because that’s what the world thinks is best. The national center for complementary and integrative health explains how we should be informed of our health and what we are consuming, we need to have knowledge on what we are putting inside of our bodies and not just assume what works or everyone else or what is being advertised will work for us as well. You can speak with your physician if you are not 100 percent sure on what is good and bad. I think that the biggest problem area in the nutrition/food industry in the United States is caffeine. Coffees, soft drinks, and energy drinks. We tend to always look at foods, but we never stop to think about how bad these drinks are. People get so hooked on energy drinking because as a society we are always doing something, so we need that boost. This day in age coffee is a MUST, cold or hot, lots off other sugary stuff added into those. Too much of these things can lead to diabetes and hypertension but I don’t think people see these at a problem because we aren’t eating those calories.
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