Daily Doses: Snacks

            Have you ever walked down an aisle of your favorite grocery store when something caught your eye? Perhaps it was a nice display of your favorite snacks, White Cheddar Cheez-Its in my case. The yummy, cheesy crunchy taste always gets to me. So you see your favorite snack beings advertised. Luckily the box is on sale for $2.50. So you buy it. When you buy it what do you expect you are getting? In my case it’s a box of delicious, white cheddar cheese crackers. But in reality, what are you really getting?

            I had to do some thorough research on this snack before I got all my facts straight. Cheez-Its are one of my favorite snacks. I could eat on a box all day long. I love them that much. When I think of Cheez-It cracks, I think of some type of wheat product, cooked with dairy products and other fresh ingredients to make the cracker. And then I think of the fresh cheese that must be freeze dried and ground to make the cheesy powder on the cracker. That was my initial idea of a Cheez-It cracker. Honestly, I never took the time to read the ingredients at the back of the box. I didn’t feel like I needed too. I didn’t even look at the calorie count. I just ate what I felt was the right amount, depending on how hungry I was…

            In reality, Cheez-It crackers have 21+ ingredients. When I read the serving size, it listed 27 crackers as the limit. I well went over that… Each serving has 8g of fat and 2g of saturated fat. It also contains 250mg of sodium. I’m not saying this is bad, considering a bag of Doritos has way more danger than this. All I am saying is that this snack should not replace my meals, which they can easily do. Snacks are often abused by overeating them, due to lack of proper knowledge on portion size and content. Snacks are often low nutritional and are intended to be eaten sparingly and in moderation. That is what most health doctors would tell you, but not the companies who make our favorite snacks… Mega companies such as Kelloggs and Frito-Lay will advertise their products in such a way to get you interested in buying them on a regular basis. The commercials often feature pretty looking people with nice figures eating a handful of the given snack. It’s made to looks so natural and delicious. Today, many of our food products are marketed this way.

            What do we really know about our food? And why does money play such a big role in production? Average hard working people usually tend to buy food they can afford. As the trend goes, people who are poor spend less money on food. This means they tend to buy cheaper products. Cheaper products mean foods that are low in nutritional value. Fresh meat, fruits and vegetables are considerably higher priced than what we consider junk food.  Mega companies tend to use cheap products when they market cheap products. Only makes sense right? The cheapest food stock in the USA is corn. Corn is used in almost every snack food, including soda and juices. Most sweetened products in the USA have high fructose corn syrup. Over time, the production of corn grew out of proportion. Major corporations realized they could take a great deal of advantage from this overstocked crop. They decided to use corn as oil, sweetener, grain, and even food stock for animals such as beef and chicken.

            The addition of corn wasn’t the only change in the way food is produced and presented. Our perception of food has also changed. Compare a generic hamburger from 1950 to a generic hamburger from 2010. Is there a difference? Yes there is. The difference is portion size. As time went on, people’s average portion size for food grew bigger. The correct standard portion of something in a meal is the size of your palm. Let’s use pasta for example. The way I eat pasta, I usually fill the whole plate up with it when I serve myself. In reality that’s about 5 times more pasta than a standard portion. Not to mention it’s lacking in nutritional value. Pasta alone is a carbohydrate; it has no vegetable value except for maybe some fiber. The meat sauce is only good for protein, and maybe some tomato value. A full nutritional meal contains foods from all groups correctly proportioned. Average people don’t always consider this.

            Apart from creating cheap foods is the way the food is handled. The food these days are not of high value when it comes to mass production. That is evident in the way food is farmed and packaged. Safety measures seemed to be bypassed through secret added ingredients. What I mean is, ingredients used to kill off bacteria and preserve food are at the forefront of options rather than taking the actual safety precautions of storing and handling food properly. An example of this is the way chicken is produced and packaged. Fresh, live chickens are forced to live in horrible conditions. To combat this, they are injected with anti-bacterial agents, rather than being changed to cleaner environments. When the chickens arrive at the factories to be packaged, they are sprayed down with chemicals, such as chlorine, to kill germs, which are caused by improper handling.  Despite the attempts to keep food uncontaminated, breakouts of bacteria such as ecoli and salmonella are prevalent. If we really knew all the facts surrounding our food’s origin, we would look at it completely differently. We would question how our money is being spent on food. After seeing the film “Food Inc.”, my perception of food has changed. I realize that buying healthier foods cost more, which increases the substantial value I place on food. Does healthy food have priority?  To me it does.

Daily Doses: Obesity

               In this world, it is crucial for people who want to be successful in society to think ahead of their given situation. They must think, critically think for themselves. Critical thinking means to purposefully reflect on a given situation, taking note of all sides, and then making a reasonable judgment or opinion. A critical thinker must evaluate evidence, discern hidden values and accomplish an action, even if it’s just to come to a conclusion.  I chose to critically think about a problem that is affecting millions of people worldwide. It is a problem in which I looked at the causes and effects, and formulated solutions to combat them.

There was a time in America, and across the world, when obesity was an abnormality in human society. Matter of fact, during those times, a person who was overweight never reached the standard weight of today’s obese population. Obesity is a widely spread nutritional disorder that can affect anybody at any age across the world. It is very clear that the world’s nutritional standards and personal fitness habits have drastically changed in the last 50 years. This change in standards has affected the world for the worst. I chose this topic because it hit me close to home. I was able to critically analyze why we have the certain problems we’re suffering from and how it could be prevented.

            Writing this essay required me to research my family past.  My mother, who has turned 50, recalled what the world was like when she was growing up. She grew up in small, dusty Texas town of Amarillo, where the roads seemed to last forever. When she was my age, eighteen that is, she weighed around 120-130 pounds, and had a healthy, slender, and energetic body. Most of her peers during that time had the same healthy body type. Today, 2011, I’m eighteen years old and I weigh approximately 200 pounds. I can hardly do as much physical work as my mother did in her time. But I am no social outcast due to this variance. Many of my contemporary peers are in the same range as I am. What is responsible for this drastic change?

            During my mother’s day, food was not as heavily processed and it was fresher. Snacks such as chips and sweets were limited as vain treats. Sure, people didn’t know as much about nutritional value back then as they do now, but things were still a lot healthier. That’s on part because people like my mother practiced moderation. They could eat whatever they desired, as long as it was a proper amount. Fresh fruits and vegetables were on the table more than anything else, even meat. During that time, children and teenagers were physically active, for long periods of time. My mother recalls taking long walks to and from high school, running on the roads with friends, and being involved with a school sport (volleyball in her case). This made exercise enjoyable, fun, and most of all, unnoticeable. She lived her life carefree and unconscious about her weight, because it was never a health risk issue. She had no medical problems or aliments. Her body and heart were robust and strong.

Today, the issue of obesity is controversial and sensitive. People often don’t want to hear about the many changes they think they must make to achieve a better lifestyle. Truth is issues with obesity and overweightness is slowly killing Americans, and even the world. Health problems associated with obesity is rapidly growing at an all-time high. Diseases never before mentioned in my mother’s home have now taken over the medical market. Things such as diabetes, various types of cancer, and heart failure can be directly connected to obesity and malnutrition. These aliments are found not only in adults, but teenagers and young children.

People try to blame the fast food markets for our demise. But I have come to believe that they are only a small portion of the picture. It’s true that cheap, high calorie foods are dominating the food supply market. Fresher foods seem more and more costly and people are turning to cheaper alternatives. But still, people are fooled into making bad choices because they are ignorant of what they are really buying. Some people don’t even take the time to read the labels of what they are consuming. I know for a fact that I sometimes buy snack foods and disregard the warning signs, because it tastes so good. All of that artificial flavoring and high caloric, saturated fat makes my mouth water… It’s a shame really. The people who create these products deliberately make them a trigger food. That is, they become addictive due to suspect ingredients. People will just eat a said product until they think they think they are full, not knowing that their brain is tricking them to overeat. They have no idea when to stop! It’s only natural, since most snack foods are light weight and appear thin, when in reality a handful of your favorite goodies could come out to an astonishing 500 calories! In the end, it seems quite unfair to my body. The companies who supply such items have no intention of warning the buyer, considering they would be at a financial loss if people knew the truth…

            Apart from consuming a low nutritional diet, many people consider physical activity as a hassle. I once thought exercising would make me lose all my energy and I would be exhausted afterward, when in fact exercising increased my energy, metabolism, and mental focus. Many people are not fully aware of the benefits of having an active lifestyle. That is partially due to inactive distractions and not enough role models to show the way. Instead of playing outdoors with their friends, children would rather communicate electronically, whether by phone or internet. Adults who have hectic work schedules tend to come home to relax by sitting in front of the TV, rather than going for a refreshing walk, which would indeed increase their energy and focus. It is simple things like these that the average person does not consider. Small physical activities that could add to a healthy lifestyle are often overlooked.

            It is simple facts like these that the “industry” doesn’t want to consumer to know about. If people found out their health were being exploited, the industry would collapse. Just researching this topic has inspired me to take a closer look at myself. I am 200 pounds and reaching the borderline obesity level, and I’m still 18. If my condition remains this way, I am more likely to get heavier and unhealthier as I grow older, eventually peaking the obesity chart. I don’t want this calamity to befall me. I want to give myself a fair chance. Now that I know of the present and future danger, I can change my course of action. I believe that if every other young adult who had the same problem as me truly knew the causes of their condition, they would be inspired to change their course as I did. I realize that times are quite different than when my mother was my age. People enjoyed life with physical activity, food portions were 3 times smaller, and people ate far more nutritional foods. I realize that if I can practice this simple method of moderation and fun exercise, I wouldn’t have to spend any additional money on diet pills, surgery, or meal plans, which are so heavily advertised in the media. Obesity is indeed a growing and dangerous problem, but it can be easily prevented if more people were aware of the easy and natural options they had.

Daily Doses (Artist Choice Edition): Purvis Young

            Purvis Young was no ordinary artist. He didn’t have many luxuries in life. He didn’t have any formal training. Purvis Young was a self-taught artist. Though he lacked a formal education in art, he taught himself by reading and studying in libraries. He went to prison, yet turned his life around through art. He went to prison for three years, but while there we received a vision, a vision to become an artist. His art work has been shown nationwide; often depicting many problems in the African-American community.

He used a variety of art mediums, basically anything he could find. This was a type of artistic recycling.  They were materials such as discarded plywood and cardboard, refrigerator doors, table tops, scraps of fabric and metal trays. I think his choice of mediums gave a natural style to his work. Using raw materials from the neighborhood seemed to make his paintings closer to it. “His paintings are populated with angels which watch over turbulent cityscapes; faces reminiscent of an imagined Zulu past life, and symbols of freedom and escape – wild horses, trucks, and the flimsy craft that the boat people from Haiti use to journey to these shores, plowing through shark infested waters” (Daniel Aubry). One of the symbols Purvis uses recurrently is pregnancy. The impression of a pregnant woman can be found throughout his art. He uses the image of pregnancy because of what it represents: new life and rebirth. Purvis stated that he felt new generations being born were somewhat of a saving grace for mankind, a new beginning.   

            He painted what he saw, the “problems of the world”, much injustice and sadness. He lived in the ghetto Overtown, Miami. In Overtown, he painted vibrant and passionate murals, with much symbolism. At the Overtown library, he painted one of his most famous murals around the building. On the mural he painted horses, which represented freedom, with people at the bottom, who are freed and chainless. This is how Purvis portrayed most of his ideas and feelings, through symbolism. He painted other murals in places like the Miami metro station and in alley way.

            Though he did grandiose things with his artwork, he chose to live a most humble life. His artwork sold for thousands of dollars yet he spent most of his later years living in warehouses. He didn’t buy many things or any real luxuries. He seemed somewhat naïve in charging accurately for his artwork and was taken advantage of. He didn’t have much savings. It wasn’t until later that he realized the true value of his work. But all that didn’t really matter to him. To him, his art was a gift to the world. Near the end of his life, he had severe medical problems. He suffered from diabetes and later died from a heart attack. Though Purvis received rich rewards from his art work, he never lost the innocence that made him great. He will be remembered as someone who gave back to his community, helping individuals in need. 

Daily Doses: American Drug War

                        The American Drug War was an initiative to combat the “illegal” drug market and use in America. The war on drugs listed natural and unnatural drugs as being illegal (natural being weeds and mushrooms and unnatural being cocaine and meth). Addiction is something that is taken out of moderation and abused. It is also defined as “continued involvement with a substance or activity despite its ongoing negative consequences”. Many people use drugs as a way to “get away” from their natural world and its conditions, which are usually harsh and unappealing. Addictive drugs are usually mind altering and produce some type of temporary euphoria.

            The people caught for such drug use are usually impoverished minorities, although wealthy and influential people do use drugs too. Drug use is rampant in impoverished communities, especially African American ones. This is probably on part of the negative social conditions in such communities as well as them being major targets of investigation. A part of the agenda on the “War on Drugs” is to remove drug users and sellers off the streets by imprisonment. I feel this is not a productive way to combat the problem. It seems the people behind this initiative cannot come up with better ideas other than to imprison people, which really does not address the addictions or the social problems that cause the addictions.

            I do believe that America does allow or does not thoroughly investigate the shipment of illegal drugs into the country. The standing conspiracy theory is that the American government has made pacts with foreign drug lords (who happen to be in foreign governmental power) and has and continues to profit. Instead of helping the weak and oppressed drug addicted people, the government better profits off of seizing drug money from lower dealers and prison labor. The people who are “higher up” still make their profits regardless, even if dealers are caught (who are obviously expendable).

            If drugs were legalized, there would be noticeable changes. First off, the money makers would have a cut on revenue. If natural drugs were controlled by government and dispensed and taxed, the government would still make money, but private dealers would cease to exist (unless they dramatically cut the cost of drugs down). This might cut drug related crime down a bit. The big bosses who cultivate and grow the drugs would see a price cut in their makings. People’s attitudes on drugs may even change, with more rehab programs available to wean off addicts on their particular addiction at clinics, much similar to how they do it in Amsterdam. Most likely, natural drugs (that are in plant form like weed and mushrooms) would be used more frequently than chemicals and narcotics. Weed most likely would replace hardcore prescription pain killers and hallucinogens, with better treatment affects. The prescription drug companies might even go bankrupt or contribute in the dispensing of weed.  In all, I think the best way to combat the drug problem is to make it a low profitable market, or even non profitable, like some subsidized prescription drugs.  

            For this reason I believe that natural drugs should be legalized and monitored, because they do have positive health effects and are not as detrimental as chemical drugs. I also think that instead of imprisoning people for drug use, the government should invest in clinics to help people get off, making it mandatory participation. The American government should promote to the public that any and all drugs should be used primarily for medicinal purposes, and that addiction can lead to unproductivity. Of course using them in moderation, like alcohol moderation, is not necessarily a negative thing but can help ease the mind and body.

Daily Doses: Manhood

This is my first Daily Doses posting for 2012! I hope it serves as an ice breaker for the new year :)

 

Masculinity… A public health problem? Boys and men tend to be the majority when it comes to committing violent crimes against both men and women. Why is this? It could be because they were taught for an early age that showing aggression and violence is “rite of passage” so to speak, and that aggression is a definite trait of what it means to be a “man”.

            I agree that our cultural portrayal of masculinity is heavily defined by the media. Men are portrayed as unemotional, uncaring, independent, and aggressive beings that show their courage through dominance and control. The cool pose that was referred to, was a seeming a way to identify masculinity from a stoic demeanor, frowning or showing no emotion. Many men and women try to imitate this pose to gain respect. But this so called respect is just another name for fear. They really wanted to be feared, which gives them power.

            This goes into the point why abuse of women is so prevalent today. Men abuse women to feel powerful, dominate, and in control. They beat fear into the women who depend on them. The rate of sexual abuse is high as well. This can be linked to the degradation and objectification of women. If men don’t see woman as anything more that objects, how can they be willing to respect them? If they see women as weak creatures and men as strong, how can they respect them, without feeling entitled to dominate? What has to change is the overall portrayal of the sexes without some narrow minded view.

            Changing a mental view can mean changing an entire lifestyle. Some people have grown up to listen and following iconic gangster rappers. Some people came from abusive households or had abusive childhoods from peers and attributed the situations to being caused by their own weakness. To change how people think masculinity is focused would mean changing the media’s view. It can be done by showing more positive attributes to being a man, such a caring/providing for one’s household, show affection for wife and children, and protecting their family through positive mean rather than showing aggression and violence.

To change the mentality of students, we could teach through music or artistic means that positive human expression is required for all people to grow and develop. Love, peace, and unity are innate properties, which we can be taught to disregard rather than respect.