Many of these I already knew about, but numbers 7 and 10 surprised me a lot.
Hey I eat an egg every day. I feel a little bit better now.
Numbers 1-3 I think are the majority of the problem, and they're all the same problem, really: sugar is too cheap, and it's force fed to everybody. I agree that number 7 is interesting. I recently started dating a girl who has celiac, so I've been learning a bit more about wheat-free food. It's really not that hard to avoid altogether. That said, I have no idea if replacing wheat flour with rice flour or whatever else is any healthier for the average person who doesn't have celiac. In the end the thing that matters most is calorie intake. The physics of eating too many calories are pretty simple, even if the biochemistry is really complicated. My hope for the future is that the food industry will have a rude awakening just like tobacco did in the 90s. On a side note, I love eggs. And butter. And I have about 10% body fat. People should eat more of both. They're delicious, and completely healthy. I've been eating two sunny side up eggs (of course cooked in a liberal amount of butter and topped with an even more liberal amount of cheese) on toast for breakfast recently. It's a really great way to start the day.
I found number 7 interesting mainly because of modern dwarf wheat. I'm sure it has become so popular because of drought/disease/pest resistance, high yields, etc., but look at the sacrifices we make all the time for convenience. This time it's nutritional value. I recently began to taste a difference when eating non-organic meat, ESPECIALLY chicken. It tastes terrible to me- there's a very off putting flavor there that I can't put my finger on, but it totally grosses me out. As a result, I don't order chicken when I'm out to eat anymore unless it is sauced/spiced beyond recognition, and I eat less meat because I now spend the extra money on better quality meat. Re: your side note- I too love eggs and butter, especially with toast. I prefer my eggs poached if they're fresh enough, but I will always eat them fried (in butter, of course.)
I'm taking a Sociology of Food class this semester which has covered most of these. We've had to read a pretty diverse amount of material. One thing covered though was excerpts from Marion Nestle books. In the readings she details instances of various members of the Food Industry influencing policy as well as general guidelines for health and nutrition published by the government, which have in turn influenced the public opinion on what's considered a healthy diet. If anyone is interested I can compile the readings into on PDF and post it later on when I get home.
I'd totally be into that, but I understand if you don't just want to compile your readings into a PDF for one person.
Here you go dude, I just included all the course reading. The "textbook" is omnivores dilemma with the other pdf's filling in gaps the books leaves. The word document is the order in which we've been reading things in class. The articles in particular I mentioned are (4) and (5). Hope you enjoy it.