Annotated Bibliography
Balko, Radley. "What You Eat Is Your Business." Cato Institute. Cato Institute, 23 May 2004.
Web. 13 Feb. 2015.
In the article titled What You Eat is Your Business, Radley Balko argues that personal accountability is the largest single factor in determining ones health. Balko dismisses others claims that manufacturers are to blame simply by offering unhealthy options and takes issue with the government stepping into something he sees as a personal issue, and not one of public health. Balko takes issue with Margot Wootan from the Center forScience in the Public Interest having said “we need to move beyond personal responsibility,” when discussing how to combat obiesiety, and sees her and others like her as giving the American people an easy scapegoat for their own fitness.
Maxfield, Mary. "Food For Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating.""They Say/I Say":
The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 442-46. Print.
In Mary Maxfield’s article Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating she challenges the viewpoint of Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food by calling his credibility into question. She sees his “food algorithms,” as essentially the same kind of specific advice that he warns against. Maxfield also presents her own “food algorithm,” at the end of the article. Maxfield cites law professor and journalist Paul Campos as saying, “lies about fat, fitness, and health… not coincidentally serve the interests of America’s $50-Billion_dollar-per-year diet industry.” Maxfield essentially uses this proof to call into question the motivations of Pollan’s work. She later uses the article to discuss how the empirical standards of the fitness industry don’t provide the same type of determination of fitness that one would expect to find in an unbiased industry based on health, and how even commonly thought of standards of fitness such as BMI are not the measuring tool most people think they are.
Pollan, Michael. "Escaping the Western Diet." "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in
Academic Writing: With Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 434-40. Print.
In the article Escaping the Western Diet, Michael Pollan postulates that the science behind nutritionism is often contradictory and that an approach from any one of the competing camps of scientists is short sighted. Pollan notes that the industries that benefit the most from nutritionism are the food and medical industry and not the consumer. Pollan links the processing of foods to the rate of disease citing Dennis Burkitt an English doctor in World War II, quoting, “The only way we are going to reduce disease, is to go backwards to the diet and lifestyle of our ancestors,” but stops short of calling for a return to a more paleo diet and instead suggests that there are some more common sense rubrics that can be applied to eating. Pollan’s overarching theme of the article is to avoid processed and refined foods and instead to consume more “whole foods,” defining those not only as less processed, but also originating from less processed roots, an example he gave of this is that beef, if raised on a western diet still may not be considered a “whole food.”
Singer, Natasha. "Foods With Benefits, or So They Say." The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 May 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.
In the article Foods With Benefits, or So They Say Natasha Singer brings to light the confusing world of regulating the sometimes dubious claims of functional food manufacturers. She exposes the method of deceptive marketing practices and shows where the boundaries lie as far as what is actual legal to market to consumers. Singer cites Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University as saying, “Functional foods, they are not about health, they are about marketing.” Singer is using this as evidence to support the confusing way we see our food because of how it is marketed. Throughout the article she shows the point of view of the manufacturers, usually ones that have run afoul of the FDA, and that of the regulators tasked with making sure that the health claims made about food are accurate.
Warner, Judith. "Junking Junk Food." The New York Times 25 Nov. 2010: n. pag. The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2010. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
In her article Junking Junk Food, Judith Warner argues that the only way that a lasting change can be made in the American diet is by a broad cultural shift in the way we view food. Warner sees that the American “free-wheeling” way of life as tied to the way we consume and view food. She takes issue with governmental regulation on food, and notes that this is inconsistent with how we view our rights. Warner quotes David Kessler, the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner and author of the 2009 book “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, ”it was a shift in cultural attitudes, not laws or regulations, that led Americans to quit smoking. In the space of a generation cigarettes stopped being portrayed as ‘sexy and cool’ and started to be seen as ‘a terribly disgusting, addictive product’.” Warner asserts, with this quote, a direct link in the psychology of how we eat culturally to how we male changes to that routine. She uses this quote to bolster her point about a shift in attitude being the only way to bring about lasting change.
Zinczenko, David. "Don't Blame the Eater." The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2002. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.
In the article Don’t Blame the Eater David Zinczenko takes aim at the lack of proper nutrition labeling. He also takes aim at the lack of choices for healthy alternatives in our society. Zinczenko notes that his own weight came under sontrol through learning about nutrition and making more educated decisions about his eating. The article is an opinion piece and is not supported with evidence or scientific data.
Argument Essay
Even though singular variables in a person’s diet do have correlating effects to that person's health, for example there has been a significant amount of research into the effects of cholesterol intake in relation to heart health and the rate of heart disease and heart attacks, I am asserting instead that the way we market the nutrition information needs to improve, and that attention grabbing headlines do little to actually inform the average citizen about their health, and ultimately that believing that only one aspect of your total diet is contributing to ones lack of health or fitness is dangerous and potentially further damaging to ones health. Health and nutrition are complex issues that cannot be boiled down to an emphasis on a singular aspect of a certain food’s nutritional make-up. The way we see food, and the marketing it is sold to us with, needs to change if we are to make solid efforts in getting more Americans more fit and healthy. I believe that the way we attempt to analyze individual elements in the diet, like caloric intake or the number of grams of carbohydrates per serving, distracts us from examining the broader reality of what is and is not healthy. Most people want an easy solution to their health issues and marketers and manufacturers are quick to capitalize on the hottest new trend rather than take a broader more comprehensive approach to health. Most diets do not take a comprehensive approach to health and fitness and instead single out a few bad or good foods and building from there, and marketing conceals certain unhealthy aspects of food by propping up other nutritional statistics.
First, I believe that the way we attempt to analyze individual elements in the diet, like caloric intake, or the number of grams of carbohydrates per serving, distracts us from examining the broader reality of what is and is not healthy. Scientific studies that inform us of potential health benefits or dangers must use the scientific method and need to isolate a singular variable in order to prove a correlating effect. The focus on using a singular variable in their research leads to overblown correlating media coverage extolling the evils of fat in connection to heart health, or how without a proper amount of fat intake in ones diet one can become depressed more easily. The way in which the media portrays these scientific studies lead people to believe that there is a simple, singular variable in their diet that they can change in order to become healthy. It is far too complicated a matter to be reduced to any singular statistic, but telling people a far more complicated answer never sells papers or gets views. People want to believe in an easy solution, so the marketing that is effective and does sell papers, or get's shared over news feeds, is for miracle cures, super foods that do everything, or a new exciting weight loss compound..
Additionally, most diets preach the evils of one or maybe a few nutrition statistics to watch out from, like the Atkins Diet and it's prohibition against carbohydrates, or a raw juicer diet with prohibitions on processed or cooked foods, while allowing their dieters potentially harmful amounts of other nutrition statistics like fat and cholesterol in the Atkins diet, or a dangerously low amount of protein in the raw juicer diet. (Revise for clarity)
Finally, the most important reason I believe that most of the foods you find available in a supermarket may use marketing stating that they have one or two of the new diet-trendy statistics like “0 Grams of Trans Fat,” or that their product “Contains Probiotics,” or even the more dubious to overall health claim of “Gluten Free,” while still remaining high in other area's like calories, carbohydrates, total fat, or may contain highly processed foods or chemical compounds. This is already a complex issue, and to further complicate things we need to define some things first, namely calories, the CDC’s website defines a calorie as as “a unit of energy supplied by food. A calorie is a calorie regardless of its source. Whether you're eating carbohydrates, fats, sugars, or proteins, all of them contain calories.” What the CDC fails to mention is that all calories are not created equally. The CDC’s guide to health eating and weightloss is targeted only at caloric balance, defined by the CDC as “like a scale. To remain in balance and maintain your body weight, the calories consumed (from foods) must be balanced by the calories used (in normal body functions, daily activities, and exercise).” According to Carmody, Weintraub, and Wrangham, all professors of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, in their paper titled Energetic consequences of thermal and nonthermal food processing that the “cooking substantially increases the energy gained from meat, leading to elevations in body mass that are not attributable to differences in food intake or activity levels. The positive energetic effects of cooking were found to be superior to the effects of pounding in both meat and starch-rich tubers, a conclusion further supported by food preferences in fasted animals. Our results indicate significant contributions from cooking to both modern and ancestral human energy budgets. They also illuminate a weakness in current food labeling practices, which systematically overestimate the caloric potential of poorly processed foods.” This quote shows how the labeling of foods is often inaccurate and even throws cooking method into the discussion. This definition of a calorie, and the recommendations for healthy eating by the CDC show how, according to the CDC view of things that regardless of how low a food is in one area it’s nutrition statistics it is it’s caloric content that matters most significantly. Transversely, according to Theresa Albert, a registered nutritionist and author of Ace Your Health, 52 Ways to Stack Your Deck, "Low calories may or may not make you thin, overall, it is the quality of the calorie that counts rather than the calorie itself when it comes to fighting off disease and maintaining health.” She goes on to provide further analysis on the nutritional statistics of two seemingly healthy foods comparing the 120 calories for six whole-grain crackers to the 185 calories for an ounce of unsalted walnuts, the first option seems best if you were to just view the caloric content of the foods, but a deeper examination reveals “the nuts provide omega-3 fatty acids, which help turn off hunger messages in the brain, while the carbs in the crackers may do the opposite,” Albert says. While both have about the same amount of protein and fiber, the walnuts have zero sodium, something most scientists and nutrionists agree that we all need to cut back on anyway. Although the recommendations of the CDC and the advice of this nutriontion author seem to come at odds with each other they both show that to truly understand the health benefits and raminfications of the foods that we ingest we will need to look at all of the components closely to understand the exact benefits we seek to gain or the consequences we need to avoid.
Indeed, while science can prove that individual nutritional statistics can have positive or detrimental effects on ones health, these are poor markers of overall health. Staying fit and healthy will never have a simple easy solution, but a few things are clear: one marketing and media coverage of food and health need to change from sensationalism to informative and offer and more a more complete and broader picture of how certain foods may affect your heath; and two we need to quit looking for simple fixes to our health. It’s not going to be just one simple thing you change that changes your overall health, it’s everything you do, so the solution is going to be just as complex as the problem.
Works Cited
"Balancing Calories." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.
Carmody, Rachel N., Gil S. Weintraub, and Richard W. Wrangham. "Energetic
Consequences of Thermal and Nonthermal Food Processing."Energetic Consequences of Thermal and Nonthermal Food Processing. PNAS, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.
Smith, Jessica. "When More Calories Is Better." Shape Magazine. Weider
Publications LLC, 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.
On Preparing Onions
A memoir
It starts with cutting the onions. Carefully, after sharpening the knife, and remembering to keep my mouth open to avoid the tears I begin to build a bed of onion rings, enough to coat the bottoms of four large baking dishes.
Each layer of the white onion flesh separating away from the stainless steel chef’s knife, while releasing an ultra-fine mist into the air, the kind that irritates a human’s mucous membranes and causing our eyes to flush and noses to run. Makes us look like we are crying, and that is exactly what I’m trying to avoid today. Nate used to go to even further lengths and cut them underwater so as to keep the mist from spraying everywhere.
The recipe is such a simple one, but precise at the same time, the work helps to stay busy and focused. Each cut of the blade is precisely ¼ inch across. I work methodically and quickly through this part, whistling also helps keep the onion enzyme away from my eyes. I save some for later to cover the top meat with. I’ve chosen the largest, widest, and ripest white onion for this dish.
Next to be butchered is the giant garlic cloves, a swift whack with the side of my chef’s knife expertly removes the outer dry and husk like layer. I repeat this 6 times then give the now pungent and aromatic cloves a rough chop. I take a moment to brown some butter in the sauté pan then drop the garlic and herbs into butter.
Small sizzles and pops fill my ears, the herbs and garlic begin to sauté. The almost static sound of sizzling calms my frayed nerves. If I could listen to each one they’d sound like a TV set that isn’t set to the right channel and unsure if it has enough power to output a signal. The sounds sound similar in my head and this congruence of reality and consciousness is entirely enveloping. I drop the chef’s knife to the bamboo cutting board for a moment and just take in the aromatics of the room. The garlic, herbs and onions mix with the smells of an Indian summer coming in through the window in a heady mixture. My eye begins to leak, involuntarily at first and then as if willed, but I don’t have time for that now.
The kitchen is a sanctuary for the time being, too small to maneuver in for even the tiniest of team chefs, so thankfully for the time being it is my private space. A luxury on a day like today, when your already small house is crammed full of people.
Next is a similar layer of the widest and biggest oranges I could procure, nothing special is needed to prepare these, just continue to cut ¼ inch rings until the onions are covered. I’m happy my roommate remembered to pull the rib meat out of the fridge before we left that morning, the pliable pork was easy to work with, though not much prep work was necessary, just a bit of manufacturing and a few quick cuts and the bloody, fresh pork ribs went onto their beds of oranges, and onions, then drench the tops of the racks in distilled white vinegar.
I remove the sauté pan from the burner and begin to drip the herbal garlic butter onto the tops of the rib meat. I’ll repeat this process a grand total of 6 or so times before they are done. I take the pieces I remembered to save for this part and cover the tops of the ribs in onions and oranges. I wrap the dishes in aluminum foil shiny side to hold in the low heat the ribs will roast and steam on. The oven isn’t preheated yet, a small oversight, but it gives me a chance to go out back for a quick smoke. I grab my suit coat as I exit the kitchen, noting that Heidi had made it. We share a quick knowing glance and I head for the back door.
People are talking in small groups, quiet polite conversations, there are frequent hugs. No one is trying to let the onions win the battle for dry faces, but at the same time no one seems to be winning that fight. I finish the smoke while managing to avoid the majority of the condolences and return to the kitchen.
I place the four trays of meat into the oven and realize that I can’t avoid it any more. As my shoulders begin to heave, and my chest fights to maintain a normal breathing pace the work that had given me a clear and focused goal was gone. Heidi’s hands rubbed my still shaking shoulders and she pulled me into her and we just stood there in the too small kitchen for what seemed like forever, each moment shared together with friends was another one he’d never see.
Today, on the day we gathered to say goodbye, I was making the same dish he had showed me how to make in Kalispell, the time we went to his parent’s cabin, though ribs seemed inappropriate funeral fare, everyone insisted I made something that reminded them of Nate, and in the end, the effortless way the flesh parted from the bone reminded everyone of how flexible and easy going nature he had been. The nearly disintegrated fruit and vegetable pulp that steamed beneath and over the meat provided a richer layering of flavors than it’s simple ingredients list suggested, much like the way Nate touched the lives of everyone there in simple yet poignant ways. The barbeque sauce that I added at the end was a savory North Carolina vinegar base, with just a hint of spice, and again similar in the best ways to him.
While the dish may not be the most appropriate food to eat after a funeral it’s simple and elegant preparation gave me time to breathe and something to keep checking on if the onions got too strong.
· Rack of Ribs
· ½ cup Vinegar
· 2 Large White Onions
· 1/2 teaspoon salt (rubbed into meat)
· 2 Large Oranges
Cut Oranges and Onions into rings, rub meat with salt. Make a bed of rings, place meat on those rings, douse in vinegar, cover with remaining rings. Bake at 200 degrees for 4 ½ to 6 hours. Cover in favorite sauce.
Balko, Radley. "What You Eat Is Your Business." Cato Institute. Cato Institute, 23 May 2004.
Web. 13 Feb. 2015.
In the article titled What You Eat is Your Business, Radley Balko argues that personal accountability is the largest single factor in determining ones health. Balko dismisses others claims that manufacturers are to blame simply by offering unhealthy options and takes issue with the government stepping into something he sees as a personal issue, and not one of public health. Balko takes issue with Margot Wootan from the Center forScience in the Public Interest having said “we need to move beyond personal responsibility,” when discussing how to combat obiesiety, and sees her and others like her as giving the American people an easy scapegoat for their own fitness.
Maxfield, Mary. "Food For Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating.""They Say/I Say":
The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 442-46. Print.
In Mary Maxfield’s article Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating she challenges the viewpoint of Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food by calling his credibility into question. She sees his “food algorithms,” as essentially the same kind of specific advice that he warns against. Maxfield also presents her own “food algorithm,” at the end of the article. Maxfield cites law professor and journalist Paul Campos as saying, “lies about fat, fitness, and health… not coincidentally serve the interests of America’s $50-Billion_dollar-per-year diet industry.” Maxfield essentially uses this proof to call into question the motivations of Pollan’s work. She later uses the article to discuss how the empirical standards of the fitness industry don’t provide the same type of determination of fitness that one would expect to find in an unbiased industry based on health, and how even commonly thought of standards of fitness such as BMI are not the measuring tool most people think they are.
Pollan, Michael. "Escaping the Western Diet." "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in
Academic Writing: With Readings. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 434-40. Print.
In the article Escaping the Western Diet, Michael Pollan postulates that the science behind nutritionism is often contradictory and that an approach from any one of the competing camps of scientists is short sighted. Pollan notes that the industries that benefit the most from nutritionism are the food and medical industry and not the consumer. Pollan links the processing of foods to the rate of disease citing Dennis Burkitt an English doctor in World War II, quoting, “The only way we are going to reduce disease, is to go backwards to the diet and lifestyle of our ancestors,” but stops short of calling for a return to a more paleo diet and instead suggests that there are some more common sense rubrics that can be applied to eating. Pollan’s overarching theme of the article is to avoid processed and refined foods and instead to consume more “whole foods,” defining those not only as less processed, but also originating from less processed roots, an example he gave of this is that beef, if raised on a western diet still may not be considered a “whole food.”
Singer, Natasha. "Foods With Benefits, or So They Say." The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 May 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.
In the article Foods With Benefits, or So They Say Natasha Singer brings to light the confusing world of regulating the sometimes dubious claims of functional food manufacturers. She exposes the method of deceptive marketing practices and shows where the boundaries lie as far as what is actual legal to market to consumers. Singer cites Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University as saying, “Functional foods, they are not about health, they are about marketing.” Singer is using this as evidence to support the confusing way we see our food because of how it is marketed. Throughout the article she shows the point of view of the manufacturers, usually ones that have run afoul of the FDA, and that of the regulators tasked with making sure that the health claims made about food are accurate.
Warner, Judith. "Junking Junk Food." The New York Times 25 Nov. 2010: n. pag. The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2010. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
In her article Junking Junk Food, Judith Warner argues that the only way that a lasting change can be made in the American diet is by a broad cultural shift in the way we view food. Warner sees that the American “free-wheeling” way of life as tied to the way we consume and view food. She takes issue with governmental regulation on food, and notes that this is inconsistent with how we view our rights. Warner quotes David Kessler, the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner and author of the 2009 book “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, ”it was a shift in cultural attitudes, not laws or regulations, that led Americans to quit smoking. In the space of a generation cigarettes stopped being portrayed as ‘sexy and cool’ and started to be seen as ‘a terribly disgusting, addictive product’.” Warner asserts, with this quote, a direct link in the psychology of how we eat culturally to how we male changes to that routine. She uses this quote to bolster her point about a shift in attitude being the only way to bring about lasting change.
Zinczenko, David. "Don't Blame the Eater." The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2002. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.
In the article Don’t Blame the Eater David Zinczenko takes aim at the lack of proper nutrition labeling. He also takes aim at the lack of choices for healthy alternatives in our society. Zinczenko notes that his own weight came under sontrol through learning about nutrition and making more educated decisions about his eating. The article is an opinion piece and is not supported with evidence or scientific data.
Argument Essay
Even though singular variables in a person’s diet do have correlating effects to that person's health, for example there has been a significant amount of research into the effects of cholesterol intake in relation to heart health and the rate of heart disease and heart attacks, I am asserting instead that the way we market the nutrition information needs to improve, and that attention grabbing headlines do little to actually inform the average citizen about their health, and ultimately that believing that only one aspect of your total diet is contributing to ones lack of health or fitness is dangerous and potentially further damaging to ones health. Health and nutrition are complex issues that cannot be boiled down to an emphasis on a singular aspect of a certain food’s nutritional make-up. The way we see food, and the marketing it is sold to us with, needs to change if we are to make solid efforts in getting more Americans more fit and healthy. I believe that the way we attempt to analyze individual elements in the diet, like caloric intake or the number of grams of carbohydrates per serving, distracts us from examining the broader reality of what is and is not healthy. Most people want an easy solution to their health issues and marketers and manufacturers are quick to capitalize on the hottest new trend rather than take a broader more comprehensive approach to health. Most diets do not take a comprehensive approach to health and fitness and instead single out a few bad or good foods and building from there, and marketing conceals certain unhealthy aspects of food by propping up other nutritional statistics.
First, I believe that the way we attempt to analyze individual elements in the diet, like caloric intake, or the number of grams of carbohydrates per serving, distracts us from examining the broader reality of what is and is not healthy. Scientific studies that inform us of potential health benefits or dangers must use the scientific method and need to isolate a singular variable in order to prove a correlating effect. The focus on using a singular variable in their research leads to overblown correlating media coverage extolling the evils of fat in connection to heart health, or how without a proper amount of fat intake in ones diet one can become depressed more easily. The way in which the media portrays these scientific studies lead people to believe that there is a simple, singular variable in their diet that they can change in order to become healthy. It is far too complicated a matter to be reduced to any singular statistic, but telling people a far more complicated answer never sells papers or gets views. People want to believe in an easy solution, so the marketing that is effective and does sell papers, or get's shared over news feeds, is for miracle cures, super foods that do everything, or a new exciting weight loss compound..
Additionally, most diets preach the evils of one or maybe a few nutrition statistics to watch out from, like the Atkins Diet and it's prohibition against carbohydrates, or a raw juicer diet with prohibitions on processed or cooked foods, while allowing their dieters potentially harmful amounts of other nutrition statistics like fat and cholesterol in the Atkins diet, or a dangerously low amount of protein in the raw juicer diet. (Revise for clarity)
Finally, the most important reason I believe that most of the foods you find available in a supermarket may use marketing stating that they have one or two of the new diet-trendy statistics like “0 Grams of Trans Fat,” or that their product “Contains Probiotics,” or even the more dubious to overall health claim of “Gluten Free,” while still remaining high in other area's like calories, carbohydrates, total fat, or may contain highly processed foods or chemical compounds. This is already a complex issue, and to further complicate things we need to define some things first, namely calories, the CDC’s website defines a calorie as as “a unit of energy supplied by food. A calorie is a calorie regardless of its source. Whether you're eating carbohydrates, fats, sugars, or proteins, all of them contain calories.” What the CDC fails to mention is that all calories are not created equally. The CDC’s guide to health eating and weightloss is targeted only at caloric balance, defined by the CDC as “like a scale. To remain in balance and maintain your body weight, the calories consumed (from foods) must be balanced by the calories used (in normal body functions, daily activities, and exercise).” According to Carmody, Weintraub, and Wrangham, all professors of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, in their paper titled Energetic consequences of thermal and nonthermal food processing that the “cooking substantially increases the energy gained from meat, leading to elevations in body mass that are not attributable to differences in food intake or activity levels. The positive energetic effects of cooking were found to be superior to the effects of pounding in both meat and starch-rich tubers, a conclusion further supported by food preferences in fasted animals. Our results indicate significant contributions from cooking to both modern and ancestral human energy budgets. They also illuminate a weakness in current food labeling practices, which systematically overestimate the caloric potential of poorly processed foods.” This quote shows how the labeling of foods is often inaccurate and even throws cooking method into the discussion. This definition of a calorie, and the recommendations for healthy eating by the CDC show how, according to the CDC view of things that regardless of how low a food is in one area it’s nutrition statistics it is it’s caloric content that matters most significantly. Transversely, according to Theresa Albert, a registered nutritionist and author of Ace Your Health, 52 Ways to Stack Your Deck, "Low calories may or may not make you thin, overall, it is the quality of the calorie that counts rather than the calorie itself when it comes to fighting off disease and maintaining health.” She goes on to provide further analysis on the nutritional statistics of two seemingly healthy foods comparing the 120 calories for six whole-grain crackers to the 185 calories for an ounce of unsalted walnuts, the first option seems best if you were to just view the caloric content of the foods, but a deeper examination reveals “the nuts provide omega-3 fatty acids, which help turn off hunger messages in the brain, while the carbs in the crackers may do the opposite,” Albert says. While both have about the same amount of protein and fiber, the walnuts have zero sodium, something most scientists and nutrionists agree that we all need to cut back on anyway. Although the recommendations of the CDC and the advice of this nutriontion author seem to come at odds with each other they both show that to truly understand the health benefits and raminfications of the foods that we ingest we will need to look at all of the components closely to understand the exact benefits we seek to gain or the consequences we need to avoid.
Indeed, while science can prove that individual nutritional statistics can have positive or detrimental effects on ones health, these are poor markers of overall health. Staying fit and healthy will never have a simple easy solution, but a few things are clear: one marketing and media coverage of food and health need to change from sensationalism to informative and offer and more a more complete and broader picture of how certain foods may affect your heath; and two we need to quit looking for simple fixes to our health. It’s not going to be just one simple thing you change that changes your overall health, it’s everything you do, so the solution is going to be just as complex as the problem.
Works Cited
"Balancing Calories." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.
Carmody, Rachel N., Gil S. Weintraub, and Richard W. Wrangham. "Energetic
Consequences of Thermal and Nonthermal Food Processing."Energetic Consequences of Thermal and Nonthermal Food Processing. PNAS, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.
Smith, Jessica. "When More Calories Is Better." Shape Magazine. Weider
Publications LLC, 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.
On Preparing Onions
A memoir
It starts with cutting the onions. Carefully, after sharpening the knife, and remembering to keep my mouth open to avoid the tears I begin to build a bed of onion rings, enough to coat the bottoms of four large baking dishes.
Each layer of the white onion flesh separating away from the stainless steel chef’s knife, while releasing an ultra-fine mist into the air, the kind that irritates a human’s mucous membranes and causing our eyes to flush and noses to run. Makes us look like we are crying, and that is exactly what I’m trying to avoid today. Nate used to go to even further lengths and cut them underwater so as to keep the mist from spraying everywhere.
The recipe is such a simple one, but precise at the same time, the work helps to stay busy and focused. Each cut of the blade is precisely ¼ inch across. I work methodically and quickly through this part, whistling also helps keep the onion enzyme away from my eyes. I save some for later to cover the top meat with. I’ve chosen the largest, widest, and ripest white onion for this dish.
Next to be butchered is the giant garlic cloves, a swift whack with the side of my chef’s knife expertly removes the outer dry and husk like layer. I repeat this 6 times then give the now pungent and aromatic cloves a rough chop. I take a moment to brown some butter in the sauté pan then drop the garlic and herbs into butter.
Small sizzles and pops fill my ears, the herbs and garlic begin to sauté. The almost static sound of sizzling calms my frayed nerves. If I could listen to each one they’d sound like a TV set that isn’t set to the right channel and unsure if it has enough power to output a signal. The sounds sound similar in my head and this congruence of reality and consciousness is entirely enveloping. I drop the chef’s knife to the bamboo cutting board for a moment and just take in the aromatics of the room. The garlic, herbs and onions mix with the smells of an Indian summer coming in through the window in a heady mixture. My eye begins to leak, involuntarily at first and then as if willed, but I don’t have time for that now.
The kitchen is a sanctuary for the time being, too small to maneuver in for even the tiniest of team chefs, so thankfully for the time being it is my private space. A luxury on a day like today, when your already small house is crammed full of people.
Next is a similar layer of the widest and biggest oranges I could procure, nothing special is needed to prepare these, just continue to cut ¼ inch rings until the onions are covered. I’m happy my roommate remembered to pull the rib meat out of the fridge before we left that morning, the pliable pork was easy to work with, though not much prep work was necessary, just a bit of manufacturing and a few quick cuts and the bloody, fresh pork ribs went onto their beds of oranges, and onions, then drench the tops of the racks in distilled white vinegar.
I remove the sauté pan from the burner and begin to drip the herbal garlic butter onto the tops of the rib meat. I’ll repeat this process a grand total of 6 or so times before they are done. I take the pieces I remembered to save for this part and cover the tops of the ribs in onions and oranges. I wrap the dishes in aluminum foil shiny side to hold in the low heat the ribs will roast and steam on. The oven isn’t preheated yet, a small oversight, but it gives me a chance to go out back for a quick smoke. I grab my suit coat as I exit the kitchen, noting that Heidi had made it. We share a quick knowing glance and I head for the back door.
People are talking in small groups, quiet polite conversations, there are frequent hugs. No one is trying to let the onions win the battle for dry faces, but at the same time no one seems to be winning that fight. I finish the smoke while managing to avoid the majority of the condolences and return to the kitchen.
I place the four trays of meat into the oven and realize that I can’t avoid it any more. As my shoulders begin to heave, and my chest fights to maintain a normal breathing pace the work that had given me a clear and focused goal was gone. Heidi’s hands rubbed my still shaking shoulders and she pulled me into her and we just stood there in the too small kitchen for what seemed like forever, each moment shared together with friends was another one he’d never see.
Today, on the day we gathered to say goodbye, I was making the same dish he had showed me how to make in Kalispell, the time we went to his parent’s cabin, though ribs seemed inappropriate funeral fare, everyone insisted I made something that reminded them of Nate, and in the end, the effortless way the flesh parted from the bone reminded everyone of how flexible and easy going nature he had been. The nearly disintegrated fruit and vegetable pulp that steamed beneath and over the meat provided a richer layering of flavors than it’s simple ingredients list suggested, much like the way Nate touched the lives of everyone there in simple yet poignant ways. The barbeque sauce that I added at the end was a savory North Carolina vinegar base, with just a hint of spice, and again similar in the best ways to him.
While the dish may not be the most appropriate food to eat after a funeral it’s simple and elegant preparation gave me time to breathe and something to keep checking on if the onions got too strong.
· Rack of Ribs
· ½ cup Vinegar
· 2 Large White Onions
· 1/2 teaspoon salt (rubbed into meat)
· 2 Large Oranges
Cut Oranges and Onions into rings, rub meat with salt. Make a bed of rings, place meat on those rings, douse in vinegar, cover with remaining rings. Bake at 200 degrees for 4 ½ to 6 hours. Cover in favorite sauce.