Politics of Government and Dietary Advice

The article "Politics of Government and Dietary Advice" addresses the ways that the government sets nutritional standards and the effect of these standards on food organizations. The original intention of each nutritional standard is to attempt to help the community make good choices about their eating habits. However, food organizations dont always go for the governments new standards because sometimes it gives the community a reason not to purchase their products, and so their business would be hindered. One particular example was when the World Health Organization advised the public to limit their sugar intake to improve their health. Of course everyone involved in an organization based in the production of sugar saw this as a threat to their business and fought to have the claim that sugar was bad for your heath revoked. The sugar organizations threatened to withdraw funding and so the World Health Organization withdrew their claim regarding sugar. Situations such as this continued to happen over time and the goverment could no longer tell the public exactly what they needed to do to practice a healthy diet. If they said that one thing was good to eat and another was not good to eat then not all food organizations would be happy with their new dietary guidlines. So, now these dietary guidelines are vague and can be broadly interpreted.

I find it slightly disturbing that the food industry has so much influence over the set dietary standards that the government publicizes. it would be interesting to see how much these industries spent on lobbying so that they can defend the health benefits of their products.

Also, I think that it can be assumed that the standard American diet is certainly one of the most unhealthy diets among those of other nations in this world. Would it be beneficial to mimic the dietary standards in countries that eat healthier than we do? Health in our country seems to be important, so the food industry should certainly not be able to call the shots on what makes a healthy diet.

The American "Cuisine"

In the article "Eating American" the author reflects on the typical American cuisine and determines that it actually does not exist. Although it isnt exactly that it doesn't exist but rather that it is not its own cuisine. it is actually a conconction of many many cultural foods, which results in a variety of regional cuisines. This variety of foods is then combined with the American way of life, which of course is fast paced living. So the foods have become fast foods, so that Americans can eat and be as efficient as possible with their time management in their busy bee lives. So then this also leads to Americans not really caring about what they eat, or even enjoying it as much as other cultures do. The author therefore concludes that an American cuisine does not exist.

I personally think that the article seriously underestimates the reality of an American cuisine. As they said, Americans eat 'fast foods' because of the culture that we have in this country. But although Americans are more into eating fast foods, and not cooking home cooked meals but rahter eating out, that doesn't mean that an American "cuisine" doesnt exist. The American cuisine is actually everywhere. You can find a McDonalds and a KFC and a Burger King pretty much all over the world, and you cannot find a cultural cuisine that has the same massive expasion as the American "cuisine"....the author of this article fails to realize that the American "cuisine" actually monopolizes the world...so it therefore must exist.

Meat That Isn't Meat

Ben Paytner's work "The Other Other White Meat", opens the readers mind to the reality of cloned meat potentially being in the supermarket. Some farmers seek to maintain the current productive and beneficial state of their animals and so for that reason they clone them, to create exact replicas with the same beneficial and productive attributes. The meat from these clones is then circulated into the supermarkets, and it has become possible that whoever is reading this may have eaten cloned meat...how does that make you feel?

The FDA, although always imposing extremely strict regulations on the food industry in general, has not made a very difinitive judgment when it comes to cloned meat in the supermarket. in 2002 they declared that cloned meat was perfectly fine to eat because it was conventionally bred from animals. However, they asked that cloned meat was not to be sold. An interesting and confusing decision considering their opinion that the meat is safe. However, it is very difficult for the FDA to enforce their ruling because, as Paytner even observed, it impossibe to tell the difference between cloned and traditionally raised meat.

Why does the FDA care to make regulations when they deemed that the meat was safe to eat?