Peer Response 3

Lindsey recently wrote a blog post on preparing her own meal. She prepared her healthy meal at home during spring break. She tells about how she decided on what to make. A healthy salad and assorted fruits was what she decided to make. Her salad contained lettuce, mozzarella cheese, carrots, Chow Mein noodles, pecans, croutons, and teriyaki chicken toped with Italian dressing. She also prepared a fruit salad by cutting up some pineapple, strawberries and grapes.

She prepared her salad by washing the lettuce and carrots and cutting them into easy to eat pieces. Those ingredients were then placed on a plate. Lindsey then added the mozzarella cheese, pecans, croutons and the Chow Mein noodles. She used leftover teriyaki chicken from the night before. Lindsey warmed up the chicken before adding it to her salad and then toped it off with Italian dressing. She cut up some pineapple and strawberries and added some grapes.

I agree with Lindsey, she made a healthy and delicious meal in just 15 minutes. She states that college students do not eat like this usually, and she admits that as a college student she does not always eat healthily. Lindsey was able to make this meal at home, but it could easily be made in the dorm, except for the preparation of the chicken. I agree with her when she says people tend to eat and run instead of taking the time to prepare the food and sit down to eat it. This is especially true for college students. Although this meal is not hard to make, most students would not take the time to make it. It would be just easier to heat something and go, or grab something at the cafeteria on their way to class. Lindsey provides a link to an article about the eating habits of college students. I totally agree with this article.

Demonstration Speech Self-Evaluation

I gave a demonstration speech last week on how to tie dye a t-shirt. Over all I feel I did a good job. Although I was not able to watch my speech afterwards I have an idea on what I did well and what I need to improve on. Using the rubric I was able to reflect all of the the components that were graded.

I had an introduction that was fairly interesting but I feel like I could have been more enthusiastic to grab the audience’s attention. There were many steps involved in tie-dyeing and several visual aids to go along with these steps. I feel like I was well organized with my supplies. I was able to mix and make the solutions and dyes before class to save time. I am not sure about the volume of my voice; I tried to make it so everyone could hear me. I feel like I could have incorporated the audience more, as well as made more eye contact with the group. I get nervous when speaking in front of people and I am sure that was visible in my speech. I went a lot faster than I practiced because I was nervous. I should have slowed down and emphasized every step of the process. I had a small conclusion, but could have made it better by running through the steps again more slowly.

It would have helped me to do my demonstration speech on something I was more enthusiastic and excited about like something to do with hockey, but due to bulky equipment and the lack of ice in the classroom it would have been difficult. When giving my next speech I will make sure to practice more and focus on being relaxed. This will help my message get through more clearly to the audience.

Peer Response 2

I recently read Mari’s post on Apolo Anton Ohno’s endorsement of Vicks DayQuil and NyQuil. She did a good job at describing the content of the commercial, as well as providing the links to the two commercials he appears in. Apolo’s commercials along with similar commercials featuring popular snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis were very effective way of advertising for Vicks. These commercials not only advertised the Vicks products but also the 2010 Winter Olympics. I agree with Mari when she said that Apolo was an appropriate choice for the endorsement. He is the most decorated American Winter Olympian of all time. I also agree with Mari that Vicks is capitalizing on both the popularity of Apolo and the Winter Olympics.

I am assuming that most winter Olympians have battled with the common cold whether it is during competition or training. It is hard not to be able to relate to this commercial, I don’t know anyone who has not had cold at some point. It is easy to believe that if this product works for Apolo then it will work for the average American. In my experience, DayQuil and NyQuil work very well at combating the symptoms of the common cold. I am a strong believer in “the nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, fever, best sleep you ever got with a cold…medicine”.

Peer Response to Matt's post on In Defense of Food

Matt recently blogged about his thoughts on the first section of Michael Pollan's newest book In Defense of Food. He starts by talking about the first part of the quote "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". Matt reinforces Pollan’s argument that people should eat food; by "food" he means real food, not processed or unnatural foods. Matt agrees with Pollan on the issue of the western diet, that Americans eat way too much of these bad foods. Matt continues blogging about how this problem developed in America. When the government started going against these new processed foods, it caused chaos within the food industry. This caused the warnings to the public to be less specific and more scientific.

Matt justifies Pollan’s views on this issue by talking about his experiences. He confesses that he buys products based on what is said on the label, choosing foods with claims of high fiber and antioxidants. Matt has a link to “Six Meaningless Claims on Food Labels”. I strongly agree with the views expressed in this article. Food makers are making claims like “a good source of fiber” when the fiber is coming from an unnatural source. Many other health claims that food producers make can be considered as spinning the truth. This kind of false labeling should not be allowed. I think that one should not pay attention to such health claims. The list of ingredients is a better way of deciding if a food is healthy or not. If there are a lot of ingredients that you don’t know of or can’t even pronounce, it’s probably not considered a real food and should not be consumed.

Matt Hinkamp's Blog

"Real" Food vs. "Fake" Food

My mom constantly nagged me to eat my fruits and vegetables when I was a child. I would consume the fruit with out too much persuasion, but I would always refuse to eat the veggies. Like many kids, I would eat everything but. It was a constant battle at the dinner table, until we got a juicer. Now my mom could hide those unsightly vegetables in some kind of fruit and vegetable blend. Carrot orange juice was my favorite. I didn’t even know there were actual carrots in it until my mom told me so. With the juicer my mom could trick me into eating the vegetables that I despised. We would make all kinds of juices, mostly mixtures of different fruits with some vegetables thrown in. The best part of the juicer is that you can put a whole apple in, skin and all. You get the benefit of eating the actual apple with out having to bite into it; you could just drink the refreshing juice. By using the whole fruit you are consuming the most nutrient packed parts, like the skin.

After a while the excitement around the juicer faded and it ended up on the dreaded top shelf of the pantry. Shortly after, bottles of store bought juices could be found in our fridge. It started with simple fruit juices and then escalated to juice blends like V8 V-Fusion. V8 V-Fusion was introduced into the market as a way of getting a full serving of fruits and vegetables. With tempting flavors like Strawberry Banana, Tropical orange, Peach Mango, and Pomegranate Blueberry, who could resist? Right? WRONG. These drinks were nothing compared to our homemade juices. They were tolerable, but I found them to smell kind of funny and they had a slight aftertaste. But due to the price of fresh fruits and the convenience of already bottled juices, I could always find it in the fridge.

V8 V-Fusion claims to be nutritionally the same as eating the fruit and vegetables its juices are made of. It also claims to be made of 100% juice. The juices in V8 V-Fusion are reconstituted vegetable and fruit blends. Reconstituted means that concentrated versions of the juices are brought to full strength by adding water. By processing and concentrating fruits and vegetables you loose a lot of nutrients naturally found in the “real” versions. Although this article is promoting a product called the Champion Juicer the author agrees with me on the idea of “real juice” vs. “fake juice”.

Post 1: Response to In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

In his latest book In Defense of Food, Micheal Pollan explores many different arguments against food science and what is called the western diet. His main point so far is that many Americans today are not eating food; they are eating nutrients. Many of the products we see on grocery store shelves are the outcome of some food scientist’s experiment. Labels claiming things like low-cholesterol, low-fat and high-fiber are seen everywhere. Pollan tells readers that products making such health claims should be avoided. He discusses the shift of eating nutrients and the science that discovered and exploited these nutrients. Pollan also brings up history of the American diet and introduces nutritionism, a term that represents a concept in which food is defined by nutrients.

Pollan makes an argument about the governments involvement with the nutritionism ideology. The Food and Drug Administration proposed a new imitation rule that states if an imitation food was not “nutritionally inferior”(35) it did not have to be labeled as an imitation. Pollan disagrees, and so do I. If whole foods used in creating food products are replaced with substances produced in the lab we as the consumer should know about it. Just because they are nutritionally equal does not account for the real foods being replaced by fake ones.

Pollan argues that if scientists try they could come up with advantages of eating any given food. He even talks about how a candy company can find benefits of eating chocolate. This can happen with any food not commonly associated with being healthy. I agree with his argument. If someone has the money and technology, they can find something remotely beneficial to the human body and spin it into a health claim. This trend of new healthy labels has caused some companies to make up false health claims about their product. This candy company was sued because of their false labeling. I also agree that people are more attracted to regularly bad-for-you foods with a health claim than they are to normally healthy foods.