Shannon’s Reviews > The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals > Status Update
Shannon
is on page 99 of 450
Resistant starch has the corn refiners particularly excited today. They've figured out how to tease a new starch from corn that is virtually indigestible. You would not think this is a particularly good thing for a food to be, unless of course your goal is to somehow get around the biological limit on how much each of us can eat in a year.
— Jan 09, 2013 08:54PM
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Shannon’s Previous Updates
Shannon
is on page 118 of 450
Corn's triumph is the direct result of its overproduction, and that has been a disaster for the people who grow it. Growing corn and nothing but corn has also exacted a toll on the farmer's soil, the quality of the local water and the overall health of his community, the biodiversity of his landscape, and the health of all the creatures living on or downstream from it.
— Jan 19, 2013 05:49PM
Oh. Is that all?
Shannon
is on page 117 of 450
I asked Todd Dawson, a biologist at Berkeley, to run a McDonald's meal through is mass spectrometer and calculate how much of the carbon in it came originally from a corn plant. In order of diminishing returns, this is how the lab measured our meal: soda (100 percent corn), milk shake (78 percent), salad dressing (65 percent), chicken nuggets (56 percent), cheeseburger (52 percent), and french fries (23 percent).
— Jan 19, 2013 04:20PM
Shannon
is on page 108 of 450
Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.
— Jan 09, 2013 10:51PM
Shannon
is on page 107 of 450
Add fat or sugar to anything and it's going to taste better on the tongue of an animal that natural selection has wired to seek out energy-dense foods. Animals studies prove the point: Rats presented with solutions of pure sucrose or tubs of pure lard will gorge themselves sick. Whatever nutritional wisdom the rats are born with breaks down when faced with sugars and fats in unnatural concentrations.
— Jan 09, 2013 10:28PM
Shannon
is on page 107 of 450
Natural selection predisposed us to the taste of sugar and fat because sugars and fats offer the most energy per bite. Yet in nature—in whole foods—we seldom encounter these nutrients in the concentrations we now find them in in processed foods. The power of food science lies in it ability to break foods down into their nutrient parts, fooling the omnivore's inherited food selection system.
— Jan 09, 2013 10:27PM
Shannon
is on page 106 of 450
Researchers have found that people (and animals) presented with large portions will eat up to 30% more than they would otherwise. And while this is a useful adaptation in an environment of food scarcity and unpredictability, it's a disaster in an environment of fast-food abundance, when the opportunity to feast presents itself 24/7. Our bodies are storing reserves of fat against a famine that never comes.
— Jan 09, 2013 10:14PM
Shannon
is on page 105 of 450
Wallerstein served on the board of directors at McDonald's, but in the fifties and sixties he worked for a chain of movie theaters in Texas, where he labored to expand sales of soda and popcorn. He found he simply could not induce customers to buy more than one soda and one bag of popcorn. He discovered that people would spring for more as long as it came in a single gigantic serving.
— Jan 09, 2013 09:56PM
It's this guy's fault!
Shannon
is on page 104 of 450
Since 1985, an American's annual consumption of HFCS has gone from 45 pounds to 68 pounds. You might think that this growth would have been offset by a decline in sugar consumption, since HFCS often replaces sugar, but that didn't happen: During the same period our consumption of refined sugar actually went up by 5 pounds. Our consumption of all added sugars has climbed from 128 pounds to 158 pounds per person.
— Jan 09, 2013 09:40PM
Shannon
is on page 103 of 450
That is what we're doing with about 530 million bushels of the annual corn harvest—turning it into 17.5 billion pounds of high-fructose corn syrup. Considering that the human animal did not taste this particular food until 1980, for HFCS to have become the leading source of sweetness in our diet stands as a notable achievement on the part of the corn-refining industry, not to mention this remarkable plant.
— Jan 09, 2013 09:37PM
Shannon
is on page 102 of 450
Clever marketing (supersized portion; advertising to children). Changes in diet (more fats; more carbohydrates; more processed foods).
All these explanations are true, as far as they go. But it pays to go a little further, to search for the cause behind the causes. Which, very simply, is this: When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat.
— Jan 09, 2013 09:36PM
All these explanations are true, as far as they go. But it pays to go a little further, to search for the cause behind the causes. Which, very simply, is this: When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat.
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CJ - It's only a Paper Moon
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Jan 09, 2013 09:21PM
You are making me really want to read this book but something tells me I'm going to seriously regret it.
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CJ - i never promised you a rose garden wrote: "You are making me really want to read this book but something tells me I'm going to seriously regret it."Definitely shouldn't regret leaning about what you're putting in your body.
My problem is I have way too many food intolerances and allergies that I'm afraid that no matter what I read about the foods I eat, I'm gonna be stuck eating them. And I also like to remain blissfully ignorant of how hotdogs are made.
"To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting."
CJ - i never promised you a rose garden wrote: "You are making me really want to read this book but something tells me I'm going to seriously regret it."I think it is kind of scary and frustrating, but it's better to know what we're getting and then we can make a cognizant choice to eat the crap anyway. I know I'm still going to eat junk. But because I'm more aware of food sources it helps me weed out the junk that I don't really enjoy that much anyway and to replace it with nutrient dense foods to help my body counteract (or balance out) the junk I'm still going to eat despite knowing how bad it is for me.
Ok guys you've convinced me! I'll stop being a chickenshit ;DGotta find a copy....
