FUSH final

Why does America grow so much corn?

- it is used in so many products. Such as cheese, batteries, peanut butter, ketchup, salad dressings, and of course soda. -government basically pays them to over produce. -All these big corps like perdue and tyson are willing to purchase corn below the cost of products. -This a crop you can store. -Engineering our foods and bring all the pieces together to produce a new type of food. Most foods on the shelf have high fructose corn syrup added - can feed it to animals it is mostly what is in feed of animals, so when eating the meat you are consuming some kind of corn product.

Why was backyard barbecuing suddenly popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and why did men take over these cooking chores (and only these chores)?

- manly to cook outside over fire - gave women time off from cooking - made Sunday dinner more casual - men started doing housework

Explain the following quotation: "A remarkable aspect of the postwar transformation of food-processing was the minimal extent to which it affected traditional American tastes in food." (111) If American tastes were really so stable, how would you explain the popularity of spaghetti, pizza, and chop suey in the 1950s?

- pizza and spaghetti : similar ingredients prepared differenty - always find chinese and pizza place in evrey neighborhood - spaghetti: cheap, easy , makes a lot of food, popular through WWII because common place in armed forces mess halls

Define the terms "bliss point," "sensory-specific satiety," and "vanishing caloric density."

-Bliss point: amount of an ingredient (salt,sugar ,fat) which optimizes palatability, eating just enough that it is not too much, sometimes when you eat the same thing for a while, or a lot of one food it starts to not taste good or make you nauseous This bliss point is right before you feel like its too much of one food. Ex. dr pepper, banana chips. -Sensory- specific satiety: tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Soldiers that keep eating the same food, they only start to eat half the meals, which meant they were getting less nutrition from the meal. Some foods will make you feel satisfied and full. -Vanishing caloric density: if something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there's no calories in it, you can just keep eating it forever, you think it's not as much food as it actually is. These foods are scientifically created to trick out bodies on their natural appetites. ex. Cheetos, doritos

What's changed in the experience of workers in the American food industry since the days of Jurgus Rudkus, and what hasn't?

-Food production used to be a skilled man's job, you would have to be able to be a butcher and cut the pieces that your customers wanted you to sell to them. T-he time of Jurgus Rudkus, he was working in those big factories, doing jobs that now robots and machines can do on their own. -Now anyone with not much experience can work at a mcdonalds. -Its is no longer seen as a highly skilled job, it's seen as a teenager job while they aren't in school, or a job for the less fortunate.

10. One solution to the obesity epidemic is to eat right and exercise more. How do you think Michael Moss would respond?

-Get big food companies involved to educate consumers and make their products less processed -People will not eat right because as they walk down food isles, they get hooked to cheap and convenient foods. -People are very vulnerable to the intensity of these companies and to the selling campaigns.

Oh, good. "FDA Restricts Antibiotic Use"? And local, organic, free-range livestock farms on Long Island? Maybe things are looking up in terms of sustainability and animal cruelty. Not to mention flavor. Right?

-Illegal to use antibiotics to make animals bigger, only prescription to prevent disease -Endangers human health→ 23,000 americans die from antibiotic resistance infection/year -Things are not looking up in terms of sustainability and animal cruelty, that all stays the same because of big companies like perdue that tell the chicken farmers how to raise their chickens. -Have to go beyond just antibiotics to make the chickens healthy, just like how they are raised and how much it pays to feed them.

f I can't afford $35 chickens and ground beef at $12/pound, is there anything I can do about all this? Have we learned anything that might make one hopeful about the future?

-Less expensive options usually more processed , less healthy -Try not to eat as much of the processed foods but add healthier sides (vegetables, fruits) -grow vegetables instead of buying -Organic farmers aren't going to reduce prices because of the cost to raise animals this way Supplements

It seems pretty well beyond dispute that the U.S. is experiencing an obesity epidemic. Can we agree on a diet that will reduce weight and improve health, at least? Maybe we could replace the Food Pyramid, or whatever, with this diet. Problem solved, right?

-Might be hard to replace food pyramid → people are used to what they eat and might not want to change, harder to buy healthier options , less time leads to processed prepared foods -A diet is to eat less sugar and carbs, that is the key to reduce weight -Obese are uneducated how bad foods actually -Food producers are scared of being put in the same category as tobacco, equally as bad for you. (Dorito analogy) -You should be eating the right way, with the right state of mind, naturally holistic way that can make you lose weight. -We can't agree what a right diet should be, because as people who don't produce food we don't know exactly what's right and wrong to eat.

Boy do some people hate Monsanto. What's it doing to (fully) deserve all this hating?

-Monsanto, is a genetic organism in the soybean which will kill weeds and can spread throughout an entire field. -If your seeds cross with someone else's seeds, companies can sue you for not giving them the exact thing they asked for. -Made his own types of soybeans, and not everyone can use the same soybeans.

I know! Why not add this to the long list of things that public schools are responsible for. Let's make our school meals healthier, make kids learn about nutrition in school, and the problems solved. Right?

-Need to fight the marketing of junk food everywhere , not just in schools -Schools can't help during adult years -Schools are underfunded, throwing out a lot of food is a waste, so they make things for children that they won't throw away like chicken nuggets and pizza , cause the least amount of waste with the small budget they have. -They discourage you to send lunch with your child, the most affluent is to send your child with lunch. -Any kind of nutrition a child learns in school will have little effect on what they eat outside of school, other people around you will eat bad and they learned the same things as you so the learning wont stick for long,

Is the "hygiene hypothesis" the same as "Clean Eating"? What's old and what's new about the "clean eating" fad? Be specific about a prior food fad

-No the hygiene hypothesis is not the same thing as clean eating -We are surrounded by bacteria -Bacteria, yeasts and fungi in foods are the biggest problems -Many people develop gluten sensitivities from the foods they eat, -clean eating is eating things that aren't processed which is not not many foods anymore, mostly everything in some way is processed

Hey—if Campbells is redesigning their soup recipes and Gatorade (Gatorade!) has gone organic, things must really be looking up health-wise, no? Next we'll see organic Lunchables! Organic Doritos, even!

-Organic sugar not actually healthier , still a sugary drink "liquid candy" -The producers produce what the consumers want, they want to see on the can of soup that there are less ingredients and it has become organic, that is what they are going to produce. -Nothing is healthier, it is just said in different wording on the label to make you believe that gatorade could actually be organic. -There's always going to be a demand for the unhealthy food because some people really just don't care. Even if they say organic and healthier how much healthier could they actually be? They probably just added something just as bad as the thing they took away.

I know! Let's make nutritional information clearer and more accessible—once people understand what's in that Double Down, they won't eat so many of them. Problem solved, right?

-People might not understand how to read nutritional information or know what's bad or too much -People have began careless about what goes into their bodies. -Even if they know what's in the product they are still going to eat it ,doesnt change many people's minds. -Might still eat unhealthy option because it tastes good ,exactly why people still go to mcdonalds and fast food chains -Cheap and accessible

Why did it take until the 1950s for pizza to become a fast-food meal broadly acceptable across the USA (geographically, racially, and in terms of social class

-Popularity of spaghetti and tomato sauce made white farinaceous base slathered with thick and salt tomato sauce integral part of american palate -Ideal family food : acceptable by all ages and genders -cheap meal to deliver without having to go out. -Fast food places like McDonald's or HoJo's did not allow teenagers so they went to pizza parlors instead Tacos: -Variation on pizza :flattened dough topped with tomato flavored meat sauces ,some veggies and cheese -Americanized "mexican" food- taco bell first logo was a sleeping mexican w/ sombrero , changed to a bell to appeal to american audience

If nutrition researchers—with Phds—can't agree on what's going on and how to fix it, how can we listen to anyone? Why can't these "experts" agree?

-Some hypotheses are treated as facts because they are hard or expensive to test → never known if the hypothesis is accurate -Some researchers like the one from Coke, are paid to down play the amount of sugar, since sugar is such a scare to people they make it look like there's more fat than sugar, meanwhile all the fat in a product is coming from sugar. -Some experts believe it all isn't about the food it's also about the the amount of exercise, non-profits push for more exercise. -Groups that are funded were not urging the soda tax. -The sugar industry screws up their research on purpose. -We find correlations in causes with health problems, this is bad science should try and find the problem between the two things. They don't do nutritional science, to long and expensive. -All of these experts are receiving private funding from large companies to place blame on other industries rather than their own and this only benefits the company and places blame on others

If you don't like what's on sale at your local supermarket, then shop somewhere else. It's a free country." What's your response?

-Sometimes only one in vicinity -Some areas don't allow franchises -Most places sell the same things, you could shop at an organic store like trader joes, but now you can order from amazon and the foods you want can be shipped to your house. Its like you don't even have to go shopping in the actual supermarket you can do it right from your couch.

In the film Food, Inc., Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation says in relation to McDonald's that the recent revolution in America's food habits started there. What revolution is he referring to?

-The revolution of mass production Mcdonalds factories mass produce the most amount of chickens, apples, and beef in the world. -These corps take over much of the food percentage in the U.S, mass production is needed in this society with so many people -This mass production is to be able to produce all food with the same taste, each mcdonalds burger all over the world tastes the same. -This fast food nation began in the 1930's when it became acceptable to have fast, affordable food.

Think of those poor post-WWII housewives. By comparison, today's Wall Street moms are a sign of progress toward gender equality. But in what ways do gendered assumptions of work still shape even those families?

-Women still in society have to work hard to even equal a working man in society especially with a job like wall street. -This is a sign of progress from being the stay at home mom only cooking and cleaning, to actually being able to support your family with money you earned at your job. -One parent to work, would usually be the father so the stay at home mother is something that is normally seen, but now its reversed roles. -In an interview, a man would ask a woman if they have children and if they have someone to take care of them while you have a job that takes up a lot of your time. They wouldn't ask a man in an interview about his children.

It's fairly common to say that consumers consume what they want to consume and that producers produce what consumers want to consume. What's Michael Moss's take on this equation, or the two guys (Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan) quoted in the film Food, Inc.?

-Yes this is what is going on, but something else also is. Lunchables takes the whole natural sandwich but finds a way that you can put it on a shelf and make it last longer, because bread will go bad. -Not fresh completely processed. -We don't really even know what's in this products, we see that is says healthy that's what the consumers want to see so that is what they will produce. -Ultimately the large food companies are the ones deciding what we want

Soda taxes? Talk about the Granny State. If people want to drink soda, it's their choice, and anyway it's a free country last I checked. The government has no business involving itself in how Americans spend their money. Right?

-disagree → country has obesity epidemic someone needs to do something to fix it -Many americans who use food stamps, the most abundant thing that they purchase is soda and sugary drinks, it's like the government is giving them money to make unhealthy choices. --The government can't tell them how to spend that money but it's why many poor people have become obese, because these cheap full fo fat sugary things are easy and cheap to purchase. -The dollar menu at mcdonalds, cheap and quick for a family dinner.

As Americans spent more and more money on fast food and takeout, one might expect supermarkets to wither away. Why did they expand instead?

-expanded offerings of fully prepared foods to take home → stores got bigger - choice of where to shop expanded - frozen foods can be bought which makes it easy to prepare like cooking a home cooked meal but less time. -also already prepared food started to be sold in supermarkets which would make it easier on a weeknight to have a good meal. -by selling prepared meals it gave the parents the feeling that they were cooking some rather than just going out and buying it premade.

Finally, men started joining women in dieting in the 1980s. Why? Is this true of all men?

Change in ideal body type → wanted to match wife, if the wife needed a nice body and stayed in shape the men wanted to start to do the same. Seen as lazy and gross to be overweight Upper middle class Men started to get "love handles" and developed the typical dad body shape. Fatphobia became new, don't need to be a model to be skinny and eat healthy. Being extremely thin was not the ticket, but don't want to be lazy and undisciplined.

In what ways did the "Negative Nutrition" draw on the New Left and counterculture movements of the 1960s?

Don't eat trans fats, gmos, eat things that help fight off the new realized toxins. Wine does something to help protect against animal fat. Be good to humans and animals

Where did E. coli O157:H7 come from, and why is it such a major problem? Is there anything we can do about it?

Icomes from eating too many corn products, it is in the gut of a cattle -A little boy got e coli from eating hamburger, but one hamburger could be parts of 100 different cows, so there would have to be a large recall on all the products a corp produces. -It takes a company a long time to publicly say they have e coli in their products. -Contaminated food can stay on the shelf. -Federal law does not have the power to take back food -The bad meat and the leftover scraps can be soaked in ammonia to create pink slime which produces hotdogs and mcdonalds burgers that taste exactly the same. -A solvent could be to just feed the cows grass, and add more costs at the slaughterhouse. -But mcdonalds will sue their meat producers if they change any of the instructions that they gave the farmers in order to produce the kind of meat they want.

According to Michael Moss, what's new about advertising and marketing in the early 21st century that separates it from earlier efforts?

Kids are in control So many lunchables, are targeted to working parents that don't have time to make lunches by saying that they have less fat, or are organic once a parent sees that they think they are doing good for their children giving them what they want and it seems to be healthy from the package. Feels like your receiving a little present with lunch and a dessert, Mom feels guilty that she doesn't show enough love to her children, so giving them the lunch they want will be better for them.