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Pollan's Criticisms Of The Food Industry

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Would it be possible to incorporate a healthier diet into the average consumer’s lifestyle? I believe with the help of committees and the enforcement of their petitions a difference could be made. If enough evidence is found confirming the health hazards caused by fake foods along with class action lawsuits filed against certain mass food producers, then either a change will have to be made or they will be shut down by FDA regulators. In professor Unger’s class, we discussed how one of Pollan’s main criticisms of nutritional science is that certain foods have been altered to include preservatives that appeal to the consumer’s taste, completely numbing their perspectives and the effects that the products have on them. If this is true then why are these products still being sold? …show more content…

The importance of the food production business has risen ten-fold. People have begun to realize all the controversies surrounding the ethics of substantial food producers. Companies still believe that it is okay to insert unnatural preservatives into the foods we eat as long as the taste created is one that will keep the company profiting, completely disregarding the health aspect of the consumer’s diet. “I have long stated that if you want to be optimally healthy, you should spend 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed foods. Unfortunately, most Americans currently do the opposite, and their health suffers as a result”(Dr.

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What does Pollan mean by the "industrial food chain?" In Omnivore’s Demma, Pollan states corn is the very basic essential component in the industrial food chain. Corn can be eaten by human being, feed livestock and also can be turned into many other food products.

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I found Pollan 's book to be very informative and enjoyable to read. I particularly liked the fact that I could associate Pollan’s cultural, political and economic views to the topics we covered in class. In order to complete this assignment, I selected Part 1 of the book "Industrial Food" because I was particularly captivated by the secrets of corn and also because I believed that this section sincerely disclosed the reality behind High-Fructose Corn Syrup (a major participant in the development of obesity). Not only that but, the fact that corn is found in almost every product in our pantry, it’s a little frightening.

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In the prologue of his book Salt, Sugar, and Fat, Moss recounts a time when CEOs of processed food giants, including General Mills, Pillsbury, and others, gathered to address the issue that many medical experts were slamming processed food as very unhealthy. Moss uses his word choice to paint former General Mills CEO Stephen Sanger in a very bad light when he writes, “But most often, he said, people bought what they liked, and they liked what tasted good. ‘Don’t talk to me about nutrition,’ [Sanger] reportedly said, taking on the voice of the typical consumer. ‘Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.’ To react to the critics, Sanger said, would jeopardize the sanctity of the recipes that had made his products so successful.

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557 Words | 3 Pages

He provides tips on how to shop for and prepare healthy foods, and he encourages readers to start cooking from scratch using whole, natural ingredients. Despite the strengths of Pollan's argument, there are some limitations to his approach. For one, he tends to oversimplify the causes of the Western diet and the reasons why people continue to rely on processed foods. He also does not take into account the social and economic factors that make it difficult for many individuals and communities to access healthy foods.

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565 Words | 3 Pages

In recent decade, the United States has seen supermarkets continuously get filled with packages labeled with things like “Low sodium” or “No Trans Fats.” Companies stick these labels on their food to match the current fads of what is good for you and what is not. In his essay Unhappy Meals, Michael Pollan advocates a return to natural and basic foods, and deplores nutritionism. Pollan argues that nutritionism does not actually tell people what is healthy or not, and that the only way to be sure you are eating healthy is to eat natural, fresh food.

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172 Words | 1 Pages

Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma demonstrates ethos states, “I finally had to conclude that Rosie the organic free-range chicken doesn’t really grok the whole free-range conceit” (172). Here, Michael Pollan uses a passive method to convey his ideas to the audience and allow them to think about and form their own opinions on his given ideas. He incorporates his own thoughts that he feels that the chickens cannot completely seem to grasp their environment and just live as they are told and raised to do. His personal experience of taking care of Rosie leaves him to realize that many corporations and companies only care for the rewards they receive for their work.

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717 Words | 3 Pages

In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he directly to Americans about the western diet and why he believes they need to escape from it. The reason Americans should escape the western diet is to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 420). To support his view on the issue, Pollan describes factors of the western diet that dictate what Americans believe they should eat. These factors include scientists with their theories of nutritionist, the food industry supporting the theories by making products, and the health industry making medication to support those same theories. Overall, Pollan feels that in order to escape this diet, people need to get the idea of it out of their heads.

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199 Words | 1 Pages

The discovery of the main components of food, which include proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, known as “macronutrients” by William Prout has blossomed into the cultural of “nutritionism” that we have today. What we put into our bodies is no longer “real food” but instead “food like substance”. Due to advancements in nutritional science the food industry can construct products that look like food and go back and add in the desired “nutrients” instead of eating the

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1122 Words | 5 Pages

Simple small steps like this can break the paradigm of bad eating habits, which will lead us to a healthier organic food industry. Being a persistent and responsible consumer is the power we hold for change if we really believe in moving towards a better

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Michael Pollan, in "Eat Food: Food Defined" argues that large amounts of what we consume is not food and his goal in this article is to assist eaters. He mentions that ordinary food is an important for consumers. In this article, the author provides some recommendations that eaters should follow to substitute fake foods. Firstly, Pollan gives some pieces of advice explaining how we, as consumers, can avoid food that our grandmother do not identifies by giving an example of unknown ingredients of yogurt. In this example, he tries to show how to read the ingredients label whether it consists of familiar elements or not, and we should be aware of this kind of foods that travel to our body.

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Why are our foods making us unhealthy? Some issues Sinclair includes in “The Jungle” (Sinclair 352-355) are chemical additives that are being used in foods to enhance flavor (taste), and fast food chains are making their food portions bigger which may cause more people to be unhealthy. Importantly, chemicals are being used in foods to enhance flavor (taste). The flavor industries are highly secretive and will not reveal the formulas to their clients.

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549 Words | 3 Pages

My opinion about the food industry is that it full of lies that help large corporation to make more money no matter how the animals much suffer. Also they don’t care about the health of people neither because the government lays on the labels of the food that people has consumed. People have to know “how ethical arguments” work and to find the proof of the arguments. For example on of the argument is that “actions can be justified by small consequences. This could be describing as the labels changing into the consumer choice of product that they want to buy.

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A dietary regime that is rich in whole foods are the fundamental requirements in maintaining a healthy diet. World wide, cultures dine on a considerable variation of foods. Most of their diet consists of healthy high-fat and healthy low fat diets. Even with their differences, their diets have a unique correlation of being constructed around fruits and vegetables.

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954 Words | 4 Pages

By tackling these complex issues, we can make it possible for people to choose healthier lifestyles and fight obesity effectively. To further back the claim of modifying junk food to healthier food, the text expresses “Success stories where companies have successfully improved the nutritional profiles of their products without compromising taste or profitability.” (Freedman). This clearly shows how when companies have changed their food for the better, they were able to keep their success while giving consumers healthier options. It provides a real-world example of how it is feasible to make these foods healthier, maintain consumer interest and be financially available.

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697 Words | 3 Pages

People are becoming extremely malnourished from the fact that “improved” or “enriched” foods “have actually been stripped of their original nutrients, so the manufacturers add a few synthetic vitamins and minerals to artificially give it some nutritional value. The final products have fewer nutrients than the starting product and they are not well received by our bodies, as they would have been in their natural state.” Just because you can’t taste those anti-foaming agents in your condiments doesn’t mean their not there. Ironically, a person who is consuming thousands of calories per day might not even get the nutrition he needs for good health. If your diet consists of fast food take-out, large amounts of sugar or food additives, you miss the essential vitamins and minerals found in fresh fruits and vegetables.

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