Nutritional Facts and Sponsors

While reading the last 100 pages of Marion Nestle's, Food Politics : How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, I came across a table that showed which food companies sponsored which nutrition journals and I was very shocked by what the table entailed. According to the text, 28 different companies sponsor journals that inform the public about the nutrition of our food.  House hold names such as Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, Kraft Foods, Nestlè USA, and many more are named as these companies. Nestle also states how in some of these journals, there are several full sized advertisements from these companies located in the journals themselves. These journals can take in as much as $20 million per year from these companies. 

With these large contributions, these companies are able to influence the journals and how they portray what is being said about them. After all, money is king and rules the world. If you have money, you can influence anyone's view on you. You can change a negative view into a positive one simply by throwing a little bit of money around. That is why the richest people in this world have the most power and influence in politics . They make donations to campaigns and that candidate must owe them a favor if they get elected. It's crazy if you think about it; what people will do for money. Who knew that a little piece of paper would have that much influence and could have that much power? 

     

1900 and 2000

While reading Marion Nestle's, "Food Politics : How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, there was one thing that stood out to me the most. This happened to be one particular table that compared the top ten diseases from 1900 and 2000. This table was quite interesting to me because, although they were different diseases, the cause of mostly all of them had one common factor; food and diet. The text talked of how in the early 20th century, people would catch disease that were made worse by the lack of peoples' food intake. The poor were especially effected by this. Nestle also states that, because of this problem, the average life expectancy was only a mere 47 years old. Personally, I found this to be quite unsettling. This is something that should not be such a large problem for such a strong nation. It should not have taken 100 years to help fix the problem. I guess with the Great Depression  and the two world wars it would have stalled the correction of this problem but, after these events, the economy was on the up and up. 

Although in the 20th century the lack of food was the problem, when the 21st century hit it was the opposite. The diet of most people was anything but healthy. People were starting to eat more and more unhealthy foods which, in turn, led to many of these people to develop diseases of the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and many more. Nestle states how even though that the government may want people to eat less, they cannot say that because it would harm the food producers. This is an interesting view. This is because the food industry has become such a large business in America that if citizens were to start to eat less of the junk food that they love, these businesses would lose out on a ton of money and perhaps it may even lead to job cutbacks.  

Food and I

Being together for dinner in my family is very important. It was always something that my mother felt strongly about and had a strong belief that if a family that eats together, stays together. My mom would cook dinner every night and my siblings and I would make sure that we made home for whatever was in the oven that night. Every night it was something good. From a delicious pot roast to, my personal favorite, steak. Even as my siblings were going off to college, we still had these family dinners with whoever was still at home.

Although every night was great, Sundays were ALWAYS the best. Sundays were always so relaxing. All my family and I would do on Sundays is sit on the couch and watch football. My mom would be in the kitchen at half time cooking appetizers so that we all had something to munch on while we watched our Detroit Lions go on to blow the game in the fourth quarter like always.

Not only was the dinners themselves great but, also the conversations were always nice. My mom would always ask how our day was, what we did, did we learn anything at school today, and if anything interesting happened today. Aside from the normal dinner conversations, there was always the ones that were interesting to say the least. For example, during dinner one night the topic of , if you could be any famous person who ever lives who would it be?

Eating dinner together as a family has always been a staple value in my up bringing. This is something that I will bring into my family when I am fortunate enough to have my own someday and something that I hope my children are able to pass along to their own children.