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What Makes A Diet?

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As children grow into adults they begin to have more freedom of what is put into their body, but is freedom always positive? Freedom often correlates with responsibility because freedom allows for the transfer of decision making from a separate entity to an individual self. There is a great deal of power that goes into nutritional decisions. The way a body functions, grows, reproduces, appears, and reacts is all affected by what it consumes. Maintaining a diet that takes all these factors into account is not only tedious, but also impossible in many countries. It is important for the world to be educated on what they consume and how it affects their body; therefore, they can understand the complex relationship between the two, which is…show more content…
As stated previously, dietary freedoms come with responsibility and often the choices we make come laden with consequences. Many of the chronic diseases that exist within today’s society result from “overconsumption combined with underexpediture of energy (Wiley & Allen, p.92).” Food shortages can also result in growth stunting for children, but deficiencies in specific “micronutrients such as iron…are going to manifest in a myriad of ways beyond stunting (Yip et al., 1992, as cited in Wiley & Allen, p.132-133).” In the article “Power Steer,” Pollan describes how synthetic estrogen pellets are injected into a cow’s ear prior to slaughter, and often the hormone makes its way into the human body via dissection of the cow. Pollan goes on to state that many scientists believe this can manifest into reduced sperm counts in men and premature puberty within girls (Pollan, 2002).

Family background plays an important role when referring to genetics. One of the few things individuals can’t control about their diet is their bodies intolerance to certain foods. Often this is a genetic reaction and is due to the family’s lineage and plasticity. An example of this would be lactose intolerance.

Culture can influence diet based upon what makes up social norms.For example, “in Samoa, where obesity rates are very high, it was found that weight was positively associated with social status (Wiley & Allen, p 102).” There is also some irony within cultural diets; for example, the
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