A Series of Questions About Nutrition

¶ … added sugar, as distinguished from naturally-occurring sugars, are unhealthy; that consumers must read labels carefully; that limits for added sugar are manageable for people; and that natural sugars are not a free-for-all. What this means is that some products with high levels of naturally-occurring sugars, such as juices or dried fruit, can be unhealthy for different reasons. Of particular interest to me in this article was the way that the article presented its case. It is speaking to an audience that lack education on the subject, and maybe has trouble conceiving of how it could possible go a day on just 100 calories of added sugar. It's good to have these basic tips, though, to separate fact from fiction, as there is a lot of fiction in this world about diets.

The article by the FDA about gluten-free foods states that the FDA now officially set a gluten limit for foods to be allowed to be labelled as gluten free. This ruling was important for people with celiac disease, as they need to manage their gluten carefully. Furthermore, this ruling was necessary to curb the use of terms like "gluten free" in food marketing for products that still contained gluten. Basically, gluten is "a mixture of proteins that occur naturally in wheat, rye, barley and crossbreeds of these grains" (FDA.gov, 2015). The FDA defines gluten free as having less than 20 ppm of gluten, the lowest level for which there is reliable testing.

2. The video about Mauritania highlights that in many countries, fatness is considered a sign of wealth. In these countries, famine is a real risk, and thus skinniness is associated with not having enough food to eat. Families seek to overstuff their daughters to make them fat, as this will make those daughters more desirable, and it is a sign of status for the family. Families often resort to child abuse in order to make this happen. In the second video, a morbidly obese man is seeking to, via surgery, get to a weight where he can lead an active life again. The was essentially eating himself to death. He is described as an example of how too much fat can cripple the body.

The two cultures do not have different views on obesity necessarily. The Mauritanian video did not talk about obesity. When it had shots of women in the city walking, they were fat but by no means where they the sort of morbidly obese person as the 650-lb man. The situation, quite simply, is apples and oranges. The Mauritania video does juxtapose that in the U.S. there is an emphasis on thinness as beauty, but this is only the media image -- in reality the U.S. has a major obesity problem, with people who are much larger than the wealthiest Mauritanian. A 650 lb Mauritanian wouldn't be considered wealthy or lucky, either, they'd be dead because the health care system would not be able to deal with that.

3. Replacing body parts is an interesting idea. Aside from being a science fiction staple from years past, this is an interesting idea for ethical reasons. Some people seem to be wary of artificial body parts, yet they accept transplants from other, dead, humans. The video covers the ethical implications of living forever, which could happen with enough technical advances to regenerate tissue, for example. I cannot imagine the average person being any more or less cavalier with their body, however, just because we may be able to replace things. There are still risks -- the body parts may eliminate natural decay of the body but they will not eliminate death, and needless surgeries to fix things. People don't usually take the long view today, and I doubt that would change.

4. Red meat is considered to be beef, pork ... basically land mammals are viewed as red meat. Processed meat is basically meat that has undergone some preservation (smoking, curing, salting) or adding other preservatives. The study suggested that processed meat should be limited to 70g per day. The overall sentiment of the article is that people eat more red meat and more processed meat than is healthy for them, and the studies recommend that people cut back on consumption of such meat products.