Peer Response: Erik Houck's Blog

I did my last peer review on Erik’s post 5 on on making a meal and that being a cranberry walnut salad. Erik talks about how he knew that he wanted to make something that would be better than what he could get in the school cafeteria’s but he wanted it to be relatively cheap, easy to make, and easy to clean up. With this he and his friend came up the idea to make a cranberry walnut salad, which could be made easily and cleaned up easily.

He goes on to discuss Pollan’s claims about what people are choosing to eat more in this day and age. He talks about how most people choose to eat things because they have health claims and not choose to eat just a well rounded diet. He also talks about how one of Pollan’s major points in this section is that genetically altered foods are really bad for you. But, Erik found an article that showed that in some cases genetically altered foods, such as one that end up being reduced in calories or fat, could be better for you and can help reduce heart disease when these food are eaten rather than when in their original form.

I think that Erik’s post about making a meal was really well formulated and everything made sense. It was clear, concise, easy to understand, and easy to follow. I don’t see much that Erik needs to improve on because this post was organized and presented so well.

Post 1: Response to 'In Defense of Food'

Pollan’s main arguments are surrounding what we eat, the chemical content of what we eat, and the influence of the media on what we eat. Pollan believes that we should be eating mostly whole, fresh foods, but since we are running out of space on the Earth it is hard to find fresh, quality foods. The chemical content of what we eat is a great concern too because often times we don’t really know what we are eating, and many chemicals can lead to build-up in our systems causing health problems in the future.
One argument that Pollan focuses a lot on is the argument that the media has a lot of influence over what we eat. I thought that this argument of Pollan’s was extremely valid and that it did cause problems for consumers. Pollan talks about how the health claims made about specific foods are often made up, false, or exaggerated. Pollan also discusses how ‘scientific claims’ are often completely wrong. Because a substance supposedly is a superfood and provides great benefits for us and this has been proven scientifically proven many people will not question this information. But, science is constantly changing and evolving, many scientific claims can be published will have multiple tests run on them or without having any extra information to back up their claims. These claims often times cause food fads because people want to think that they are eating the most healthy and ‘most fashionable’ food available. Claims can be made that something is healthy, but five years later the same substance could be labeled a deadly substance. Since, a lot of the information we may hear through the media is misguided or untrue it is hard for people to know what they truly are consuming, and what they really should be eating. I think that it is important to understand the impact of health claims on consumers and understand what the majority of people think about 'scientific claims'.

Sources:

Pollan, M. (2009). The Age of Nutritionism. In In Defense of Food (pp. 1-40).
New York, NY: Penguin Group. (Original work published 2009)

Roe, B., Levy, A. S., & Derby, B. M. (n.d.). The Impact of Health Claims on
Consumer Search and Product Evaluation Outcomes: Results from FDA
Experimental Data. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/pss/30000511

What is Body Burden? (n.d.). Chemical Body Burden. Retrieved February 18, 2010,
from http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org/whatisbb.htm