Eating more fruits and vegetables

        Nowadays, people pay more attention on their health. As a result, people talk more about healthy eating than before. There are so many healthy foods available in the supermarket. However, many people just pay attention to the descriptions on the package of meat. They care about the location where the meat is produced, and the quality of the meat. Sometimes they ignore the existence of fruits and vegetables, which are also very important to people’s health.

        Fruits and vegetables have so many nutrients that meat could not provide. People eat meat everyday. By eating meat, people could get the energy they need, which can make them become stronger. In Chinese people’s minds, meat is very important to people’s growth. You can always hear Chinese parents asking their kids to eat more meat during meals. In their eyes, the more meat their kids eat, the better they will grow. Indeed, meat could provide enough energy to people’s bodies. However, only energy comes from meat is not enough for the normal and healthy function of people’ lives. At this moment, eating some fruits and vegetables is very important. In Steffen’s article, “Eat Your Fruit and Vegetables,” the author wrote, “Fruit and vegetables are rich in many health-promoting nutrients and food compounds, including antioxidants such as vitamin C and folate, potassium, phytochemicals, dietary fibre.” From this viewpoint, we know the nutrients that fruits and vegetables have. Unlike meat that mainly provides energy, fruits and vegetables offer their unique nutrients to people’s healthy.

        Although the amount of nutrients that fruits and vegetables have is not as much as that of energy, we still could not ignore their importance. I still remember a story between my mom and me. It is the first time that I was reminded the importance of these nutrients coming from fruits and vegetables. When I was young, I did not like to eat oranges. I felt eating it bothered a lot because the juice of the orange would spill out.  Every time when I finished eating an orange, I had to have my hands washed. I thought it cost me a lot of personal time. In order to persuade me to eat some oranges, my mom told me a story. In the past, watermen always infected a strange disease when they were sailing on the sea. The strange disease was called scurvy. In a long period of time, people could not find the right way to cure it. One day, people finally found that eating oranges could efficiently protect people from infecting scurvy. So when they were sailing on the sea, they took so many oranges with them. This story really shocked me at that time, so I began to eat oranges and would like to buy everything that is made by orange. I am not sure which one is the reason that I like to eat oranges now, the result of having heard that fearful story or I really enjoy the taste of oranges. But I always think it is just a story made by my mom until I have read Hirshmann’s article, “Adult Scurvy”, the writer wrote, “Vitamin C occurs primarily in fruits and vegetables, and scurvy develops from inadequate consumption of these sources.” In this idea, I know that scurvy is mainly caused by the lack of Vitamin C. Fruits and vegetables contain large amount of Vitamin C. If people could eat some fruits and vegetables, they can better defend themselves from being scurvy patients. I suddenly find that the story from my mom is not just a story. This scientific research also supports that story. Thanks to my mom so that I can eat so many oranges in these years. Maybe the orange I have eaten these years already have protected me from infecting so many diseases.

         However, people do not eat enough fruits and vegetables, especially for vegetables. If people go to restaurants, they might see that dishes made by meat are more than dishes made by vegetables. People eat too many meat everyday. To many people, they could live without vegetables, but they could not live without meat. As the result of eating too many meat, the number of fat people becomes larger and larger. New styles of diseases caused by eating too much meat exist quickly in these years. Fatty liver is a disease that is caused by eating disorderly; the number of fatty liver patient grows very quickly in recent years. In the article “Causes and Metabolic Consequences of Fatty Liver”, the authors wrote, “In human studies, individuals with fatty live have higher intake of calories as well as saturated fat and cholesterol compared with healthy controls. They also have lower intake of polyunsaturated fat, fiber and antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin C and E (99-101)”(Stefan, Kantartzis, and Häring 943). From this point, the reason for fatty liver can be regarded as having eaten too many meat and less vegetables and fruits. The growing number of fatty liver patient is a reflection of people’s eating habits. In order to prevent from diseases such as fatty liver, people begin to recognize the importance of eating vegetables. In a Chinese family, when their children are about 10 years old. Some parents began to worry about their children’s weight, and the variety of food. As the result, they even force their children to eat less meat and more vegetables. Sometimes when I sit on a bus, I can hear people talk about their worries about their children. Then discuss and try to come up with an idea to make their children eat more vegetables instead of meat.

       Luckily, people eat more fruits than vegetables. I always think that only myself would like to eat more fruits than vegetables, but in Edwards and Hartwell’s article, “Fruit More Popular than Vegetables and Recognized Better by Children,” they wrote, “Fruit is more popular than vegetables and recognition of fruit is better, among children aged eight to 11 years, a study has found.” From this study I know most children have the same choices as me, fruits are more popular than vegetables. The reason might be the taste of fruit is more diverse. There are so many fruits all over the world; every fruit has its own tastes. Children could find the taste they like among so many fruits. But vegetables are totally different because they are sometimes cooked in the same way, and there are not big differences between the tastes of different vegetables. Besides that, one can easily see the advertisement that links the healthy and fruits together in the supermarket. This efficiently increases people’s interest to buy some fruit back home. The developing transportation also leads people to buy more fruits. Because of the faster and cheaper transportation, one can buy fruits from all over the world in the supermarket. Some people just want to try a new variety of fruit, so they buy some fruits home. Other than that, fruits could be considered as snacks for people to eat. Fruits are often put on the desk in the parlor. When people watch TV, they sometimes need some snacks to eat. In this occasion, people can eat fruits. However, the lack of these characteristics makes vegetables not as popular as fruits.

        In fact, there are so many benefits of eating fruits and vegetables. One amazing benefit is that eating fruit and vegetables could defend cancer. In the article “Fruit and Vegetables and Cancer Risk”, Key wrote, “Persons with low fruit and vegetable intake experience about twice the risk of cancer compared to those with a high intake, even after control for potentially confounding factors’ (Block et al, 1992)”(6). In this search, we know that people eat more fruits and vegetables have a lower risk to get infected cancer than people who eat less fruits and vegetables. The importance of eating fruits and vegetables is really far more exceed our imagination. For most people, they might have never imagined eating them could make contribution to preventing cancer. In other words, people’s ignorance of eating fruits and vegetables increases their possibility to infect cancer.

        Having done so much research, I find that it is really important to eat fruits and vegetables. By eating them, people can better defend disease such as scurvy, fatty liver, and cancer. Even though people may not make themselves that worse, eating more fruits and vegetables still can keep their food balance, make their weight in a normal period and lead them living in a healthy mood.

        Once I was eating only meat without any vegetables. Fortunately, I keep the habit of eating fruits everyday. Maybe this is the reason why my body is not so bad now. But from now on, I decide to change my eating habits. I will make myself eat more vegetables every day. Even though the taste of vegetables is not attractive, but the benefits of eating vegetables really shock me. I want to make myself healthy by eating more vegetables. I will make some vegetable salad in every lunch. I will put some vegetables in every hamburger that I am going to eat. I will still act as usual to some fruits everyday. Besides, I will also eat meat in the future in order to have the appropriate amount of energy everyday that could provide me with enough energy to face different challenges. Controlling myself to eat suitable amount of meat, vegetables and fruit is the right way to keep healthy.

        Eating fruits and vegetables is really important to keep the food balance, and have special effects to defend diseases. The result of eating only meat is that people will probably become so fat and even have fatty liver. Therefore, forming a habit of eating vegetables and fruits is important to people’s health and should be adopted by more people.

Works Cited

Steffen, Lyn M. "Eat Your Fruit and Vegetables." The Lancet 367.9507 (2006): 278-9. Print.

Hirschmann, J. V., and G. J. Raugi. "Adult Scurvy." Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 41.6 (1999): 895-910. Print.

Stefan, Norbert, Konstantinos Kantartzis, and Hans-Ulrich Häring. "Causes and Metabolic Consequences of Fatty Liver." Endocrine reviews 29.7 (2008): 939-60. Print.

J S A Edwards, and H H Hartwell. "Fruit More Popular than Vegetables and Recognised Better by Children." Community Practitioner 75.12 (2002): 482. Print.

Key, T. J. "Fruit and Vegetables and Cancer Risk." British Journal of Cancer 104.1 (2011): 6-11. Print.

Reflection blog post

The most interesting part in this course is that I learn a lot about the benefits to eat variety of food. After that, I know when and why do I need to eat different kinds of food. Besides that, I think I have improved my skills to write blogs. Upon what I have learned, I think I will build a good healthy eating habit. And I think I will do  better in writing blogs in the future.

Draft of EE2

Eating more vegetables

        Nowadays, people pay more attention on their health. As a result, people talks more about healthy eating than before. There are so many healthy foods available in the supermarket. However, so many people just pay attention to the descriptions on the package of the meat. They care about the location where the meat is produced, and the quality of the meat. They sometimes ignore the existence of fruits and vegetables, which are also very important to people’s health.

        Fruits and vegetables have so many nutrients that meat could not provide. People eat meat everyday. By eating meat, people could get the energy they need, which can make them become stronger. In Chinese people’s minds, meat is very important to people’s growing. You can always hear Chinese parents ask their children to eat more meat while they are eating. In their eyes, the more meat their children eats, the better they grows. Indeed, meat could provide enough energy to people’s bodies. However, only energy is not enough for the normal and healthy function of people’ lives. At this time, eating some fruits and vegetables is very important. In Steffen’s article, “Eat Your Fruit and Vegetables,” the author wrote, “Fruit and vegetables are rich in many health-promoting nutrients and food compounds, including antioxidants such as vitamin C and folate, potassium, phytochemicals, dietary fibre, and plant proteins that have been inversely related to high blood pressure and stroke.” From this viewpoint, we know the nutrient of fruit and vegetables. Unlike meat that mainly provides energy, fruit and vegetables offer their special nutrients to people’s healthy. Yet, the amount of these nutrients may not as much as energy’s. But we cannot ignore the importance of these nutrients. Use vitamin C as an example, in Hirschmann’s article, “Adult Scurvy”, the writer wrote, “Vitamin C occurs primarily in fruits and vegetables, and scurvy develops from inadequate consumption of these sources, usually because of ignorance about proper nutrition, psychiatric disorders, alcoholism, or social isolation.” In this idea, we know that scurvy is mainly caused by the lack of Vitamin C. Fruit and vegetables contain large amount of Vitamin C, if people could eat some fruits, they can better defend themselves from being a scurvy patient. I still remember the first time when I heard the word “scurvy.” It is a story between my mom and me. When I was young, I did not like to eat oranges. I felt eating it bothered a lot. The juice of the orange would spill out, so every time when I finished eating an orange, I had to have my hands washed. I thought it cost me a lot of personal time. In order to persuade me to eat some oranges, my mom told me a story about oranges and scurvy. The story was in the old times, watermen always infect a strange disease when they were sailing on the sea. The strange disease was scurvy. After a long period of time, people found that eating oranges could efficiently help people from infecting scurvy. So every time they sailed on the sea, they took so many oranges with them. As the development of science, people found that it was the vitamin C containing in the oranges that helped watermen to keep healthy in that time. It is a depressive story for me. I firstly know what are the vitamin c and scurry. After that, I feel like to eat oranges. I still cannot understand the reason why I like to eat oranges now is the fear of infecting scurvy or t enjoying the delicious taste of oranges.

         However, people do not eat enough fruit and vegetables, especially for vegetables. If you go to restaurants, you can see dishes made by meat are more than dishes made by vegetables. People eat too many meat everyday. To many people, they could live without vegetables, but they could not live without meat. As the result of eating too many meat, the number of fat people is larger and larger. New styles of disease cause by eating too much meat exist quickly in these years. Fatty liver is a disease that causes by food balance; the number of fatty liver patient grows very quickly in recent years. In the article “Causes and Metabolic Consequences of Fatty Liver”, authors wrote, “In human studies, individuals with fatty live have higher intake of calories as well as saturated fat and cholesterol compared with healthy controls. They also have lower intake of polyunsaturated fat, fiber and antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin C and E (99-101)”( Stefan, Norbert, Konstantinos Kantartzis, and Hans-Ulrich Häring p.943). From this point, the reason for fatty liver can be regarded as having eat too many meat and less vegetables and fruit. The growing number of fatty live patient is a reflection of people’s eating habits. In order to prevent from diseases such as fatty liver, people begin to recognize the importance of eating vegetables. In a Chinese family, when their children are about 10 years old. Some parents began to worry about their children’s weight, and the variety of food. They even force their children to eat less meat and more vegetables. Sometimes when I am sitting on a bus, I can hear people talk about their worry about their children. Then discuss and try to come up with an idea to make their children eat more vegetables instead of meat. Although people still prefer not to eat too many vegetables, luckily, people now are eating more fruits. Obviously, fruit is popular than vegetables. In the article, “Fruit More Popular than Vegetables and Recognised Better by Children.” Edwards and Hartwell wrote, “Fruit is more popular than vegetables and recognition of fruit is better, among children aged eight to 11 years, a study has found.” In my mind, the reason for this result is the taste of fruit. There are so many fruit all over the world; every fruit has its own tastes. Children could find the taste they like among so many fruit. But vegetables are different, they sometimes cooked in the same way, and there is not big difference between the tastes of different vegetables. Besides that, there are other reasons for people having eaten more fruit than vegetables. In the supermarket, you can easily see the advertisement that links the healthy and fruit together. This efficiently increases people’s interest to buy some fruit back home. Nowadays, the transportation develops very quickly; you can buy fruit from all over the world in the supermarket. Some people just want to try a new variety of fruit, this also cause people to eat so fruit. Fruit could be considered as snacks for people to drink. Fruit often are put on the desk in the parlor. When people are watching TV, they sometimes need some snacks to eat. In this way, people can eat fruit.

        In fact, there are so many benefits to eat fruit and vegetables. One amazing benefits is that eating fruit and vegetables could defend cancer. In the article “Fruit and Vegetables and Cancer Risk”, Key wrote, “Epidemiological research on fruit and vegetables and cancer then increased rapidly, and by 1992, a review of 156 studies concluded that ‘ for most cancer sites, persons with low fruit and vegetable intake experience about twice the risk of cancer compared to those with a high intake, even after control for potentially confounding factors’ (Block et al, 1992)”(p.6). In this search, we know that people eat more fruit and vegetables have a lower risk to get infect cancer than people who eat less fruit and vegetables. The importance of eating fruit and vegetables is really far more exceed our imagination. To most people, I am sure they have never imagined eating fruit and vegetables could make contribution to preventing cancer. In other words, people’s ignorance of eating fruit and vegetables increases their possibility to infect cancer.

        Having done so much research, I find it is really very important to eat fruit and vegetables. Through eating them, we can better defend disease such as scurvy, fatty liver, and cancer. Even though we may not make ourselves that worse, eating more fruit and vegetables still can keep our food balance, makes our weight in a normal period and cause us living in a healthy mood.

        Once I was eating only meat without any vegetables. Fortunately, I keep the habit of eating fruits everyday. Maybe this is the reason why I am still healthy now. But now, I decide to change my eating habits. I will make myself eat more vegetables everyday. Even though the taste of vegetables is not attractive, but the benefits of eating vegetables really shock me. I want to make myself healthy by eating more vegetables. I will still act as usual to eat some fruit everyday. Besides, I still eat meat in the future, having right amount of meat everyday could provide me enough energy to face different challenges. In my mind, control myself to eat suitable amount of meat, vegetables and fruit is the way to keep healthy.

        More and more people begin to focus on healthy eating now. I am not an expert in this area. But I am still confident enough to give the suggestion, if you want to keep healthy, remember to eat more vegetables and fruits.          

Works Cited

Steffen, Lyn M. "Eat Your Fruit and Vegetables." The Lancet 367.9507 (2006): 278-9. Print.

Hirschmann, J. V., and G. J. Raugi. "Adult Scurvy." Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 41.6 (1999): 895-910. Print.

Stefan, Norbert, Konstantinos Kantartzis, and Hans-Ulrich Häring. "Causes and Metabolic Consequences of Fatty Liver." Endocrine reviews 29.7 (2008): 939-60. Print.

J S A Edwards, and H H Hartwell. "Fruit More Popular than Vegetables and Recognised Better by Children." Community Practitioner 75.12 (2002): 482. Print.

Key, T. J. "Fruit and Vegetables and Cancer Risk." British Journal of Cancer 104.1 (2011): 6-11. Print.

Healthy eating habits

In Pollan’s article, the author talked about people’s eating habits. In recent years, people’s eating habits are not healthy enough. Changes are important and should be made to people’s eating habits. This article mainly talked about the nutrient of food, the factors that will take effect to people’s health, and some advice to change people’s eating habits in order to make people healthy. Among his advices, there are 3 advices values a lot.

        First, the author showed a very simple way to distinguish whether the food is good to eat or not. Pollan wrote, “Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food”. (P 15) This way is very interesting and special. Pollan thought food existed only a few years were not healthy enough to eat. But this way do have its truth. Time is the best tool to check whether the food is healthy. If the food exists in the supermarket for so many years, we probably define this food is healthy food.

        Secondly, the author talked about an unwelcomed advice “eat less”. This suggestion is really strange; why not eat more so that people will not feel hungry any more? Pollan wrote about the longest-lived people on earth called Hara Hachi Bu, he said,  “Eat until you are 80 percent full.”(P 16) The way of his eating proved that eating less is a good eating habit. Besides, we should focus on more about the quality of food instead of quantity. The quality of food is important to people’s health.

        Thirdly, I agree with the advice of “eating like an omnivore” very much. Pollan suggested people should eat more different species, not just food. This is very healthy to people, because people could achieve more different kinds of nutrients they need in this way.

        However, in Dupuis’ article, the author had different viewpoint with Pollan’s.  In his mind, people should choose the food following their hearts. He wrote, “Because we have lost our faith in both religion and science as guides to eating, we rely on popular writers to steer us through a welter of confusing and contradictory information”(P 2). To Dupuis, people now choose their food rely on some science information that go against their heart. Food choosing should only depend on people’s taste, heart, and something like this.

        Not only in the U.S, people all around the world begin to focus on healthy eating habits. I think Pollan’s viewpoint is the main viewpoint fits the world. People should considering more about whether it is healthy before they choose what to eat.

Works Cited

Michael Pollan.  "Unhappy Meals. " New York Times Magazine  28 Jan. 2007:  ProQuest Newsstand, ProQuest. Web.  19 May. 2012.

Melanie Du Puis, E.. "Angels and Vegetables: A Brief History of Food Advice in America. " Gastronomica  7.3 (2007): 34-44. Research Library, ProQuest. Web.  19 May. 2012.