CONVENIENCE FOOD STUDENT HANDOUT

Convenience food means fast food, soft drinks, snack foods, TV dinners, and

the already-prepared foods we can buy in the store. It's supposed to be

cheap, make our lives easier, and taste good. But there's a hidden cost: it

often ends up hurting our health.

The Obesity Epidemic

There is a world-wide epidemic of obesity and the U.S. is leading the way.

In 2008, more than 17% of U.S. children ages 2-19, some 14 million, were

obese. This number has more than doubled since 1980. The rates of obesity

in children 12 - 19 have tripled, growing from 5% in 1976 - 1980 to 18% in

2007-2008. Kids who are overweight are more likely to be fat when they get

older.

As of 2008, approximately 68% of the adults in the U.S. (217 million

people) were overweight or obese. This was up from 46% in 1980. Recent

studies show that these numbers are rising. Obesity is the seventh leading

cause of preventable death in the U.S. (Hypertension is the first and smoking

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is the second.) Overweight and Obesity: Home from the Centers for Disease

Control, Childhood Obesity from the American Obesity Association and

Advisory Committee Report: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. (For

teenagers the leading causes of preventable death are accidents, murder, and

suicide.)

Except for some small islands in the Pacific, America is the fattest country

on Earth. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

by Greg Critser. P. 4 (hereafter "Critser").

Obesity increases the risk of having about 30 serious illnesses including:

diabetes (Type 2); several cancers such as cancer of the uterus, breast, colon,

esophagus, and bladder; cardiovascular disease; osteoarthritis (degeneration

of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint); dyslipidemia (high total

cholesterol); hypertension; stroke; sleep apnea and respiratory problems;

urinary stress incontinence; impaired immune response; liver disease;

gallbladder disease; renal disease; menstrual disturbance; and pancreatitis.

Overweight and Obesity: Health Consequences from the Centers for Disease

Control and Fact Sheet on Health Effects of Obesity from the American

Obesity Association. A child who is ten years old and diagnosed with Type

2

2 diabetes can expect to lose 17 to 26 years of his or her life.

Being obese does much more than cause early and needless death: it restricts

our lifestyle. Fat people don't get out as much as other people, they don't

have as much fun, and they are not seen as attractive. Obesity is an indicator

of low self-esteem, poor social adjustment, and depression. If you're

overweight as a child, you're already most of the way to being obese as an

adult.

Why are we getting fatter? As Mr. Spurlock says in Don't Eat This Book at

page 16:

* We are eating more food than ever before -- way more.

* We are eating more food that's bad for us -- way more.

* And we are getting less physical exercise -- way less.

Agribusiness in the U.S. became extremely efficient over the last 40 years. It

now produces about 3800 calories a day per person. The problem is that

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each of us should consume only about 1600 to 2800 (2200 for teenage girls

and 2800 for teenage boys). What's the best way for agribusiness to sell its

surplus calories? Get people to eat more. (By the way, a calorie is a unit of

energy. It is the amount of heat needed to increase the temperature of one

gram of water by one degree centigrade. We use the calories we eat to power

our bodies. Calories we don't use turn to fat.)

It used to be that people didn't snack or snacked much less than they do now.

It's hard to snack when you're in the field or the factory performing

strenuous physical labor 12 hours a day. Now we have a whole new type of

food, called snack food: potato chips (plain, barbecue flavored, artificially

flavored, etc.), corn chips, bagel bites, donut holes, etc. This is an entire

segment of the convenience food industry focused on getting us to eat a lot

of food that's really bad for us and that we don't need.

In addition, we eat out much more often than before. Having a meal at a

restaurant (including a fast food restaurant) used to be a special occasion

reserved for once a month. Now, many people eat out or take restaurant food

home four and five times a week for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Americans

eat 40% of their meals in restaurants of one kind or another.

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Restaurant meals have gotten much bigger. Here's how that happened. Every

business wants people to buy their high markup items. (Markup is the

amount added to the cost of goods sold in a store or restaurant so that the

owner can make a profit. Another way to say it is that markup is the

difference between the cost and the selling price.) High markup items are

where the big profits are. The auto companies push SUV sales even though

they know the cars are bad for the environment and increase our dependence

on foreign oil. They push SUV sales even though they know that when gas

prices go up, as they inevitably will, their customers will suffer. This is

because the markup on SUVs is much greater than the markup on smaller,

more gas efficient cars.

A few decades ago the movie theater industry did something very creative

with its highest markup item, popcorn. (Think about how many kernels of

corn it takes to pop up a box and then think about how much you pay for it.

That's high markup.) To increase sales, theater owners tried two-for-one

specials, discounts, matinee specials, and combining popcorn with other

foods. Nothing worked. Then an executive figured that if he increased the

size of the box but charged just a little more, people would believe they were

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getting a great deal and they'd buy more boxes of popcorn. The cost of the

additional popcorn was trivial. Sales of

boxes of popcorn went up and, in addition, people bought more soda,

another high markup item.

After his success in the theater business, this same executive went to work

for McDonalds. Instead of two burgers, McDonalds started to offer a Big

Mac for a little more than the price of a regular hamburger. People thought

they were getting a great deal and bought more ... and ate more. From this

experiment, the fast food industry created the Whopper, the Big Gulp and

thousands of other extra large-sized products designed to get us to buy more

by offering us a better value. Critser, pp. 20 - 22.

Fortunately, McDonalds has modified its menu in the past decade due to

health concerns and pressures by the media, activist groups, health

professionals, and lawsuits that have focused on the issue of obesity caused by

the consumption of unhealthy fast food. Like most fast food restaurants,

McDonalds now also discloses nutritional information on food containers in

an attempt to move away from its defacing “junk food” image. McDonalds

has retired their larger meal items such as the Big’n’Tasty and the Supersize

option and now offers oatmeal, fruit drinks, salads, wraps, smoothies, and

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==BEGIN SIDEBAR. ADD FOLLOWING==

grilled meat. While this is certainly a positive sign, McDonalds is still far

from being healthy. One may still order high fat, high sodium Big Macs, 580-

calorie shakes, and coffee drinks with 72 grams of sugar (the equivalent to

almost two cans of regular Coca-Cola)!

==END SIDEBAR==

Now this is a great deal for the consumer if you only count what you pay for the

food. But the hidden cost, the health effects, is devastating. The poster child for

this process is the French fry. The markup on French fries sold by fast food chains

is 20 times the cost of buying the potatoes and making them into fries. (If the

restaurant pays a dollar to buy the potatoes and make the fries, it takes in twenty

from the customer!) Chew on This by Schlosser & Wilson, p. 97 (hereafter

"Schlosser & Wilson"). Back in 1960, McDonalds offered regular French fries at

200 calories a serving. As the years went by, you could order French fries in larger

and larger servings: 320 calories in the late 1970s, 450 calories in the early 1990s,

and 540 calories in the late 1990s. French fries reached its height in 200 at 610

calories, more than a threefold increase, but due to recent health concerns and

pressures, the French fry is back down to 380 calories. Critser, p. 28 and "Super

Size Me". But 380 calories for a small pack of fries is still a far cry from being

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healthy. Not only are people eating empty calories, they're also eating too much

salt. (The same effect can be seen in the size of the sandwiches and the size of the

soft drinks. At just about any fast food restaurant you can buy a 16 fluid ounce ("fl.

oz.") size with 150 calories and 40 grams of sugar. For just a little more you can

get a 21 fl. oz. size with 210 calories with 58 grams of sugar. A really good bargain

is the 32 fl. oz. size with 310 calories and 86 grams of sugar. But the super-bargain

is the 42 fl. oz. size with 410 calories and 113 grams of sugar. Source: "Super Size

Me". But these bargains don't count all the sugar and salt that is in these drinks.

They cost our bodies dearly.)

Then there was the McDonalds PR man who was a prime mover in the launch of

Ronald McDonald, a device to fix brand loyalty when children are young and

cannot reason. He decided to buy some McDonalds franchises for himself but he

got caught in an economic recession when fewer people were going to fast food

restaurants. He had the idea that if he could package some of the low markup

burgers with the high markup soft drinks and fries, for what people thought was a

lower cost, sales might increase. Well, they do, because people believe they're

getting a good deal. (It's not only McDonalds executives who have pioneered

marketing innovations, all the fast food chains do it, as often as they can.) And so,

thanks to marketing executives in the food industry we have "Extra Value Meals"

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and the “Dollar Menu" which allow us to eat ourselves into obesity, inexpensively.

Critser, pp. 22 - 27.

Psychologists tell us what happens when the dinner plate comes with more food

than we need. We eat more -- up to 30% more. Critser pp. 27 & 28. The result is

that when we go to restaurants, which we do more and more often, most of us eat

more than we need. When we are at home we eat high-calorie snacks or

convenience foods. Remember, our bodies were set up to survive in the food-

scarce world of the hunter-gatherer. We are programmed to eat a lot in times of

plenty to protect against the coming days when there won't be enough food. Except

that in the developed countries, with the advent of modern agriculture, only the

extremely poor experience times when they can't get enough to eat. Result: we eat

and eat and get fatter and fatter.

The large sizing and value meal concepts aren't just confined to fast food

restaurants. Most restaurant portions are too large to finish comfortably. The food

served by a restaurant is a small part of its expenses, so super sizing costs the

restaurant just a little more. But the customers, responding to the "great deal" light

going off in their heads, buy more units to take advantage of the great deal. While

the restaurant makes more money, the customer eats all this food and gains weight.

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(Sharing a meal is a great way to beat the system. Just remember to tip the waiter

or waitress as if you'd bought two meals. You don't want to hurt the working

people when you're trying to outsmart the restaurant owners!)

So, what's the big deal about a few hundred extra calories at a meal at a restaurant?

Well, if you eat 40% of your meals out, that's 11 meals (.4 x 21 (3 meals a day 7

days a week) = 8.4 meals.) Do the numbers from your own experience. How many

times did you eat restaurant food last week, either at the restaurant or take out?

Well, 300 to 500 extra calories 8 times a week (or even five times a week) over a

year is a lot of added weight. The same marketing logic holds true for the

convenience foods we take home from the store. Bigger and cheaper often sells

more. So, we get slammed again when we eat convenience food at home. And then

there's snack food. An extra bag of chips every few days adds up to a lot of calories

over the course of a year.

Obesity has a number of definitions, but the most common is that people are obese

when 20% of their body weight is made up of fat. To determine if a person is at a

healthy weight, overweight, or obese, scientists use the Body Mass Index (BMI for

short). This compares our weight to our height. To figure out the BMI for a

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teenager use the following formula: first figure your weight in pounds and multiply

it by the number 703. Then divide that by your height in inches squared.

BMI

=

weight X 703

       height2

Thus, if a person is 5 feet 9.5 inches tall and he weighed 193 pounds, his BMI

would be 193 X 703/69.52. This equals 135,679/4830 = 28.09; seriously

overweight but not obese. Calculate your own BMI on a piece of paper and bring it

to the next class. BMI — Body Mass Index: About BMI for Children and Teens

from the CDC. This site will also automatically calculate BMI for you.

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A BMI of 18.5 to 25 indicates a healthy weight. A BMI of 25 to 30

means that a person is overweight. A BMI of 30 or higher is reserved

for the obese.

Healthy            BMI 18.5 - 25

Overweight     BMI 25 - 30

Obese             BMI above 30

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Let's start with flavor. French fries are a good example. Nowadays, most

French fries come to the restaurant frozen. Frozen foods, especially

vegetables, usually lose their taste. When food is fried, its taste is largely

determined by the flavor of the fat it is fried in. McDonalds’ fries are reputed

to be the best in the world. Originally, they were fried in 93% beef fat. It was

the taste of the beef fat which made them so popular. The problem is that the

fat saturates the fries and instead of eating a plant with little cholesterol,

McDonalds customers were eating beef fat that contained a lot of

cholesterol. In the early 1990s, after heavy criticism for contributing to the

deaths of its customers with cholesterol from the fries, McDonalds started

using vegetable oil. However, the fries didn't have that meaty taste that

everyone liked so much. So McDonalds turned to the "flavorologists."

Flavorologists are highly trained chemists who are very sensitive to smell

and taste. These people are experts in mixing up a batch of chemicals that

will smell and taste like the real thing. To make drinks taste like grape they

add methyl anthranilate. To make popcorn taste like popcorn, they add

methyl-2-peridylketone. For marshmallows it's ethyl-3-hydroxybutanoate.

Amyl acetate simulates the taste of real bananas. Flavorologists mix the

chemicals like a complicated recipe. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, pp.

119 - 129 (hereafter "Schlosser"). When the flavor is removed from food

because it's frozen, canned, sits on a shelf for years, or the frying oil is

changed, the flavorologist finds a chemical replacement for the taste of the

food.

The flavor industry is a multi-billion dollar industry of people walking

Ersatz Food

"Fast food may look like the sort of food people have always eaten, but it's

fundamentally different. It's not the kind of food you can make in your kitchen

from scratch. Fast food is something radically new. Indeed, the food we eat has

changed more during the past thirty years than during the previous thirty thousand

years." Schlosser & Wilson p. 11

The word "ersatz" means something fake, something that's not the genuine article.

It comes from a German word that means "replacement." Convenience food often

consists of man-made replacements for what is normally in food. It's "ersatz" food.

There is a simple reason for this. It has to be modified to be easy to transport and

cook. So it's almost always frozen, dehydrated, or canned. This pulls most of the

flavor, the color, and some important nutrients out of the food. No one would buy

it unless the convenience food companies made it look like it used to look and taste

good.

Where'd the strawberries go? Well, they're not in the "milkshake". List of

ingredients from Schlosser p. 125.

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Some labels say the flavor is "artificial" and sometimes the flavor is described as

"natural" There's very little difference. All this refers to is the origins of the

chemicals used to make the flavor. If they're cooked up in the laboratory, they are

called "artificial." If the chemicals are extracted in the laboratory from some

substance growing in a plant or an animal, the flavor is called "natural." But

whatever the source of the chemicals that flavor so much of our food, they aren't

the real thing. They're "ersatz."

Now let's look at color. The color of convenience food is often artificial as well.

Canning, freezing, and drying change the color of foods. Artificial color can give

them that fresh-from-the-field look. Many of the same companies that manufacture

flavors also manufacture color additives. Some of these colors come from strange

places. Cochineal, which is used for red or pink color, comes from bugs that live in

Peru and the Canary Islands, ground up and, hopefully, sterilized.

Are the nutrients replaced? (Are you kidding?) As for the nutrients that are lost by

freezing, drying, canning, and other processes designed to allow food to be

packaged, transported, sit in the warehouse, and then in the store or restaurant ...

they are seldom replaced. Many nutrients in the food survive, but the vitamins and

phytochemicals, those unique substances needed for health, often do not.

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So with most convenience foods, the taste is replaced, the color is replaced ... it's

"ersatz." Look on the label. If it says flavors added and color added, that's what

you're getting. But there's more to the "ersatz" story, and that's when the food

companies start chemically altering food to make replacements for sugar and fat

that are less expensive or extend shelf life, and then put them in food. We'll get

there.

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Fat:

Fats

are

the

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Additives and Contaminants

What about all those artificial flavors, artificial colorings, and the

preservatives? Are they safe? We know that in some people artificial food

colors cause allergies, asthma, and hyperactivity. They are also possible

carcinogens. Nitrites and bitrates (found often in processed meats) can

develop into potential carcinogens called nitrosamines. Sulfites (sulfur

dioxide, metabisulfites, and others which are used as preservatives) cause

allergic and asthmatic reactions in some people. Artificial sweeteners

(Aspartame, Acesulfame K and Saccharin) can cause hyperactivity,

allergies, and they are possible carcinogens in long term use. MSG

(monosodium glutamate) often causes allergic and behavioral reactions,

including headaches, dizziness, chest pains, depression, and mood swings. It

is also a possible neurotoxin. Preservatives such as BHA, BHT, and EDTA

cause allergic reactions and hyperactivity. Again, there are concerns that

they cause cancer with long term use. BHT may be toxic to the nervous

Foods to Avoid or Limit

Contaminants and

additives are only a small

part of the problem.

Scientists have

demonstrated again and

again that certain foods

are really killing us. What

tastes good is often what

is very harmful. Four of

the most important foods

that we have to watch are:

(1) fat, (2) sugar and high

fructose corn syrup, (3)

salt, and (4) refined

carbohydrates.

The risks of eating a high

fat, high sugar, high salt

and low fiber diet are not

confined to fast food.

Food we get from the

store, both prepared

frozen meals and

traditional dishes with

high concentrations of

body's way of storing energy. They also aid in the absorption of vitamins A, D, E,

and K. Small amounts of fat are important for proper growth and development, as

well as for the maintenance of good health. The Food and Drug Administration

says that our diets should contain between 5 and 30% fat. (5% to 30% Daily Value

(DV). Some nutritionists contend that the 30% figure is much too high and that the

FDA set the upper level of fat at 30% to protect the prepared food industry which

makes money selling foods containing large amounts of fat.)

Our love for fat goes far back in time. For our ancestors, starvation was never far

away and fats were hard to come by. Fat is an excellent way to store calories

during good times to use in the lean times that were sure to come. Our bodies

therefore developed a taste for fat. In addition, the problems that arise when fat

was eaten in high amounts for years at a time didn't occur. Life was hard and

people lived only 35 - 40 years. Thus our bodies didn't develop a defense against

eating too much fat.

We are now in different circumstances. People live longer and starvation for those

in the developed nations is not a problem. Fats enhance most flavors. Restaurants

and companies that sell processed foods want us to buy their products. One of the

best ways to make food taste better is to put a lot of fat in it. All of this fat clogs

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our arteries and puts stress on our digestive systems. In addition, it helps us to gain

weight, which itself causes the many health problems described in the section on

obesity.

Not all fats are equally bad. There are four types of fats: monounsaturated fat,

polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat, and trans fat. The first three appear in nature.

Monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat, found mostly in plants and some

seafood, don't cause health problems on their own.

Saturated fat builds cholesterol deposits in our arteries. In nature, saturated fats

come primarily from animal products such as meat, milk, and cheese. Hunter

gatherers didn't encounter these types of food all that often. Cholesterol is a waxy

substance that is used to build cell membranes and nerve cells. (Without nerve

cells for our brains, we'd all be pretty stupid.) It helps the body in a number of

other ways such as making certain hormones and bile acids. But our own livers

make all the cholesterol we need. Cholesterol from the food we eat is extra.

There are several types of cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is the kind that builds up in

our arteries and restricts the flow of blood to the heart. Saturated fat raises the level

of LDL cholesterol. Unsaturated fat does not. The heart has to pump enough blood

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to sustain us every minute we're alive. That's 70 - 80 beats per minute or 100,000-

115,000 beats every day. When our heart doesn't get enough blood to give it the

oxygen it needs to do its work, we have coronary heart disease and eventually a

heart attack. When our heart stops . . . Well, we all know what happens then.

Trans fats are the worst type of fat. While saturated fat is the main culprit in raising

LDL ("bad") cholesterol, trans fats also make a significant contribution to the

development of coronary heart disease. Unlike saturated fats, which appear

abundantly in animal products, there are very few natural sources of trans fats.

Trans fats are created when unsaturated fats are chemically altered to become

saturated fats. This promotes longer shelf life or a better taste. (Did you hear that?

Someone whispered "ersatz.") Trans fats can be found in vegetable shortening,

some margarines, crackers, cookies, snack foods, fried foods, baked goods, and

many other convenience food products.

Once we grow a fat cell it never leaves us. If we gain weight and then slim down

again the fat cells that we developed when we gained the weight stay in our bodies;

they're just empty and hungry. They have a tendency to fill up again whenever they

can. Mr. Spurlock made a lot of money from his movie and it launched his career,

but he'll pay for it all of his life by having to watch his weight more carefully. Most

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of us who overeat at fast food restaurants don't get that kind of benefit in return for

growing more fat cells.

Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup:     Fruit is a good source of vitamins,

minerals and plant phytochemicals. Fruit helps prevent heart disease and some

cancers. When our species developed, the primary source for sugar was in fruit.

Along with the sugar in fruit, we got the vitamins, minerals, fiber, and

phytochemicals.

Refined sugar has changed the course of history. Sugar from sugar cane was

brought to Europe by the Moors who conquered Spain in the 8th century C.E.

Crusaders returning from the Middle East brought it, too. Originally it was an

expensive delicacy but it grew in popularity. Christopher Columbus took sugar

cane seedlings with him on his voyages of discovery. The climate and soil in the

New World were so conducive to growing sugar that thousands upon thousands of

acres in the Caribbean and in South America were cleared for growing sugar cane.

By the 17th century, Western Europe was crazy for sugar. The economies of entire

countries and entire islands in the Caribbean (for example, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica,

and the Bahamas) were based on sugar. The need for workers fueled the slave trade

from Africa. They couldn't get whites to do the work and Native Americans

usually died when they were enslaved. Africans, removed from their homeland and

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enslaved, would do the work and they survived. The need for iron gears for

thousands of sugar cane processing plants helped fuel the Industrial Revolution in

Europe. Wikipedia article on the History of Sugar In addition, sugar, through the

dental decay that it causes, helped create an entirely new profession and a new

industry, that of the dentist. In the 19th century it was discovered that beets were

also a source for table sugar. Currently, beets account for 30% of world sugar

production.

Sugar contains mostly glucose. It provides energy but virtually nothing that people

need to grow and maintain their bodies. It has no vitamins, minerals, protein, or

fiber. But, not only does sugar taste good, it makes us feel good. When we drink a

soft drink, the immediate boost in energy and good feeling comes from the sugar,

not the caffeine. That drug kicks in later. There is evidence that sugar increases the

production of opiates in our bodies. Opiates are chemicals that make us feel good.

Our bodies produce them naturally when we exercise.

In the second half of the 20th century, the prepared food industry developed a new

type of sugar, one that's even sweeter, and some say worse for us, than regular

sugar. It's called high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It tastes just like sugar and

pound for pound it is sweeter than sugar. It's created by a process that involves a

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number of chemical modifications of corn. (Did someone whisper "ersatz" again?)

Consumption of high fructose corn syrup has risen from zero consumption in 1966

to 42.2 lbs per person in 2005. It's now almost half of the total sweetener market in

the U.S. and a multibillion dollar industry. Again, the explanation for the sudden

rise of HFCS begins with the economics of the convenience food industry. Simply

put, HFCS is cheaper than sugar but the taste is identical. Agribusiness has saved

hundreds of millions of dollars a year substituting HFCS for sugar. Sweet but Not

So Innocent? -- High-Fructose Corn Syrup May Act More Like Fat Than Sugar in

the Body by Sally Squires, Washington Post, Tuesday, March 11, 2003; Page

HE01.

There is a raging debate about whether HFCS itself is worse for us than sugar. But

we don't need studies of the effects of HFCS alone to know that it's bad for us,

because at best HFCS is a concentrated form of sugar. HFCS is a favorite of soda

companies. A research study that followed 50,000 U.S. nurses found that those

who drank just one serving of non-diet soda or fruit punch a day gained much

more weight than those who drank less than one soda a month. They also had an

80% increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. This risk was associated with

drinks sweetened with either sugar or HFCS. The increase in weight and diabetes

was caused by just one drink a day! Regular Soda a Day Boosts Weight Gain --

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Non-Diet Drinks Also Increase Risk of Diabetes, Study Shows by Rob Stein,

Washington Post, Wednesday, August 25, 2004; Page A01.

Diabetes itself causes heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, and amputation of

the lower extremities. (That means your legs!) But don't worry. Usually they only

cut off one leg, and besides, you won't be one-legged for more than a couple of

decades because diabetes also reduces your life expectancy: 17 to 27 years if you

develop it by the age of 15. Source: "Super Size Me." All this for a few stupid cans

of soda. "The message is clear: Anyone who cares about their health or the health

of their family would not consume these beverages." Dr. Walter C. Willett,

Harvard School of Public Health, the man who conducted the study reported in Mr.

Stein's Washington Post article.

Sugar and its ersatz twin, HFCS, permeate the modern diet and are found in a

majority of foods that are processed, including fast food, soft drinks, fruit drinks,

breads, cereals, mayonnaise, ketchup, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce, hot dogs,

lunch meat, crackers, canned fruits, canned vegetables and many, many more. In

the United States, as of 2009, the average person consumed about 131 pounds of

sweetener each year. Of these, 50.1 pounds were HFCS and 63.6 pounds were

sugar. The numbers have been rising; in 2003, the average person consumed 100

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pounds of sugar. USDA Sugar and Sweeteners: Data Tables, Tables 51 - 53.

24

Remember

what

happened

to Mr.

Spurlock

in just 30

days of

eating only

fast food?

He gained

24.5

pounds,

increasing

his body

fat from a

healthy

11% to an

alarming

18%.

25

In 2003 the World Health Organization (an arm of the United

Nations) recommended that no more than 10% of daily calories be

from added sugars. It did this despite threats from the food industry

that if it issued this recommendation food industry lobbyists would

ask the U.S. Congress to cut funding for the agency.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0421-06.htm, “Sugar

Industry Threatens to Scrupper WHO,” CommonDreams.org, April

21, 2003. The WHO didn't back down and endorsed this strategy in

May 2004.

Salt: In the past, salt was as valuable as gold. Some salt, a little bit, is

necessary for life. It helps maintain the right balance of fluids in our

bodies. It also helps transmit nerve impulses and it influences the

contraction and relaxation of muscles. Because we need some salt and

because for eons salt was hard to find, our bodies developed a taste for

it. Salt is used to enhance the flavor in any type of cooking. However,

when food companies are in competition to provide us with the

tastiest food possible and when the freezing, drying, or canning

process takes the natural flavors out of food, the companies

compensate by, among other things, adding a lot of salt. Most

Americans consume much more salt than is recommended by doctors

and nutritionists. Three fourths of that amount is from salt added to

processed foods. The recommended intake of salt is less than 2,300

milligrams (mg) a day. Dietary Guidelines and Sodium: Are you

getting too much? from Mayo Clinic.com. Nutrition and Your Health:

Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the USDA.

(Remember, at 20% he would be clinically obese.) He was well on his way to

pickling his liver as if he had been an alcoholic who'd been drinking for years. His

cholesterol increased by 65% to an unhealthy level. He also developed chest

pressure, depression, sugar addiction, headaches, labored breathing, hot flashes,

and heart palpitations. After he stopped his McDonalds "diet" it took him six

weeks to bring his blood levels back to normal and five months to lose 20 pounds.

The fat cells that he grew will be with him all his life and he'll have a tendency to

gain the 24.5 pounds, or part of it, back again.

Certainly, if we eat fast food or convenience food only once a month like most

nutritionists recommend, our bodies will be able to deal with the fat, salt, sugar and

additives in the food. But what about all that other convenience food? And what if,

like most Americans, we eat fast food more than once a month?

26

What we

all need to

do is get

beyond

advertising

to real

education.

Learn

about the

food we

eat. Read

the labels.

27

Being an Educated Consumer

Advertisers targeting children have already "educated" us to be terrible

consumers. Corporations spend more than $15 billion every year to

influence kids. Four hours of television programming contain about 100

advertisements. The average American child may view as many as 40,000

television commercials every year. About 20,000 are for convenience foods:

soda, candy, breakfast cereals, and fast food. Many of them are the same ad

run over and over again because marketing research shows that this works.

(Not surprisingly, children who watch a lot of television want more toys

seen in advertisements and eat more advertised food than children who do

not watch as much television.) By three years of age, if not earlier, kids can

recognize many brands. (Tobacco companies would promote candy

cigarettes for children for "brand imprinting for later actuation in life.")

McDonalds is especially good at luring children into its restaurants with

Ronald McDonald, birthday parties, Happy Meals, Mighty Kids Meals,

playgrounds, etc. In 2010, studies had shown that 96% of Americans kids

could recognize and name Ronald McDonald.

Young children can't distinguish between commercials and TV programs.

They don't recognize that commercials are trying to sell something. In 2008,

children 12 years and under influenced the household spending of over $500

billion. We don't have figures for ages 13 and above but most likely it's a

higher number. Sources: National Institute on Media and the Family Fact

Sheet; Chew on This by Schlosser and Wilson, pp. 47 - 57. "Welcome to

McDonald's", McDonald's Corporation, 1996, cited at Ibid pg. 47.

Understand not only good nutrition, but how years of advertising have affected us.

And we should understand one last thing: our own personal relationship with food.

There are all kinds of pressures that can push the amount that we eat in the wrong

direction, either too much or too little. Some mothers express love for their

children by trying to get them to eat a lot. Some of us deal with disappointments in

life, tension on the job, or problems at home by overeating. For others it's the size

of what we consume that matters: bigger cars . . . bigger houses, . . . bigger

meals . . . even bigger bellies (!!). "Bigness is addictive because it is about

power. .... While few teenage boys can actually finish a 64-ounce Double Gulp, it's

empowering to hold one in your hand." Irma Zall, a teen marketing consultant,

quoted at Critser p. 29. Some people, girls especially, go the other way and

develop a disease called anorexia, in which they think they're too fat no matter how

thin they are. Being educated consumers also means knowing ourselves and our

own psychology.

One more thing, as if life wasn't difficult enough. Mr. Spurlock had an independent

laboratory check the statistics listed on the McDonald's web site for the calories,

fat, sodium, sugars, and dietary fiber in its food. He found that the size of the

portions were smaller on the web site than what he was served at a Mcdonalds

restaurant and that the content of calories, fat, sodium, and sugars were uniformly

28

higher than reported on the web site. In addition, he found that there was less fiber

than reported. In other words, McDonald's was underestimating the dangers of its

food. Spurlock: Appendix 2.

A Few Practical Tips for Better Eating

So what do we do? If our game isn't working, the sports coach says, go back

to basics. For eating, that means to eat like our ancestors did as much as we

can: fresh food, if possible grown locally, including fruit and vegetables (9

servings a day), whole grains (at least 3 servings a day), nuts, and legumes.

People should consume a variety of foods and control caloric intake. We

should consume fats, salt, carbohydrates, and sugared foods in moderation,

which for most of us means that we'll have to reduce our intake. We need to

increase our consumption of dietary fiber. See the U.S. Government's

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. (The government recommends 3

cups of non-fat or low-fat milk or the equivalent per day. Some well-

regarded nutritionists dispute the value of milk in the diet and charge that

milk was included because of pressure from the dairy industry.)

Regular and frequent consumption of fruits and vegetables is associated with

reduced risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease,

29

and cataracts. It postpones aging for a while. The combination of the

vitamins and other beneficial phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables causes

this. Taken separately they don't have the same effect. So it's important to

have a variety of fruits and vegetables every day. See 5 A Day.Gov! a web

site from the Centers for Disease Control promoting a diet which includes at

least 5 fruit and vegetable servings a day.

Here's an example of back to basics. Remember the ad campaign from

Subway about the young man, Jared Fogel, who went from 425 to 192 lbs on

a year-long Subway diet? Well, Mr. Spurlock interviewed Mr. Fogel and it

turns out that what Mr. Fogel did was to stop overeating and go on an

exercise plan. That's why he lost the weight. It didn't have much to do with

Subway. Spurlock at pp. 141 - 144. (There are a lot of vegetables and fruit

that Mr. Fogel should have been eating that Subway doesn't offer. He only

went part of the way back to basics, and look at the results of even that

halfway measure.)

Speaking of Subway, the great advantage (and sometimes the even greater

disadvantage) of Subway is that we can choose what they put in our

sandwich. We can have whole wheat bread with just vegetables or lean

30

chicken and no mayo. But then again, we can order a sandwich containing

four strips of bacon, lettuce, and lots of mayonnaise on white bread. Now

that sandwich is probably worse for us than a Quarter Pounder or a

Whopper. Subway claims to stress healthy meals but every Subway store is

loaded with chips and has a great big soft drink dispenser. (Don't tell me

they don't want you to buy that stuff.)

With respect to fat, choose oils high in unsaturated fats (like olive oil), buy

margarine made with unsaturated liquid vegetable oils as the first ingredient

and limit butter, lard, fatback, solid shortenings, and full fat mayonnaise. If

you're going to eat meat, eat less of it, eat only lean meat, and make sure it is

well cooked. Wild caught fish are said to be a healthy protein source but

mercury contamination is now an issue.

Eat according to the Food Pyramid. But remember that this is created by the

U.S. Department of Agriculture which is charged with protecting farmers.

Some nutritionists have criticized the pyramid for promoting consumption of

meat and dairy products.

Learn to read the nutritional labels and be a truly educated consumer. Look

31

out for the tricks of the people trying to market food to you. They often

fortify highly sugared products with calcium or vitamins that people with a

good diet don't need. Along with the extra vitamins or calcium comes an

unhealthy dose of sugar, fat, salt or refined carbohydrates.

END OF STUDENT HANDOUT. See the Convenience Food Student

Handout in Microsoft Word®. The citations have been deleted from the

handout.

NOTES FOR LECTURE OR POINTS TO STRESS DURING CLASS

DISCUSSION

These notes are suggested for a very short lecture after the film. Another

approach is to work these concepts into your comments during the class

discussion. See Discussion Questions below.

The first point is to tell the kids that you don't expect most of them to stop

eating convenience food. The flavorologists and advertisers do too good a

job for that. Maybe, each year, one or two kids will really take the lesson to

heart and start eating very well. That would be a home run. But you do hope

that all of them will buy less convenience food, watch their weight, and try

to eat a healthier diet.

32

TeachWithMovies has found seven reasons that might convince teenagers to

reduce or eliminate their consumption of fast food and resist the obesity

epidemic. Different themes will work with different kids. Some will reject

everything now but the seeds of change will be sown, hopefully to blossom

later.

33

34

o As people who aren't yet adults, there's one thing you can control. It's

what you eat; what you put into your body. (Teenagers often feel

powerless. What they eat is something that they can control.)

o Convenience foods are loaded with fat, salt, sugar, refined

carbohydrates, and chemical additives. They often don't contain the

nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and fiber that we need for optimal

physical and mental development. Convenience foods are major

contributors to the obesity epidemic which sickens and kills millions

of people each year. (This is the health argument made in the movie

and the handout.)

o The executives from the convenience food companies are not trying to

kill us, it's just that our health often gets in the way of their

companies' profits. (The executives who run McDonalds, Burger

King, Chili’s, Starbucks, and all the other companies that sell

prepared foods are not bad people, but they're not our friends and they

are not interested in our health. They are trying to enhance the return

on their shareholders' investment by reducing costs and getting us to

consume more. Business schools teach courses in "marketing" and

"advertising" showing people how to convince the public to buy more

of their product. On occasion processed food companies are forced by

public opinion or the government to modify their food to make it

healthier. But if it comes to a question of profits vs. health, profits will

win. It's unlikely that the overall experience of eating convenience

food, especially eating at a fast food restaurant, will ever be truly good

o The food that's sold is often not really the kind of food that grows in

the ground. (In order to reduce costs, improve color, or to enhance

taste, the prepared food industry adds chemicals that change the

nature of what we eat by adding chemical flavoring and color and by

changing the chemical content of food to make fake foods like trans

fat and HFCS.)

o Advertisers can't be trusted to tell the truth and they've already got

their hooks deep into all of us. (Advertisers know that younger

children cannot look critically at an advertisement. They get us early

with special meals, free toys, and characters like Ronald McDonald,

because they know that unreasoning brand loyalty built when we are

young is a powerful weapon. Many decisions by adolescents and

adults about what to buy are influenced by a child's desire for brands

or foods that recall happy times when he or she was young.)

o And then there's compassion, an ethical value endorsed by the

Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions. (Each year millions of cows,

pigs, turkeys, and sheep, and billions of chickens, are raised in factory

farms in conditions of abject misery. Then they are transported to

slaughter houses where they are brutally killed. The only way to

35

reduce the suffering these animals endure is to reduce consumption of

meat and poultry. See Discussion Question #6.)

o And last but not least, there is vanity. (Thinner and healthier people

look better and are more desirable. Eating convenience food is an

excellent way to look fat and frumpy.)

Teachers and parents should always be up front with children: almost all of

us have to battle against fast food, snack food, sodas, and prepared food. In

our society, they're hard to avoid. In addition, we've been bombarded by

advertising about how good this food tastes since we were infants. All of us

could improve our diets and all of us fall prey to the convenience food trap.

The purpose of this movie and this lesson plan is to give kids the

information and motivation to eat convenience food less frequently.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT FOR SUPER SIZE ME

1.  List four different types of convenience foods.

2.  What is a common definition of obesity? Give your answer in terms of

the percentage of a person's weight that is comprised of fat.

36

3.  List the three most important causes of preventable death for the entire

population in the U.S. Then list the three most important causes of

preventable death among U.S. teenagers.

4.  In terms of BMI what is a healthy weight, what is overweight, and what

is obesity?

5.  State in words the formula for BMI and describe what it measures. Be

sure to include a reference to pounds and inches in your statement. Then

calculate your own BMI.

6.  For the most current year for which we have statistics on how many

children were obese, state the year, the number of children in the U.S. who

were obese and their percentage of the population of children.

7.  Name ten serious diseases that obese people get more often than people

who are not obese.

8.  Why are people in the U.S. getting fatter? Mr. Spurlock told us. What did

he say?

37

9.  What percentage of meals do Americans eat in restaurants, including fast

food outlets?

10.  Explain the psychology behind supersizing. Why is it a good marketing

technique?

11.  If a person is presented at a meal with more food than he or she could

possibly eat, how much more food will the average person consume than he

or she needs? Give your answer in terms of a percentage.

12.  What is the profit margin for French fries sold in fast food restaurants?

13.  Why do restaurateurs like to sell super sized meals?

14.  What does "ersatz" mean?

15.  Give two examples of specific convenience foods that are ersatz food

that we learned about in this unit. Describe why they are called ersatz.

38

16.  What are the four general types of foods that can hurt our health if we

are not careful to consume moderate or small amounts?

17.  What is a flavorologist?

18.  What is the difference between natural and artificial flavors put into

foods?

19.  Food additives are tested for safety, so why are they still a risk to our

health? Give two reasons.

20.  Fats and salt often make food taste better. Why do we like the tastes of

fats and salt?

21.  What are trans fats and why are they bad for us?

22.  What is the mechanism by which LDL cholesterol causes heart disease?

23.  Which types of fats do not contribute to heart disease?

39

24.  What types of foods contain fats that have high amounts of LDL

cholesterol?

25.  What types of foods contain fats that do not contribute to cholesterol

found?

26.  Why does advertising affect young children more than it does teenagers

and adults?

27.  The Food and Drug Administration says that our diets should contain

between 5 and 30% fat. What do some nutritionists say about the 30%

number?

28.  What is the "nag factor"?

29.  What doesn't sugar have that is healthy for us?

30.  How did the growth of the sugar industry in the 17th and 18th centuries

contribute to the Industrial Revolution? How did the growth of the sugar

industry contribute to the slave trade?

40

31.  Remember Jared Fogel, the young man who lost so much weight eating

at Subway? What were the two most important reasons for the success of his

weight loss program? Did they have anything to do with the fact that he ate

at Subway?

32.  In the study that followed 50,000 nurses, how many cans of soft drinks a

day did it take to lead to weight gain and an 80% increase in Type 2

Diabetes?

33.  In 2009, how many pounds of sweetener did the average American

consume? How much of this amount was sugar and how much was HFCS?

34.  When the World Health Organization stated that it was going to release

a recommendation that sweeteners account for only 10% of daily calories,

what did the food industry do?

35.  The caloric content of the largest serving of McDonald's French fries

that you can buy has changed from 1960 to the present. Describe that

change.

41

36.  What is the recommended caloric intake per day for teenagers?

37.  People with Type 2 diabetes are at risk for several other illnesses. Name

three of them.

38.  Can you rely on the nutrition statistics on the websites of the

convenience food companies?

39.  Did Mr. Spurlock's 30-day fast food diet have any effects on his mind?

What were they?

40.  Name four things that society as a whole could do to reduce the obesity

epidemic. (Don't list things that an individual can do, but only list what

society as a whole can do.)

Discussion Questions:

THE ISSUE OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

1.   Most people know that convenience food (CF) is loaded with salt, sugar

42

and fat. They have heard that CF is a substantial factor in causing the obesity

epidemic which sickens and kills millions every year. Some of them know

that in the U.S., the obesity epidemic is the second leading cause of

preventable death. List the facts that affect the answer to the following

question: When a consumer eats fast food from a restaurant like McDonalds

or Burger King or buys convenience food in a store, who is responsible for

the deterioration in the consumer's health caused by eating that food? Is it

the consumer or is it the company that runs the restaurant? Suggested

Response: Start by asking the students what they think the facts are. Write

their suggestions on the board using a T chart summarizing the facts. Have

students write the details of the factors in their notebooks.

The list should include at least the following facts. Students might come up

with more. Write the underlined headings on the appropriate side of the T

chart. Note that some of the facts may go on both sides of the T chart.

(1) Consumer Decides -- People are not forced to eat convenience food or to

go into a fast food restaurant.

(2) Advertising/Marketing -- Convenience food manufacturers and fast food

43

restaurants try to sell as much food as they can. They use a number of

marketing tactics including advertising aimed at children, pricing structures

aimed at getting people to purchase food they don't need (a good example is

super sizing, the increase in portion sizes for just a small increase in price),

and advertising aimed at subconscious urges and desires (like the desire to

be cool and with the "in crowd").

(3) Nondisclosure -- Convenience food manufacturers often do not fully

disclose the dangers of the foods they serve. Frequently they lie and

dissemble to hide how unhealthy their food really is.

(4) Ersatz Food -- Convenience food manufacturers manipulate the food to

make it taste better, to make it less expensive, and to add to its shelf life in

ways that make the food more dangerous and less healthy.

(5) Cheap -- CF is often cheap and there is a benefit to consumers in having

inexpensive food available to them.

(6) Tasty -- CF often tastes good and consumers like that.

44

(7) Profits -- The CF companies make a large profit, hundreds of millions of

dollars.

If the discussion stalls, the questions set out below might get the discussion

going again.

A.   If the industry creates the desire for the product through advertising,

isn't it responsible for what happens when people try to satisfy that desire?

B.   Advertising plays upon people psychologically in ways that are not

immediately apparent to adults and to children, especially young children.

Shouldn't the industry which puts out that advertising and tries to profit from

it, pay for some of the collateral damage?

C.   The convenience food companies have not been up front in their

advertising about the dangers their products present: the calories, the trans

fat, the saturated fat, the sugar, and the salt. For example, it is known that

trans fats clog arteries and cause heart disease. The trans fat in convenience

food is all man-made. A chemical process is used to convert unsaturated fat

to saturated fat. If a fast food restaurant advertises heavily, trying to get

people to buy its product, claiming that it tastes good, and then puts trans

fats into it to increase shelf life, doesn't that restaurant have a responsibility

45

to warn the consumer that there are substances in the product that may be

harmful? Is this also true of convenience food makers put high amounts of

salt, sugar, or fat in the food?

D.   What about the fact that convenience food companies lie about the

health effects of their food? Remember what Mr. Spurlock found when he

tested the data posted on the McDonalds web site?

E.   The final decision to purchase is made by the consumer. While the

company creates the desire, no one forces the consumer to act on it.

F.  What about this class, people who have seen the movie and had this

lesson. The class has been warned and the students in the class are now

educated consumers. If one of the class goes into a fast food restaurant,

who's responsible now?

G.   No one has time to check out the health benefits of all the food that they

eat. How can the consumer be held responsible?

2. Once the list includes at least the seven factors described above, ask for an

answer to the question of who is responsible, the consumer or the company.

46

Suggested Response: TWM suggests that the strongest answer is that there is

responsibility on both sides. After about five minutes, cut off discussion of

this issue and pose the next question.

3. Tell students to imagine their class is a congressional committee with the

responsibility to recommend what the government should do to fight the

obesity epidemic and to regulate the fast food industry. Tell the class that

this will be somewhat like the government's campaign to reduce smoking.

The plan should be based on the extent of responsibility that the consumer or

the industry bears for the harm caused by the eating at places like

McDonald's and Burger King. It should be practical. It should be effective.

Suggested Response: Here are some ideas about general ways to approach

the problem. The class can add to this list and must determine how best to

implement these ideas. Possible solutions might include:

o a sales tax on fast food to pay for PR campaigns to limit consumption,

to defray the increased medical costs of those who eat fast food, or to

subsidize fresh food production; the problem with this approach is that

it would be very hard to determine which restaurants served fast food,

so the tax would have to be on all restaurants;

47

o limits on restaurant hours;

o limits on the age of customers;

o requirements that warning labels be placed on food wrapping and

menus;

o requirements that alternative healthy choices be offered;

o prohibition on advertising or limits on advertising, such as limits on

advertising directed at children;

o creation of a really well-designed PR campaign to convince people

stop eating convenience food;

o prohibitions on super sizing;

o limits on the calorie content, salt content and fat content; and

o limits on the types of foods that can be sold, e.g., all meat must have a

low fat content; all meals must have a salad, a cooked green

vegetable, and cheese or milk.

48

5.  The fast food industry spends billions each year in advertising. Should

this be prohibited or limited in some way? Does your answer change for

advertising geared toward children? Should Ronald McDonald be banned?

Suggested Response: A good discussion will include the following: Points

for regulation or prohibition of advertising by fast food restaurants: It has

been determined that too much fast food (even a moderate amount of fast

food) is bad for your health. It is especially bad for children. The companies

use advertising to create the desire for their food. The techniques used by

marketers and advertisers are often subtle and based on subconscious drives

that we are not even aware of. They do not disclose what is in the food (like

trans fats and HFCS) and they don't warn of the dangers of eating their food.

For this reason, the advertising should be regulated to require adequate

disclosures and warnings about the dangers of fast food. The argument for

prohibiting advertisements aimed at children is much stronger than for

49

Write each suggestion on the board. When the creativity of the class

has been exhausted or the time allotted for this part of the exercise has

been consumed, have the class debate whether the proposed solution

is just, practical to implement, and effective. Then let the class vote on

which regulations to adopt.

advertising aimed at adults. Children, especially young children, are very

susceptible to advertising because, in their innocence, they can't critically

evaluate what they are hearing and seeing. For this reason we need the

government to come in and regulate advertising fast food and perhaps

prohibit advertisements aimed at children. Points against regulation or

prohibition of advertising fast food restaurants: If you distort the

marketplace by too much regulation, the marketplace loses its efficiency. It

is up to people to decide what they put in their bodies. It is not up to the

government to tell them what to eat. (Note that the First Amendment does

not stop the government from regulating the advertisement of commercial

products. In other words, if society decides that advertising a product needs

to be regulated for an important public good, the First Amendment does not

prohibit that regulation. This is the basis for limits on tobacco advertising.)

6.  Should fast food outlets be invited onto campus to sell food to high

school students? Suggested Response: The general consensus in the country

is that this is not a good idea because it promotes the consumption of fast

food by children. However, kids may disagree. This is a great question for

debate.

50

7.  What about selling sodas or sugared drinks at school through vending

machines? Should that be allowed or prohibited? Suggested Response: See

response to preceding question.

8.  By offering kids convenience food in the food line at the cafeteria are we

setting them up to make bad choices or giving them an opportunity to make

good choices? Suggested Response: The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

When offered fast food, kids will usually take it.

9.  Should people stop eating meat and poultry? Justify your answer.

Suggested Response: People disagree on this. A good discussion will raise

the following points. Points against eating meat: It's better for our health.

Meat contains fat and many contaminants. It's better for the environment.

Meat production takes a tremendous toll on the environment. A meat-free

diet is better for the animals. They won't be tortured and then killed. It would

help eliminate world hunger. Feeding animals grain and then eating the meat

of the animal wastes a lot of grain. The animal moves around using up the

food energy and a lot of grain goes to create the non-edible parts of the

animal. It takes at least seven pounds of grain to make one pound of meat.

World hunger could probably be eliminated if all the grain fed to animals

51

was made available to people. Points for eating meat: Meat, milk, and

cheese taste good. They are a good source of protein and calcium and some

people believe they need it for proper nutrition. If it was really dangerous,

the government wouldn't let it on the market. Rebuttal: Vegans (who eat no

animal products and eggs) and vegetarians (who do not eat meat or poultry

but will consume dairy products) live long and healthy lives. Neither meat

nor dairy products are necessary for good nutrition. With respect to the

argument that if it was really dangerous the government would do

something, the answer is that the government is beholden to the agricultural

and convenience food interests. The government didn't stop the tobacco

companies for decades even when it knew cigarettes were killing hundreds

of thousands each year. We can't trust the government to take care of us

when there are powerful industries lobbying to stop government action. And

so the only reason the proponents of eating meat are left with is the fact that

meat, milk, and cheese taste good. This means that people are hurting their

health, contributing to the destruction of the environment, and killing

billions of innocent animals simply for pleasure when they eat. [Note that

the author of this Lesson Plan is a vegan and believes that people can get

good nutrition without meat and dairy and should not eat food from animals

because it inflicts needless suffering.]

52

1.  Can you really take care of yourself if you don't pay attention to what you eat?

Suggested Response: No. You are what you eat. The food that you put into your

body is all that your body has to replenish and grow its cells.

(Do

what you are supposed to do; Persevere: keep on trying!; Always do your best; Use

self-control; Be

self-disciplined;

Think before you

act -- consider

the

consequences;

Be accountable

for your choices)

See Discussion Question #1.

1.  When an adolescent (ages 11 - 18) makes a decision about how to take care of

53

Social-Emotional Learning Discussion Questions:

TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF

Moral-Ethical Emphasis Discussion Questions (Character

Counts)

Discussion Questions Relating to Ethical Issues will facilitate

the use of this film to teach ethical principles and critical

viewing. Additional questions are set out below.

RESPONSIBILITYBridges to Reading:

his or her body, including weight and nutrition, who are the people who will be

affected by this decision? (We call them stakeholders) Note that some of the

stakeholders may not yet be alive. Suggested Response: Stakeholders include the

adolescents themselves (that means you!), spouses, siblings, children, parents,

employers, and friends. All of these people are affected by how well a person takes

care of him or herself. These decisions are especially important for adolescents

because they are growing and laying the foundation for their future health.

Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morton

Spurlock, 2005, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Mr. Spurlock's style is breezy and

irreverent and will appeal to young adults. In his book he repeats and supplements

the information provided in the film. A few sections give some of the background

behind the production of the movie. TeachWithMovies.com recommends this book

highly.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, 2001, Harper Perennial -- This is the

pioneering best selling classic. The fast food industry hasn't changed much since

2001.

Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food by Eric

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Schlosser and Charles Wilson, 2006, Houghton, Mifflin, Boston -- Designed for

adolescents, this book updates Fast Food Nation.

The Jungle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Sinclair Lewis with a forward by

Eric Schlosser. This was the first exposé of the meat industry. President Theodore

Roosevelt read this book and was interested to find out if the charges made by Mr.

Lewis were true. He appointed a commission to investigate and they reported that

it was. Outraged, T.R. pushed legislation through Congress trying to reform the

industry. However, many abusive practices remain.

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg

Critser, 2003, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York -- This is an excellent and

readable book.

55