Dietary Advice As Cultural And Health Constructs Intertwined

Describe how culture can affect both the focus and design of health promotion and health education efforts in the Hispanic/Latino populations.

As a culture and as individuals, we no longer seem to know what we should and should not eat. When the old guides of culture and national cuisine and our mothers’ advice no longer seem to operate, the omnivore’s dilemma returns and you find yourself where we do today—utterly bewildered and conflicted about one of the most basic questions of human life: What should I eat? We’re buffeted by contradictory dietary advice: cut down on fats one decade, cut down on carbs the next. Every day’s newspaper brings news of another ideal diet, wonder-nutrient, or poison in the food chain. Hydrogenated vegetable oils go from being the modern alternatives to butter to a public health threat, just like that. Food marketers bombard us with messages that this or that food is “heart healthy” or is “part of a nutritious meal”. Without a stable culture of food to guide us, the omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance. We listen to scientists, to government guidelines, to package labels—to anything but our common sense and traditions. The most pleasurable of activities—eating—has become heavy with anxiety. The irony is, the more we worry about what we eat, the less healthy and fatter we seem to become.

Healthy, unhealthy, good food, bad food, fat, skinny, diet, weight: all these words have been used to define what society views as the key to a balanced or unbalanced life. In the essay, Food for Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating, Mary Maxfield takes a look into the stigma of eating habits, health, and dieting in western society. Maxfield supports her claims by analyzing and refuting Michael Pollan’s essay, Escape from the Western Diet. Although it is common knowledge that many people struggle to understand what is essentially “healthy” and “unhealthy”, there are many experts in the field of nutrition that claim to have the key to a perfect diet. Maxfield ultimately disclaims these ideas by bringing to light information that

This information is very important for the health and social care profession, as individual tastes have to be taken into account when planning a person’s diet. More and more people are enjoying a diet with herbs and spices. This is partly due to our multicultural society and also because more people are travelling to other countries and tasting different types of food and drink. A person’s diet also needs to be tailored to their health requirements. For example, diabetics and some older people may need to exclude certain foods; likewise, a person’s religious belief may mean that halal meat is a requirement. Asking people about their food likes and dislikes, and what they can and cannot eat, is all part of considering and respecting their diversity.’

The progress of obesity has developed over the course of four decades has many contributing factors that can not be ignored. Such as cultural beliefs, attitudes and personal preferences towards certain food

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

The food market nowadays has become a whirlwind of misleading claims and food packed with as many vitamins and nutrients as possible. In Michael Pollan's “In Defense of Food”, he argues that people are too obsessed with diets and focus too much on nutrients that they end up ignoring the fact that the “health food” they are eating is made up of many different chemicals and byproducts that can cause more harm than good. Pollan uses solid evidence to back up his claims by giving examples of the different ways cultures view food, explaining different studies that have been done relating to nutrition, and exposing the real meaning behind the labels that have been put on food.

Americans love to eat, but do we actually understand how to eat healthy? In today’s world, everyone wants to be healthy, nonetheless, it seems no one knows how. With the nutritional knowledge of present-day, society’s health should be getting better instead of worse. However, there are so many different ideas regarding food that the public may feel confused. Michael Pollan points out many worthy causes in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto; he tends to overuse quotes and research and uses unseemly portrayals, but he also implements excellent information to make a valid argument.

We’ve been told in the earlier years by nutritionists that some food are more healthy than others, but only to be overturned by later studies. Pollan feels that this orthodoxy is very contradicting as Americans have been assured about how having a low diet helps prevent health issues, but only to be revealed by even more professionals that these foods actually have harmful effects on health, “Sooner or later, everything solid we’ve been told about the links between our diet and our health seems to get blown away in the gust of the most recent study” (Pollan). They have been told that these foods are of no harm, yet to only acquire health issues such as obesity later in their lives. For instance, my friends tried to only eat foods that affirm a low diet, however, it has barely done anything to their health and weight. Surprisingly, these supposedly “low-diet” foods doesn’t provide the vitamins enough for the body to function properly (Miller). It has been said that low diet foods makes people want to eat more than usual because these foods are mostly served in smaller portions that make people think that they are eating

Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food & Health. (2013). Publishers Weekly, 260(30), 56.

The article titled Obesity and Learned Eating Behavior: A Review of First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson depicts the social aspects of how eating habits are learned. The article breaks down how certain social factors play a role when it comes to a person eating habits in conjunction with what they were taught when they were first being raised as infants. Additionally, the author even discusses how cultural nuances aid in what some would consider a healthy diet in regards to processed foods versus eating all natural farm fresh items. Furthermore, such cultural differences have aided in the increase of obesity throughout the use improper dieting.

Michael Pollan’s book; “Food Rules” is a collection of instructions on which consumers can rely on to buy and eat healthy food. This book also suggests what we should eat and what we should be doing, with over 60 rules to live and eat by. He based the book on three parts; what we should eat? What kind of food we should eat? And how we should eat? He argues that the key is to “eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” These words were the primary advice that Pollan offers in this book.

Obesity has become a symbol of our American culture and ways of life. Across the U.S. Americans are eating for a multitude of reasons; socially, emotionally, and nutritional. Becoming overweight does not happen overnight, it’s a gradual process that’s ignored. It is estimated sixty-eight percent of Americans are overweight, with thirty-four percent obese. Eating comes easy when the meals prepared are delicious; whether baked or fried, simmered over a heated grill. A large amount of people does not take time out to read the packaging labels for nutritional values in a lot of the foods that’s purchase; the ingredients on most labels are not that hard to understand concerning the calories, sugar, or saturated fat, which is not good. However,

Hello! Helen welcomes you to health ambition, a ‘single window’ platform for all diet, nutrition and health related information. We answer the basics: how it happened, what it feels like, what you can do about it, and why it matters. Information is collated through medical content, insights from experts, real people, and breaking news. The fast paced lifestyle of busy ‘common’ people and the take-away culture is impacting the health of millions. Remember, “Garbage in Garbage out”, George Fuechsel.

When it comes to fruit and vegetable, accessibility and affordability are not the only factors that play a role if someone will consume them. This can be depicted in the 2015 Community Health Needs Assessment where of those who were surveyed, only 36.8% of adults in the medium to high-income level reported consuming the recommended daily fruit and vegetable intake. In the USDA’s recently released 2015-2020 dietary guidelines for Americans, the guidelines suggest that individual factors such as knowledge, skills and personal preferences can also have an impact on if someone will eat more fruits and vegetables (USDA, 2016). At some point in our lives, we are all taught that we should eat fruits and vegetables because they are good for us. However, for some individuals, this is as far as the education on the topic goes. Having a true understanding of why we need to eat fruits and vegetables, what to look for when we go to buy them, how to store them when you bring them home, and how to go about preparing them while keeping the nutritional benefits in tact are topics that can help enhance an individual’s likeliness to eat fruits and vegetables more regularly.