Analysis Of Mark Bittman's 'What Causes Weight Gain'

A lot of so called healthy food industries are funded by large corporations for example, American Society for Nutrition is receiving more than generous funds from McDonalds. How can you believe any information they are telling you when they are literally being paid under the table by the Evil Empire themselves! In Mark Bittman’s speech he takes an example of yogurt and how it is portrayed to be a healthier option, except is more equal to ice cream. Mark states the fact that we choose a granola bar as more of a healthier option, but if you compare the ingredients on the back it’s more similar to a snickers bar. Every day we are being lied to by food corporations and it makes me sick. Another lie we are being fed include, diet soda is better than regular soda. According to Top 10 Food Lies, a fourteen year old study found that diet sodas actually raise the risk of diabetes more than sugar sweetened sodas. You might also think foods labeled as low Fat or Whole Grain are good for you, wrong. The low fat advertisement might be true, but what they don’t tell you is that they actually replaced the fat with more sugar. When do we decide to end this slow torture to our own bodies and animals? Mark Bittman is absolutely correct on how food production is now industrial and

Judging from the title of David Freedman’s “How Junk Food Can End Obesity” published in The Atlantic, Freeman's audience, the upper middle class of America, conjures up an image of a crazy Freedman throwing away every piece of scientific data that shows junk food is hazardous to your health. However, this is not the case. Freedman brings to light a more compromising approach to solving America’s obesity problem. His opinion is that by manufacturing healthier fast food we can solve America’s obesity issue and that his method would be able to be established nation-wide in a cheaper, fast and more effortless way than some other methods proposed. Not all, but the majority of The Atlantic’s audience cares about

Whether or not a person wants a burger and french-fries’ or a salad from the salad bar, the decision should be up to him/her. Two articles share views on food, “What You Eat Is Your Business” by Radley Balko and “Junking Junk Food” by Judith Warner. These two authors wrote articles about how they felt about food and how it’s related to obesity. However, Radley Balko would not approve of Judith Warner’s views on food for the reason that the two authors have different viewpoints on the aspect of the government helping people to make better food choices. Warner and Balko also has different views on the ideas which are that eating is a psychological matter; and eating healthy should be a personal matter.

Journalist and business and technology specialist, David H. Freeman’s wrote, “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”. The article was published in the July 2013 edition of the Atlantic. Freeman addresses his major concerns in regards to major whole-foods advocates, and how their stance may be degrading to the overall movement to end obesity. Major media and promotion have been dedicated to demonizing all processed food. Journalist, Michael Pollan suggests that “It is one of the reasons that we have the obesity and diabetes epidemic that we do...If you’re going to let industries decide how much salt, sugar, and fat is in your food, they’re going to put as much as they possibly can...They will push those buttons until we scream or die.” While Pollan’s idea seems entirely plausible to the elite and upper class, who have $7.95 to blow on an organic smoothie resourced from local farms. Freeman explains this idea is unrealistic for a majority of obese people, and gradual change through the fast and processed food industries and education is more likely to have a lasting impact on the obese population.

Eating healthy has become a thing of the past. In the essay by Mark Bittman “Bad Food? Tax it, and Subsidize Vegetables Instead” offers an idea on how to change the Standard American Diet: making healthy food cheaper and fast, processed food more expensive. Calculating the tax to increase one penny would make a difference in the price and the decision for the people as to whether or not the people are will purchase processed foods. He explains that taxes on carbonated drinks and processed foods should increase due to the amount of money it would bring into the government, and the benefits of a healthier American. Bittman’s results remove chronic health diseases that reinvent the way we eat. In “Nickle and Dimed on Not Getting by in America,”

In an article published in the New York Times, journalist Mark Bittman explores the common misconception that junk food is more cost efficient than buying and preparing your own food. In the article “Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?” Bittman attempts to unravel common arguments revolving around the affordability and convenience of fast food and proposes some alternatives to what he deems as a contributing factor to obesity in America. Though Bittman makes an understandable argument in the article the general tone and method in which he chooses to build his argument may seem contemptuous at times and at some points lacking in informative evidence and relevant statistics.

In the article of How Junk Food Can End Obesity, David Freedman, the contributor editor at the Atlantic and Inc. Magazines, lays out a “they say” that then frames his argument. He states that making processed food healthier can contribute to the battle of the obese in our society. Freedman also says that the food these companies are cooking are making people sick and how it is destructive to an individual’s health. For instance, in the reading, Freedman states a quote from Michael Pollan, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, “It is one of the reasons that we have the obesity and diabetes epidemics that we do… If you’re going to let industries decide how much salt, sugar and fat is in your food, they’re going to put in as much as they possibly can… They will push those buttons until we scream or die.” In other words, Pollan believes that we constantly let people put all of these things in our foods but no one is stopping it.

In David Freedman’s article, “How Junk Food Can End Obesity” (2013), he begins by discussing his endeavors to search for wholesome food. He continues to come across food items that claim to be healthy and void of processed junk, but all he finds are items high in calories or the expense is too much for an average American. He argues that wholesome foods are actually just as bad, if not even worse, than junk food and that the Big Food industry has the technology available to make food healthier, but still retain its appeal. Freedman mentions continuously throughout his article that Americans who are most at risk of becoming obese are those who cannot afford healthy foods, completely defeating the purpose of the wholefoods movement. He

“They (Food Production Corporations) may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices. After all, we decide what to buy. We decide how much to eat.” (Moss 346). In today’s society, junk food needs no introduction as everyone enjoys the taste of junk food because it is fast, tasty, and affordable but not everyone knows what all goes into their food. Over the years the food industries have drastically changed how food is produced and manufactured. Moss reflects upon the motivations and practices by the food industries which have transformed the American food supply by the use of the three key ingredients, salt, sugar, and fat. Through Michael Moss’s use of rhetorical appeals in his book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, he discusses the extraordinary science behind what is considered tasty food, how multinational food companies use the key ingredients, salt sugar, and fat to increase sales and how other literary elements can help create trust between the author and audience thus increasing the effect of his arguments.

David H. Freedman, a consulting editor for John Hopkins and author of several books, writes in “How Junk food can End Obesity” about the dangers of ruling out Fast Food as a way to decrease obesity in society. He argues that using nutrients to gauge the healthiness of a food is an adequate way to increase health in society, and that most “healthy” foods contain a lot of unhealthy ingredients that do not promote health. He also advocates small changes of about 50-100 calories in meals to encourage people to stay on their diets and promote long-term weight loss. He also points out the severe monetary difference between health foods and fast food. He ultimately wants to promote using the forum of food in society to decrease obesity in society, rather than making the large leap from junk food to whole, natural foods.

In the documentary film “Fed Up”, sugar and the sweeteners in our food or beverages is featured to be the prime ingredient that is making the most of our adolescents obese. It tells of a few families struggling with obesity, and how these families have been trying to do everything they can to help their children lose weight. It shows what kind of food that they are eating at home and the weight problem that most of the family is struggling with. The food that is being served at schools and also the thousands of products that contain sugar, everywhere groceries are bought; sugar is the main cause for obesity. It tells that low wage earners have no choice, but to buy unhealthy food, because healthier food cost more. “The bottom line: cheap, unhealthy foods mixed with a sedentary lifestyle has made obesity the new normal in America. There is no single, simple answer to explain the obesity patterns in America, says Walter Willett, who chairs the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health” article in the U. S. News. Although it does cost more, a school of public health wrote in an article, “While healthier diets did cost more, the difference was smaller than many people might have expected. Over the course of a year, $1.50/day more for eating a healthy diet would increase food costs for one person by about $550 per year. On the other hand, this price difference is very small in comparison to the economic costs of diet-related chronic diseases, which would be

America has been faced with the growing obesity epidemic. This is becoming very wide spread among all races and class levels due in part to the abundance of inexpensive food available and how easily people are becoming persuaded to but things they do not need. David Zinczenko published article “Don’t Blame the Eater”, Zinczenko argues that fast-food industries are not doing their job to provide clear enough nutritional information for hazardous food.

It’s no secret, Americans love their processed, energy-rich foods. And undeniably, this love affair has led to an obesity epidemic. In spite of the evidence against processed food, however, there are some who believe the problem may hold the key to the solution. David Freedman, author of “How Junk Food Could End Obesity,” criticizes Michael Pollan for his argument in support of unprocessed, local foods due its impracticality. Freedman’s criticism is based on the idea that “It makes a lot more sense to look for small, beneficial changes in food than it does to hold out for big changes in what people eat that have no realistic chance of happening” (Freedman Sec. 1). He contends that processed foods already play a big part in our diets, so instead of trying to expand the wholesome food business, we should try to make processed foods healthier. Freedman’s argument, however, overlooks many negative effects of processed foods and conventional farming. Michael Pollan’s wholesome food movements takes into account not only the obesity problem, but also the quality of the environment and the rights of farmers. Although Pollan’s solution to obesity may not seem the most efficient or time effective, the trades offs it provides in terms of environmental sustainability and the well-being of farmers outweigh the loss of efficiency.

Today, as many Americans suffer from weight-attributed ailments, society continues to look for a solution to the age-old question: What should we be eating? As a result, many new complex and often complicated diets with millions of scientific explanations of how it works arise and are taken up blindly by the public. Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food, also attempted to give his point of view on the subject of eating. He makes it quite simple for his readers to follow, he simply states people should eat food, not too much, and mostly plants. He claims that most food on the market today is not actually food, it is heavily processed food products. Because of this, he tells his readers to eat “real food” and to generally eat less at the same time, while eating mostly plants as plants are generally the least processed foods and are the healthiest options for us. Pollan also criticized the public and its motion of what he called nutritionism, which is when people are overly obsessed with nutritional values of food and being healthy and

If one continually eats unhealthy foods, they can quickly become overweight. Moreover, this has become such a recurring problem in America that according to the National Institutes of Health, compulsive eating has led to obesity for approximately 35.7% of Americans. This number represents over one-third of the entire U.S population and will continue to grow unless it is addressed. In addition, it is critical that Americans learn to moderate their junk food intake to prevent the contraction of serious health issues. Sweenie states that, “Food high in salt, sugar, fat or calories and low nutrient content...provide suboptimal nutrition with excessive fat, sugar, or sodium per kcal. Such poor diets can slow growth, promote obesity; sow the seeds of diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cardiac problems, and osteoporosis.” These are exceptionally serious diseases that can often result in a severely hindered lifestyle or even death. In order to avoid these exceptionally undesirable outcomes, one must always remain aware of their daily junk food consumption. In Kirkey’s article, Paul Kenny, an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, states that, "It's incumbent upon people to make sure that they're more respectful and aware of what they're eating. Just be aware that there are dangers and risks associated. Enjoy (high-fat) food, but make sure it's occasionally and