{"id":129,"date":"2018-01-15T05:49:07","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T05:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/?p=129"},"modified":"2018-01-15T05:49:07","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T05:49:07","slug":"the-politics-of-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/2018\/01\/15\/the-politics-of-food\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

While food is typically thought of in correlation to comfort or nourishment, what I have found to be most interesting is the politics of food. In Michael Pollan\u2019s book, In Defense of Food<\/em>, he discusses the perils of Nutrionism, the ideology \u201cthat the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient\u201d (28). Nutrionism didn\u2019t begin with average people attempting to distill health into important nutrients. It began with politicians working to tackle America\u2019s health issues, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. What may have started as a pure vision to make a healthier America, devolved into politics. Immediately after releasing guidelines that stated a healthier diet is low in red meat and dairy, backlash from these wealthy industries caused the health guidelines to be changed. This was the beginning of talking about nutritional aspects of food, condemning saturated fats and cholesterol instead of red meat and dairy.<\/p>\n

Nutrionism isn\u2019t just a way to condemn certain aspects of food, it can also serve as a motivator to eat certain types of food for their health value, such as blueberries for their antioxidants. While at first glance this may seem beneficial, it is more often used as a way to promote products that don\u2019t really have much health value. Food lobby\u2019s and corporations sponsor scientists so they are able to conduct studies. Unfortunately, when scientists are sponsored by certain companies or organizations that have motives that align with their profits, scientists find some way to make the business healthy for the public. For a fee, the FDA then qualifies this statement for the company.<\/p>\n

This leaves the American people in a precarious situation. How do you know what is truly healthy? It seems impossible without dedicating your life to your own research, which shouldn\u2019t be the only option. How can America do a better job of regulating the food system and the claims that companies are allowed to make regarding the health benefits of eating their food?<\/p>\n

Invite Health. \u201cFood Label Claims.\u201d Invite Health<\/i>, 28 Apr. 2015, www.invitehealthblog.com\/decoding-healthy-food-labels\/. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Pollan, Michael. <\/span>In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto<\/i>. Penguin Books, 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While food is typically thought of in correlation to comfort or nourishment, what I have found to be most interesting is the politics of food. In Michael Pollan\u2019s book, In Defense of Food, he discusses the perils of Nutrionism, the ideology \u201cthat the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient\u201d (28). Nutrionism didn\u2019t begin with average people attempting to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[60,76,44,36,19],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-takeaway","category-week-1","tag-food-lobbyists","tag-food-systems","tag-in-defense-of-food","tag-michael-pollan","tag-nutritionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}