【征文一季】The Psychology, Biology & Politics of Food 【友情支持】

yearshappy

【友情支持】不参加评比 [重要公告] 曾经感动 - FreeOZ征文活动第一季（更新）https://freeoz.org/ibbs/thread-1301566-1-1.html

Course Title:The Psychology, Biology & Politics of Food
Course Lecturer: Brownell, Kelly 2008 (Yale University)
Online reference: https://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-123

Texts in personal interest:

• Herring, Ronald J. 2014, The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics & Society
• Pollan, Michael 2008, In Defense of Food: an eater's manifesto, The Penguin Press, NY.
• 1997, Food & Culture: a reader, Routledge, NY.
  

Overview

• - What we eat why we eat and the key role of food in modern life
• - food then, food now: modern food conditions and their mismatch with evolution
• - biology, nutrition and health: what we eat/what helps us and hurts us/the psychology of taste and addiction
• - culture and the remarkable plasticity of eating
• - hunger in the world of plenty
• - nutrition transition and global food issues
• - from ancient to modern farming: the green revolution and the prospect of feeding the world
• - sustainability: the impact of modern agriculture on the environment and energy use / the impact of modern agriculture on biodiversity, genetic modification and animal welfare
• - public health vs medical models in nutrition change: saving lives one or a million at a time
• - eating disorders and obesity - perspectives of the food industry - economics, nutrition and health: subsidies, food deserts and more
• - everyone but me: the pervasive reach and powerful influence of food marketing on food choices
• - the politics of food: how politics affects national nutrition policy/the issues, the fights and who controls the frame
• - the law and opportunities to improve nutrition and health
• - schools and nutrition: where health and politics collide
• - the morphing of modern diet
• - sustainability and health food access - success stories, innovation and change from the grass roots
  

yearshappy

- What we eat why we eat and the key role of food in modern life

• a proactive question: is Pop tart a food? (commercial food constitutes chemical and addictive properties; not natural ingredients)
• food impacts: the public's health; vitality of countries; political landscape; psychological feelings/culturally trained; biology/promote health
• perception of food: trans fat good or bad? (trans fat is banned in the restaurants in the New York city) genetically modified foods? (European governments against!)
• evolutionary reasons for preferences on variety of food, high in sugar and fat
• what is considered as food? socially constructed
• take a global perspective: globalisation/import food/agriculture industry
• marketing/ads landscape in the 21st century: everywhere in various forms
• an example of tobacco industry: regulated in the US, migrated to the developing countries; today's food trends (KFC)?
  
  

大力Summer

赞！ 我没想到食物可以有这么多研究方向~~ 学习了！

yping88

Will be sitting in the front row with bells on!

You go, girl

yearshappy

- food then, food now: modern food conditions and their mismatch with evolution
.

• In ancient times: nutritional deficiencies - incomplete diets due to partitioning behavior that agriculture far much overwhelmed everything else; hardships; certain sorts of diets prevailed over others
• three primary phases in human food evolution (2000, The Cambridge World History of Food)
  

1,500,000 years ago (Miocene & early Pleistocene)	emergence of planting, processing (preserve food), meat added
700,000 years ago	deliberate hunting of animals (larger species, e.g. mammoth, deer, horse, bison, reindeer); human banded together hunting in groups
10,000 years ago	domesticating animals; production of plants from collection of plants

• superfood = cereal diets in different part of the world: Asian - rice, Europe - wheat, Africa - sorghum & millet, the New World - maize. These superfoods then became the object of trade & human diets. Human body relys on certain foods and animals. (superfood is not necessarily in nutrition but imply its ubiquity/dominant property
• relationships between human & food then and now: food scarce & physical strength consumption; plenty of food supply & easy to get it
• profound changes occurred:
  

availability

calories density

portions

amount of processing

liquid calories

physical work securing food

human started raising animals in large groups or started growing plants in large amounts
fat consumption from plant sources to animals sources (saturated fat); carbohydrate consumption from honey to added sugar (sugar everywhere because it's cheap in price)

• major anatomical changes in human body are related in one way or another to how foods are acquired and processed by the human body
  

the brain thinks you need fat, sugar and a broad amount of food = wants calories = biological drive

• thrifty metabolism: efficiency of consuming calories, get more calories banked; being sedentary but seeking out high calories; biology overrides people's common sense; raw intersection of biology and environment
  

	then (ancestral days)	now (modern times)
fat	35%	33%
saturated fat	8	12
carbs	35	50
added sugar	2.5	15
protein	30	15
fruit & veggies	50	16
fiber	>100g/d	15g/d

• ancient genes are mismatched with the modern environment: biological factors get people thrown their equilibrium & homeostasis off
  

yearshappy

- biology, nutrition and health: what we eat/what helps us and hurts us/the psychology of taste and addiction
.

• measuring population intake is for dietary recommendations, public policy, food industry behaviours; measuring individual food intake is for promoting health
• methods to track population food intake: food production data, food disappearance data (consumption), self-reports; methods to track individual intake: 24 hours recall, food frequency via questionnaires, diary (keep tracking daily intake), biological measures just like blood pressure and cholesterol checking that scientists are working on it.
• the problem of accuracy as well as portion is difficult to measure
• measuring calories, burn it
• micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, water), macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat)
• recommendations are heavily influenced by food industries
  

春浅

too professional for me
My wife had worked in a institute for Food and Drug Control. Maybe she can teach me.

yearshappy

春浅 发表于 28-10-2018 10:45
too professional for me
My wife had worked in a institute for Food and Drug Control. Maybe ...

Is your wife on this forum? She's more than welcome to join me.  
6# is more about general knowledge than field-specific, I reckon, as the information is readily available everywhere on the internet.

yearshappy

- biology, nutrition and health: what helps us and hurts us

• teaching: the key point is your own interpretation/analysis/reaction to what you're reading linked with something that might be going on in the world; not merely retelling
• listen to the lecture recording so as to get the most of it, not to read the transcript
  

• dieting assessment is difficult
• carbohydrates = carbon + water = come in the form of sugar + starches = from many sources (refined sugar, milk, fruits)
• sugars - used by the body to produce energy; can be converted into fat // sugar types: glucose (the most common one), fructose, galactose, sucrose, lactose (from milk), maltose
• we eat too much simple sugars while we eat too little complex carbohydrates
• glycemia (the level of glucose in blood) (elicits insulin response)
  

high-glycemic: potatoes/bananas, white bread/white rice, refined cereals, soft drinks, sugar
low-glycemic: most legumes/whole fruits, whole wheat, oats, bran, brown rice, barley, whole grain cereals

• fat = animal sources (coupled with cholesterol) e.g. fat, butter, egg, milk + vegetable oils
  

cholesterol synthesised in the liver = HDL (high-density lipoproteins) + LDL
hydro.genation is to keep fat from becoming rancid
saturation = saturated (lard) + monounsaturated (olive, olive oils, nuts) + polyunsaturated (corn, soy bean, sunflower, seafood)
trans fatty acids (trans fats) = partially hydrogenerated oils = unsaturated fatty acides formed during the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils
multiple commercial benefits: long shelf life; stable during deep frying, semisolid nature enhances palatability

• we know about diet and health first from epidemiology studies (observational studies) then from intervention studies (working with samples = cohorts / snapshort / meta analysis
• malnutrition (poor nutrition) = undernutrition + overnutrition + unhealthy eating/foods
• body mass index = lean (20-23 probably the best) + overweight + obese  // underweight & overweight goes up in risk of death (cardiovascular disease mortality). Overweight women are likely more to get type II diabetes
• Mediterranean diet (the best)
  

high in olive oil, grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables, fish, red wine (moderate)
tend to low in meat, dairy, other alcohol

• general advice on what to eat: eat food (real food) in moderate
  

yearshappy

- biology, nutrition and health: the psychology of taste and addiction

• taste buds measured as density of fungiform papilla: non-tasters, supertasters = high density of fungiform papilla (desire for sweetness while disliking bitter fruits and many vegetables - affecting dietary preference
• brain --> central signals (stimulate/inhibit) --> chemicals -- food intake
• factors affecting short term intake: hunger, appetite, satiety, sensory specific satiety
• sensory specific satiety is the palatability of and desire for foods eaten during a meal decline more than for foods not eaten = if you eat the same food again and again, your brain will say that is enough.
• effects of stress & social position (dominant/subordinate) - eat more or less
• Our biology determines to a great extent how our body handles calories, how efficiently it stores them, how it burns off, how it wastes them through body heat, what it does with our basal metabolic rate.
• body fat measuring (skinfolder) / body mass index/ body composition
• genetics research methods: animal studies, family studies, adoption, identical vs fraternal twins, twins reared together vs apart, molecular biology. 25-40% of population variance. Genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger.
• taste aversions (survival mechanism): as a means of protection, it warns the body if a type of food is harmful; due to circumstances, a person can acquire a taste aversion to a type of food (a negative reaction to eating certain food.
  

• substance dependence (addiction): when a substance is consumed in a compulsive and habitual manner, results in biological and behavioral changes that have a negative impact on quality of life
• problems: binge eating, bulimia nervosa
• food and addiction: biological evidence, clinical evidence, sociological evidence
  

- culture and the remarkable plasticity of eating

• the French Paradox: drink alcohol, high in fat but small portion and take time to enjoy food , less diseases
• food culture in the US is worrying oriented
• nutritionism: pay much attention on nutrition not the food itself. Some supplements become popular.
• cultural food value shifting: there were times people didn't care anything but a low price. Nowadays, culture is changing that people care for who grew and how food is prepared.
  

yearshappy

- hunger in the world of plenty

• While mass famine occurred during wwii, Ancel Keys (1904-2004) conducted a profound study 'Starvation Experiment'
  

psychological effects: depression, serious emotional distress;
behavioral effects: preoccupation with food(dream & thought about food all the time); social withdrawal and isolation; low sexual interest; self-mutilation;
cognitive effects: poor concentration; problems with comprehension;
biological effects: extreme cold intolerance; low basal metabolic rate; low body temperature, respiration, heart rate; edema (from high water intake)

• hunger --> food insecurity (present day's term: capturing the condition well)
• mulnutrition, multiple effects
• geopolitics --> trade policies, subsidies, farm policies
• UN millennium development project
  

- nutrition transition and global food issues

• change from local eating to global eating: many steps lie between origination of the food and the metabolism of the food
• local market is a better choice than supermarket with packages of food/processed food
• too many choices may not function well psychologically - paradox choices
• a leading figure in public health: Barry Popkin
• a study on Spain, Italy and Greece (changes happening: the erosion of traditional and healthier diets) due to declining physical activity, more supermarket, food distribution systems (imported food), more women working, more eating out, increased income
  

yearshappy

- from ancient to modern farming: the green revolution and the prospect of feeding the world

• Green Revolution is in large part responsible for the reduction in hunger around the world
• Thomas Mathus: food supply increases arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5,..); population increases geometrically (1,2,4,8, 16, 32..)
• green revolution effort to increase yields in high need areas by use of irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, technology (biotechnology GMO), additional plant strains. The concept and practices existed before the term was coined
• Early 1700s, Jettro Tull invented seed drill; 1831 Cyrus McCormick was credited with developing the reaper (harvest wheat); 1830s John Deere - a steel plow.
• irrigation (pumped/funneled) was the most profound farming invention. Is it good or bad? depends on where you sit/how you look at it/depends on your perspective
• GMO: tomato bigger than organic, rice, cotton, wheat etc upsides / downsides=concerns=challenges
• Rockefeller Foundation + Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• overall Green revolution has been success in some ways and disappointing / controversial issue.
  

- sustainability: the impact of modern agriculture on the environment and energy use, on biodiversity, genetic modification and animal welfare

• modern farming = industrial farming = food chain
  

4 crops = 80% of US acreage: corn, soybean, wheat, hay
agriculture in the modern world: highly mechanized, massive agribusiness, considerable political, food surplus

• depletion of water: the most inefficient food is beef (high energy cost in production)
• Tim Lang (food studies) developed 'food miles': the distance between the place of production to the dinner table of consumers. People're working on food energy cost criteria
• once use artificial pesticide, it needs more: corn production is heavily chemical
• livestock contributes to greenhouse gas
• the environmental concern: antibiotics in the modern farming (considerable amount of antibiotics in meat)
  

- public health vs medical models in nutrition change: saving lives one or a million at a time

• publich health: the science and practice of protecting and improving the health of a community (a group of people, a country, not an individual), as by preventive medicine, health education, control of communicable diseases, application of sanitary measures, and monitoring of environmental hazards.
  

yearshappy

- eating disorders and obesity



- perspectives of the food industry





- economics, nutrition and health: subsidies, food deserts and more




- everyone but mme: the pervasive reach and powerful influence of food marketing on food choices



- the politics of food: how politics affects national nutrition policy/the issues, the fights and who controls the frame

yearshappy

- the law and opportunities to improve nutrition and health



- schools and nutrition: where health and politics collide





- the morphing of modern diet






- sustainability and health food access




- success stories, innovation and change from the grass roots

huanged

高大上啊。俺就看看哈利波特。。。

yearshappy

watched The Sugar Film on TV last night and saw Kelly Brownell having his say in the issue of sugar consumption.