Reflections from our classroom

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Zane Shaffer

Period 6

Have you ever drank raw or unpasteurized milk? Chances are if you have you have noticed the taste difference. Well, that is not the only difference from pasteurized milk. Raw milk contains helpful nutrients that pasteurization destroys. Pasteurization is a heating process in which most bacteria are destroyed, even helpful ones. Some of the nutrients that pasteurization destroys are calcium, iodine, and vitamin C. It also stops souring. People may think why is stopping souring bad? Sour milk is given to invalids because it is easy to digest, has laxative properties, and is not unpleasant to take. Pasteurization is popular because supposedly it kills the germs in raw milk that cause tuberculosis. But, a study showed that over five years in a group of 70 children who drank raw milk there was one case of tuberculosis. There were 14 cases in children that drank pasteurized milk. Also if pasteurization would become compulsory, many small farms would close, leaving all the production to a few large companies. In conclusion, pasteurization causes more harm than good.

http://www.realmilk.com/rawvpasteur.html

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/504_milk.html

http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/pasteurization.html

Nickita Martz Period

Links used:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ddt-like-pesticides-linked-to-autism-study-suggests.html
http://esciencenews.com/artics/2009/01/08/study.shows.californias.autism.increase.not.due.better.counting.diagnosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_autism
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/07/do-pesticides-c.html
When we got our issues with food assignment it had me a little concerned. It made me think about all the things I didn’t know about the food that I was eating and it made me think about how pesticides and other harmful chemicals could affect my life along with my family and friends lives. I decided to conduct my issue with food experiment on how pesticides affect children in the womb and there outcome in life.
In California there were test conducted to test a theory on weather or pesticides being sprayed on food affected pregnant women’s children. These tests were conducted in a three-year period and were conducted in California. The studies were performed to see if autism was or was not linked to pesticides from the research that was concluded from the 29 women who participated, 28% of the children were in some way affected by the pesticides and/or had autism. Though the evidence was not right on and they could not make a complete connection to autism and pesticides, the information obtained was so great that the research is being continued and study thoroughly and more in depth. All the women who volunteered to be tested in this were residents in California and lived close to or on an orange farm. The test concluded that from either just breathing in the fumes that are in the pesticides used to coat oranges or by injecting the skins of the oranges the women were infected. Scientist believes that neurodevelopment is what is the cause of this.     Other scientist has said that this theory is untrue. One page said, “ The state scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies. They also stated that they wanted to emphasize that it was exploratory research and that there was very preliminary data that there may be an association. They also said they were in no way concluding that there is a causal relationship between pesticide exposure of pregnant women and autism.
In my opinion I feel as if both sides are right in some way or another. I agree that autism could be linked to pesticides being sprayed in the area of where the pregnant women were living, but I also think that it might just be a coincidence. They said that they only tested this experiment with 29 women and that 28% of the children were diagnosed with autism. The research never stated on if there were other connections made between the women such as what types of food they ate, where they previously lived, how much they slept, if they were sick during the pregnancy, if they had any complications during the pregnancy, or any other situation in which the baby could have been affected.  But in the same sense all the women now lived/and during the pregnancy lived in an area where the pesticides were being sprayed on primarily oranges. That is also something that could have affected the women on weather or not they ate oranges during the pregnancy. I think that this situation is a very hard on to follow seeing how there are so many things that were not said that could have played a part in the autism.

Clint Lingenfelter                                    PD5
Persuasive Essay
Saturated Fats in FOOD
Good or Bad?

Bad:
Saturated Fats are good and sometimes bad for you. In the one website I found it didn’t support saturated fats because it said that saturated fats were bad for you because it produces cholesterol that can block up arteries going to the heart. And also in this article is says that in the UK, that coronary heart disease is the number one killer because of people eating too much saturated fats that are raising their bad cholesterol.

Good:
On this website they state a fact that even I kind of believe. They say that Americans have told us for years that saturated fats clog arteries and cause heart disease, but there is a problem, no one has ever proved it. In this article the say about Ancei  Keys constructed an experiment of going over five countries and out of the five of them, the US was the first in related deaths to saturated fats from heart disease.  The five countries were the US, Canada, Australia, England, Italy, and Japan. And the Japs ate the least so they were the least.

Good:
http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=heart.disease&conitem=a03ddd2eaab85110VgnVCM10000013281eac____

Bad:
http://article.wn.com/view/2009/02/10/Why_saturated_fat_is_bad_for_you/

Do you think pesticides are bad?  They can be bad and good in many different ways.  For example, some disadvantages of using pesticides are that they are bad for your health.   They can carry a virus or bad bacteria. They can cause cancer, brain damage, and trouble breathing.  Also it can harm our environment.  It can harm our environment by harming plants and animals.  Some advantages that they help keep your produce clean, keeps insects out, and it keeps them “fresher” for a longer period of time.

I think that pesticides are bad because the food isn’t as natural and the pesticides can hurt animals.  They can cause some serious illness to people such as the ones listed above.  Those can sometimes eventually lead to death.  I mean sure they will last longer but that is the only upside.  In the long run they will harm you. So therefore I think we should stay all natural and not use as many pesticides as possible.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide
http://npic.orst.edu/gen.htm

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Hayden Muth

The issue of mistreatment of the animals that we use for food is the topic that needs to be discussed today. It poses a problem because it lowers the quality of the living environment for the animals being farmed. Therefore, the quality of the food provided is lowered due to the fact that the animals are not their healthiest. Do we really want to eat unhealthy meat just because it’s cheaper?

Factory farms are exactly what they sound like. They are like shoe factories only for animals, not shoes. They keep the animals like cows, chickens, pigs, etc. cooped up in a big metal box that looks more like a prison. The animals there are basically abused and killed for the old phrase “supply & demand.” The country wants more meat, so the “farm owners” try to keep as many animals as they can jam into the factory farms. Does this really seem right? And on top of that it’s unhealthy to us. If an animal is unhealthy from mistreatment and you eat it later on, would it not be likely that you become unhealthy? If you eat meat, make sure it’s from the small farms from the old days.

Small farms are the old farms that you’d read about when you were a little kid getting ready for bed. You know the ones with all the wide green pastures and the happy animals running wild. These are the farms we should have in America. They paint a happy picture of where our food comes from don’t they? When an animal is free and happy, they tend to be fairly healthy and therefore produce healthier food. This makes small farm meat much better for America’s citizens.

To summarize, a vast majority of our meat is the unhealthy tainted meat produced in factory farms. So buy meat from stores you know buy from small country farms. Also, the less meat we eat the faster we can show the government that we don’t need more meat to get by, especially if it is this cheap excuse. This will soon lead to end of factory farms and the future of happy, healthy animals. For more information visit these websites:

http://www.uga.edu/sos/food.html - this shows the problems of factory farms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming- -this is a neutral website but it shows some benefits of factory farms

The most widely used pesticide is actually the most dangerous pesticide to organisms. DDT was the easiest pesticide to use and the most efficient in killing pests. Before the 1960’s, DDT saved human lives on the battlefield. It saved many soldiers from dying from insect carried diseases. Because it was aiding soldiers, no one cared to discover the dangers of DDT until Rachel Carson made the discovering of the horrifying pesticide in her book Silent Spring. She explained that everything was becoming unbalanced because of the use of pesticides. After President Kennedy read Carson’s findings, he ordered DDT to be more heavily researched. After a few years of research, DDT was finally banned from use in the United States. Although it is banned in the U.S., it is still widely used in other parts of the world and is still the most well known pesticide.
Even though DDT is not easily absorbed through human skin, it is very dangerous to humans. Because it was being so widely used, humans were accidentally consuming it. When DDT is consumed, it is stored in fatty organs and also the liver. Now, it is being studied to prove it’s linked to women’s breast cancer. I wanted to find further information on this so I checked another website. I found that women more exposed to DDT are five times more likely to cultivate breast cancer. The substances that make up DDT cause headache, nausea, tremors, vomiting and confusion. This substance is actual lethal to human beings. So if this substance is so lethal, why are we still allowing its use in countries such as China. Are we willing to risks lives just to get rid of pests? DDT is also endangering bird species due to the fact that it thins eggshells. This causes a higher chance that the babies will not survive.
DDT is one of most successful working pesticides. It is capable of killing mosquito, moths, beetles, and lice. This pesticide also is capable of stopping malaria. It is actually widely used in Uganda and South Africa to stop the epidemic. It was later studied and discovered that the chemical kills the mosquito that cause malaria.
DDT is saving many Africans’ lives who would normally not have been lucky enough to be surpassed by the epidemic.
Even though DDT is saving lives it’s also costing lives. It may be lessening the amount of people taken by malaria, but it is also causing breast cancer in women. In my opinion it is hard to believe this chemical is helping and hurting people at the large amounts it is. Why is aiding the people of Uganda and South Africa but not the United States. I think that if the chemical is dangerous enough to become banned it one country, its use should be stopped worldwide. What is to stop this chemical from causing diseases in the people it is now helping? I think if we are really trying to stop the spread of malaria, we should use a type of chemical that does not affect people and other organisms in a bad sense as DDT does.

Links used:

http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/pest/ddtup.html

http://www.newser.com/archive-science-health-news/1P2-8777425/long-hidden-dangers-early-exposure-to-ddt-may-raise-risk-of-breast-cancer.html

http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/mim/environmental/html/ddt_text.htm

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2003/DDT-Save-AfricansMar03.htm

Monosodium Glutamate is a chemical compound that is used in our foods as a flavor enhancer as well as to make food addictive.  Over the years, there have been controversies about whether or not monosodium glutamate provides short or long term health risks.  In my opinion, I don’t think Monosodium Glutamate is good and that it should not be used in the foods we love and enjoy today.

There are many things that are not good about Monosodium Glutamate.  According to the article “A Report on the Toxic Effects of the Food Additive Monosodium Glutamate” from http://www.holisticmed.com/msg , they say that MSG is known to cause things such as obesity due to the fact that it causes you to eat things faster and more frequently.  It is also known to cause intracellular swelling in the eyes as well as headaches.  On top of that an article from http://www.foodsaftey.gov/~Ird/msg.html also say that monosodium glutamate can cause headaches as well as other symptoms.  These include headache, drowsiness, nausea, weakness, chest pain, as well as others.

There are pros to MSG. According to http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/monosodium-glutamate/AN01251 they say that the good thing about MSG is that it just makes our food taste better.  The experts agree that there are some risks, but they claim that they have found no sequential evidence saying that it should be banned all together.  That is the pro side of MSG.

In conclusion, when you way the factors and match the two sides, I don’t think there should be much debate.  MSG should be banned from being used in food because of health factors.  On top of that, the Cons way outweigh the Pros.  I would recommend thinking this over before saying whether it is good or bad.  It should be banned simple as that.

Jenna Reitz
Period 4

Pasteurized milk is heating milk through a machine at a high temperature and then cooling it quickly. Milk has a lot of nutrients in it that bacteria can multiply so fast and spread. Pasteurized milk can kill bacteria in the milk such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, polio, salmonella, and other diseases. By pasteurizing it you can change the flavor as well. It also kills enzymes, vitamin content, and kills bacteria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization

Raw milk on the other hand comes straight out of the cow. It can make a person very ill. It has been banned to sell before. Raw milk can contain many bacteria’s that the cow gets before making milk.  People who drink raw milk can build up immunity to pathogens. If you pasteurize all milk you might not be able to digest your milk the way your body should.
http://www.realmilk.com/rawvpasteur.html

Every since I can remember I have been drinking the same pasteurized milk. I think pasteurized milk is healthier for people to drink because it kills the bacteria that can cause people harm. Even though it doesn’t taste as good as raw milk it still is the better choice.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-hew-letters9-2009mar09,0,1271804.story
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:a0q1ZrWwlXQJ:www.fcs.msue.msu.edu/ff/pdffiles/foodsafety2.pdf+pasteurization+milk&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Alex Fedigan

Period 4

The marketing of organic foods is growing around 20% every year. With the obesity rate at its highest point ever, people are looking for ways to keep healthy and eat better. Many people are turning to organic foods because they are said to be more nutritionally beneficial. But is there really anything better about organic foods than the conventional ones that we’ve been eating for years?

Some studies show that there are more nutrients in organic foods that will benefit in your body. Ingredients like partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives are put into conventional foods to make them last longer. These added things are unhealthy and are only put in the foods to improve their shelf life. Without them, the foods would be healthier, but they would only last a few days after being produced. Organic foods contain none of these things that will harm your body. Some people who don’t really care about the nutritional value of the foods they’re eating still prefer organic foods because they enjoy the taste over conventional. This may be due to the added preservatives on the conventional foods that make them taste different. Organic foods are also higher in 8 of the 11 most important nutrients that lower your risk for lung cancer and heart disease, as well as adding to the longevity of your life.

Other studies that have been conducted show that conventional foods have almost the same nutritional value, if not better than organic. Conventional foods also cost a lot less in stores and significantly less to produce. This is because when organic farmers plant their crops they only get about 75%-90% of the crops that conventional farmers can produce. This is probably because of the pesticides that are put onto the crops to keep weeds and bugs from devouring them. Experiments have shown, though, that if you wash your foods before preparing them or eating them, will significantly decrease the amount of pesticides left on them.

Prior to doing the research to do this topic, my opinion was that organic foods were much better than conventional; after I read about all the studies that have been done, my thoughts have slightly changed. I still think that most organic foods are better than the same conventional food, but if you learn how to be safe with conventional foods, I think that they would be just as beneficial to your diet as organic. People need some fats to survive, so the conventional foods that contain the extra trans fats could give us our daily need for these. Also, if you wash them thoroughly they’ll be rid of many dangerous chemicals that were left over on them.

Humans have learned to become accustomed to eating the conventional foods, so living this way may lead to our demise. It’s our own job to make sure we take the time to carefully choose what foods will help us best.
Sources

For: http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/04/13/cl.organics/index.html

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2008/04/01/face-off-organic-vs-conventional.aspx

Against: http://www.providence.org/Oregon/Health_Resource_Centers/Nutrition/AskAnExpert_Organics.htm