Introduction
Too often, females are left with little knowledge about pros and cons about diets, especially fad diets, which nowadays is a trend diet mostly influenced by media. I believe that fad diets has become very popular among females due to its dramatic and quickly results since it limits the amount of food given to eat. However most of these diets don’t result in long- term weight loss results and they can actually be dangerous to your health due to some serious negative effects, even though, sometimes it can present positive results. Different from other diets, “fad diets promote quick weight loss by following a specific set of guidelines, which differ depending on the diet plan” (Franzier, nd). Media such as magazines, television, social media and Internet are the main factors that influence and appeal women to do these crazy diets nowadays; most of them prefer to have a quick result rather than make some effort to lose weight through long-term modifications in eating habits and daily exercise. Although several women and adolescents are attempting to do fad diet due to media effect, they are not aware of its negative consequences.
Conceptual Context
Fad diets has become very popular among females due to its dramatic and quickly results since it limits the amount of food given to eat. Fad diets quick results is because you reduce the number of calories you normally consume because you stop eating certain foods, plus you are more aware of what you are ingesting.
This short documentary ‘’ Fast Food, Fat Profits: Obesity in America’’ presented by Josh Rushing focused on the rise of obesity in America among young adult. According to this documentary, obesity has reached a crisis point in America, as two out of every three Americans are overweight. While there are many factors that played a role in this issue, he believed that cheap food, food deserts and processed food are the reasons why one out of every three Americans is obese in our country. Back in the days, malnutrition and food shortage have been the scourge of humankind. However, as chronic food shortage issue has been resolved, we are now faced with the epidemic of obesity, and in most countries, it is now recognized as a public health crisis.
In the first article “Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, by Mary Maxfeild she ¬argues many things against the other author Michael Pollan about how we need to change how the American people eat, and how the government needs to handle obesity better in the United States. This portrays to the other article “Escape from the Western Diet” by Michael Pollan in many ways, as well as many challenges. “The challenge we face today is figuring out how to escape the worst elements of the Western diet and lifestyle without going back to the bush” (Pollan 437). In this paper I will go over many subtopics including: Obesity, health, and food.
In Michael Pollan's '' Escape from the Western Diet'' Pollan explains the negatives and positives of the scientific based diet, best known as nutritionism. Pollan calls nutritionist reductionist science because it focuses on individual rather than a whole foods or dieting pattern. He suggests '' stop eating a western diet’’, but Pollen states that it's hard to go back from the western diet because we inhabited such treacherous food environment. A new theory of diet means new product, that is normally the same except more processed than the old product. The Western diet is effortless, fast and cheap.
Ever since Dr. Robert Atkins helped to popularize the low-carb lifestyle with his own version of the low-carb diet, the possible consequences and health risks have been argued with the supposed benefits. The article is able to use these facts and statistics as a driving force and since it shows several credible sources it is able to directly contribute to ethos, which adds a greater sense of credibility to the overall article itself. The website’s explanatory section approaches the topic much like the first article I analyzed. Like the first article, it focuses on using logos to explain how the diet works and why it is successful for many. As logos is used, it increases the credibility and trustworthiness found in the piece.
As Woolston (2015) clearly conveyed, “Fatty, unbalanced, and oversized: That, in a nutshell, is the American diet.” With an escalation in fast food restaurants numbers, health food prices, and portion sizes, the typical American diet relics as a death sentence, encompassing fat, cholesterol, and sodium filled meals. Americans typically consume food that occurs quick and inexpensive, not comprehending the effect that this food deposits on their health. Apprehending the impact that the American diet places on health, the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans" serves as a guideline to help Americans rid of their old habits, reaching towards a healthy diet and weight.
Whole Foods continue to insist food is not healthy for you unless it contains only healthy ingredients and can be traced back to a local farm. Fast food industry argues that reducing calories on a single dish places an eater on the track to reduce daily calories. Exactly what is needed for long-term weight loss. “It is just the sort of small step in the right direction we should be aiming for, because the obese are much more likely to take it that they are to make a big leap to wholesome or very-low calorie foods”(950).
A worldwide health challenge is obesity and has been for the past thirty years. Foreyt (2010) explains that “in the United States the prevalence of obesity increased from 13.4% in 1980 to 33.8% in 2008 among adults and from 5% to 16.9% among children in the same time period.” “Sixty eight percent of all adults in the United States are either overweight or obese.” He wants his audience to understand the growing rates of obesity and how diets or lifestyle changes are crucial for those that fall into these percentages. The purpose of his article is to compare the two most popular diets used worldwide, and determine if they both give the same outcome or not.
According to the latest statistics from various sources, 1 out of 3 kids are obese in America and obesity is gradually becoming more and more common as it affects 37 percent of all adults and nearly 18 percent of all children in America (Yaniv and Rosin, 2009). The problem of obesity is also rising in parts of the developing world, as income levels rise and people have access to fattier products. In fact, the percentage of adult obesity has more than doubled while children’s obesity rates have more than tripled within the past thirty years around the globe (Yaniv and Rosin, 2009). However, despite the rise in global obesity rates, an alarming estimate of about 112,000 deaths are associated with obesity each in the U.S. alone. One of the chief causes is many people suffering from obesity do not make healthy food choices (Sturm, Powell, Chriqui and Chaloupka, 2010).
On a differing take on the solution, “Escape from the Western Diet” by Michael Pollan provides the complete change of our diet and way of life based around cooking and eating meals. however creates a more powerful and logical argument against the “Western Diet” in his article, He uses a combination of his credibility from his publications on health and foods, evidence against the practices of the medical community, along with his solution to the issue of obesity to create an article that draws in audience’s emotions and rationale. Pollan’s strongest points in his article was the use of credibility and his ability to bring logic and reason to most of his points against medical society and the publics solution to obesity. Pollan comes in with a stronger
In Gyorgy Scrinis’ essay “On the Ideology of Nutritionism,” Scrinis summarizes the basic principles of Nutritionism and deconstructs its core theories focused on calorie reduction and media influence. Nutritionism is “characterized by the attempt to understand foods and diets in terms of their nutrient and biochemical composition” (40). Using chemistry, it takes known molecules that have been proven essential to biological health and implements it into a person’s diet. Unlike Pollan’s marketing allegation, nutritionism is in its best interest to present consumers with important information to make educated decisions about their diet and health. Correspondingly, by identifying and regulating specific molecules in a person’s diet, nutritionism is able to prevent the over consumption of certain carbohydrates, fats, and sugars.
The American eating habit suggest that the appeal of the product (fast-foods) outweighs the health concerns. • Members from the science advisory council who are experts, Lisa Berkman, Ph. D., expert on social influences on health and aging and Larry A. Braskamp, Ph. D. expert an authority on creating campus-wide strengths-based initiatives who backup the survey found in the Gallup magazine. • The Gallup magazine is a monthly magazine the prints out health articles to keep the public informed on surveys on health issues to keep the public informed. • This monthly magazine also supports the findings of how the American diet have affected us and keeping us informed on the eating and health issues that America is facing.
Web. 23 Nov. 2015. Krahe, Barbara, and Christina Krause. "Presenting Thin Media Models Affects Women 's Choice of Diet or Normal Snacks. " Psychology of Women Quarterly 34.3 (2010): 349-355.
Magazines, TV, music, books, and movies help one make decisions and take action whether consciously or subconsciously. This large sphere of influence, however, is not always beneficial for those who suffer victim to these forms of public entertainment. The medias version of beauty, shames those who are considered overweight and scares almost everyone into thinking that being thin is the only way to be pretty. Jolene Hart emphasis how important beauty is in the American culture in her book Eat Pretty: Nutrition for Beauty, Inside and Out: “There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry built on helping us achieve greater physical beauty” (Hart 33). By creating this manipulated and untrue image of beauty, the American culture encourages eating disorders like anorexia (undereating) and sustains obesity (overeating).
There has been a lot of false information about pops and diet pops and whether one is healthier for you than the other. Most people would assume diet pop would be healthier, but the truth is they are both very bad for your body. They are just bad in their own individual ways. The differences between the two types of pop are mainly what it is made up of. For instance, diet soda is made from artificial sweeteners instead of natural sugars.
Our society has helped create a definition of dieting that is not only harmful to the body but also does not work. The proper definition of a diet would be the food and drink a person consumes daily and the mental and physical circumstances connected to eating. The public’s definition of a diet is to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight. Those who engage in this sort of dieting begin with the wrong mentality. They believe by undertaking a diet they will lose weight and keep it off, when in reality most people fail with diets.