SE5 & EE2

Short Essay5 

Irregular Breakfast Eating

Do you know how long it is been since your last breakfast? Many college students spend their morning like this: after their alarm clocks wake them up, they always struggle for ten or twenty minutes; they rub their tired and sleepy eyes, getting up out of their bed. Because every second counts, some students rush out of their dormitory without breakfast. The other students, who remind themselves to eat breakfast, always open their empty refrigerator and then close it, rushing off to class.

A study of Krisha Thiagaraja and Mohammad R.Torabi indicates that about 37.2% of young people between 19 and 29 years of age seldom eat breakfast. Most of these young people said the main reasons for not eating breakfast was they do not have enough time (64%) and the others said they did not feel hungry in the morning (30.3%) (9). Indeed, irregular breakfast eating or always skipping breakfast is always associated with being overweight, the low frequency of health promoting behavior, and even high possibility of cardiometabolic risk.

In their study, irregular breakfast eating and health status among adolescents in Taiwan, Rea-Jeng, Edward K Wang, et.al. investigate 1,609 adolescents and come to the conclusion that irregular breakfast eating is connected to being overweight. Among the total participant students, “28.8% were overweight and nearly one quarter (23.6%) reported eating breakfast irregularly during schooldays” (7). Skipping breakfast is common for students during schooldays and they often eat high calorie and unhealthy snacks during break. Comparing the overweight rate between students who have regular breakfast eating and those who have irregular breakfast eating, their findings show that students with regular breakfast eating had a lower risk of being overweight due to less snacks eaten between meals.

Many studies show that skipping breakfast is widespread among college students, which is also an indicator of health promoting behavior. Krisha Thiagarajah and Mohammad R. Torabi did a study called “Irregular Breakfast Eating and Associated Health Behaviors” in 2009. They investigated 1,257 college students in a Midwestern university in the U.S.A, and found nearly one-fifth of them stated that they never ate breakfast (4). Compared to regular breakfast eaters, their logical analysis indicates that students who always skip breakfast are more likely to sleep 5.5 hours or less. “Sleep deprivation would have caused them to be tired the next morning and, thus, lead to skipping breakfast” (5). Not only that, breakfast skippers are less likely to work out in contrast to those non-skippers, since eating breakfast can improve the energy intake to do extra physical activities. Moreover, students who always skip breakfast have a high consumption of soda and other sugared beverages. Similar to some breakfast skippers who nibble snakes between meals, some others have to compensate their calories from the non-nutritive beverages (9). Eating breakfast, thus, is associated with healthy behavior.

            If the potential possibility of obesity and the short-term unhealthy lifestyle does not catch your attention due to your academic pressure, a longitudinal study about the relationship between cardiometabolic risk and skipping breakfast has to get your attention. Kylie J Smith, et.al. conclude that to promote breakfast eating is an important public health message on account of cardiometabolic health (1). They found that people who skipped breakfast in adulthood but not in childhood are similar to those who skipped breakfast at both time. For instance, most of them have higher insulin and LDL cholesterol concentrations, which are contributors to detrimental effects on cardiometabolic health, than regular breakfast eaters. Their study shows that eating breakfast is a persistent factor in your daily life. The cardiometabolic rick will directly influence your diet quality in the future.

            Among the three studies, the key solution to promote college students to eat breakfast is to propose a healthy lifestyle among youth. Yang and Wang believe that college has the main duty to influence students and families’ attitudes regarding healthy breakfast and exercise. To encourage students and staff have time to eat breakfast regularly should be considered a significant health promotion strategy on a university campus. They could decrease breakfast skippers through providing quick and nutritious food (9). However, the body is one’s own. Don’t forget you are in charge of yourself. A good suggestion or always the first food you should eat for breakfast is a cup of cereal with skim milk. For starters of breakfast eating, a cup of cereal is quick, always less than five minutes to prepare, and healthy, because it has fiber to lower cholesterol. For girls who always worry about their weight, skim milk also help you to lose weight.

     It is widely accepted that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially during growth. Regular breakfast eating is a crucial indicator of a healthy lifestyle and healthy physical and mental status, because it provides people the daily supply of nutrients. Whether you are a student or an office worker, to get up early every day for 15 minutes and to enjoy a good breakfast should be one of the “required courses” in daily life. To develop a habit usually takes 21 days. Thus, why not try to set your alarm clock and to get up early for 15 minutes tomorrow and to enjoy a nutrient breakfast? Eating breakfast is a good beginning to develop a healthy lifestyle because paying attention to your health is always the best investment.

Work Cited

Yang, Rea-Jeng, Edward K Wang, Yue-Sheng Hsieh, and Mei-Yen Chen. “Irregular

breakfast eating and health status among adolescens in Taiwan.” BMC Public

Health (Dec.2006): 6:295. Print.

Thiagarajah, Krisha, and Mohammad R. Torabi. “Irregular Breakfast Eating and

Associated Health Behaviors: A Pilot Study Among College Students.” The

Health Educator (Spring.2009): vol.41, No.1. Print.

Smith, Kylie J, Seana L Gall, Sarah A McNaughton, Leigh Blizzard, Terence Dwyer,

and Alison J Venn. “Skipping breakfast: longitudinal associations with

cardiometabolic risk factors in the Childhood Determinants of Adult Health

Study.” AJCN (Oct.2010). Print.

 Extend Essay2

Safety is Paramount: an Eater’s Manifesto

Love and enjoyment of food always mean the same thing to me. Safety is paramount before the taste. From chemical additives in powdered milk to “toxic capsule”, food safety issues have aroused panic and major concerns about people’s lives and health in China. In their white paper, Assuring Food Safety and Quality: Guidelines for Strengthening National Food Control Systems, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) define food safety “as food that is free from all hazards, whether chronic or acute, that may make food injurious to the health of the consumer”(1). As a pursuer of a healthy diet, I have always believed that food safety is the foundation of diet before people can proceed further. In this essay, I will discuss unsafe food in terms of cooking and eating. I will also provide suggestions for people to avoid these unsafe foods.

In recent years, news about food safety issues has flooded the mainstream media. Food is not only a means to sustain and enjoy life, but also a medium for transmitting hazards, disease, and death. These diseases are called foodborne illness, or food poisoning. It indicates any illness that results from eating contaminated food (Hillers 18), such as botulism caused by improperly canned low-acid food. For people who always cook at home, Val Hillers provides five suggestions during cooking in his journal article, “You Can Prevent Foodborne Illness.” These are: to practice good personal hygiene, to cook foods adequately, to keep foods at a safe temperature, to pay attention to easily perishable foods, and to keep separate cooked foods and ready-to-cook foods.

To begin with, Hillers suggests that people should practice good personal hygiene during the cooking process. For instance, before people handle food, it is important to wash hands with soap and running water. If someone is ill with diarrhea, they should only prepare food for themselves (6). Secondly, people should cook foods adequately. As an illustration, people should “cook fish until flesh is opaque and flakes easily with a fork” and people should “cook eggs until both the yolk and white are firm” (7). Moreover, keeping foods at a safe temperature is also important. For example, all perishable foods should be stored at or below 40 F whereas hot foods should be kept at or above 140 F (8). People should pay more attention to foods that are easily perishable, including foods of animal origin and raw plant foods (18). The fourth suggestion is that people should avoid food and water from unsafe sources. “Using (Use) water from a safe water supply for drinking and rinsing fresh produce” is often cited as an example (10). Last but not least, since people always forget to avoid cross-contamination during the cooking process, Hillers suggests people should keep separated cooked foods and ready-to-cook foods, especially for raw meat and seafood (16). However, these are only the basic things about food safety.

Despite the cooking process at home, there are still many food safety issues that are hard to avoid and even hard for people to imagine. Such examples might be given easily. In Changsha, Hunan Province, more than 286 people show the same symptoms, including heart palpitations, nausea, and convulsions after a wedding banquet. Doctors at the No. 3 Xiangya Hospital state that the blamed pork has been contaminated with stimulant, a steroid that makes pigs grow faster and leaner (Demick para.3). Since 2008, six children died and more than 300,000 children were sickened by melamine-tainted baby formula (Para.5). Furthermore, in Shanghai, a popular brand was using dye to make cheap wheat buns and make them look like the more expensive black rice buns. In Jiangsu province, farmers state that their watermelons had exploded "like landmines" after they used too much growth hormone in order to increase the size of the watermelons (para.13). All of these cases indicate that bigger, cheaper, and faster have become the targets of food production. It is important for people to avoid these illegal additives.

There is a broad consensus that China is the nation in which people attach the great importance to cooking and eating. The Chinese government has enacted an ever-more-strict policy to ensure food safety in 2009. The law focuses on the issue of food additives. It states that no additives will be allowed in the food production process unless they can be proven both necessary and safe (Demick para.7). However, food safety scandals happen every year and become increasingly frequent and bizarre. Food safety scandals have caused a panic in society. Every time a food safety scandal happens, it will bring a new and strange term to people. People have a great mistrust of food production because it is difficult to identify illegal food additives.

Recalling my own experiences, on one hand, I was forced to know many new terms, such as Sudan Red1, melamine, and steroid spiked pork, due to the unscrupulous merchants. I have to ask whether there is really so much poisonous food; or do we really not have safe food to eat. On the other hand, the fast pace of life leads to my irregular diet, resulting it is inevitable for me to intake snack during free time. It is commonly known that snacks are always combined with a large number of additives and some of these additives are illegal.

I remember I was particularly keen on jelly when I was in primary school. I used to taste the different colors of jelly; however, I did not know they are harmful to brain development until my mom found these words in its food packaging bag, such as “charming red,” “lemon chrome yellow,” and “bright blue.” From then on, my mom forbade me to eat any jelly. Another example is that the director of class forbade us to eat instant noodles before the graduation examination in junior high school. She said instant noodles are harmful to students’ brains due to the fact that a packet of instant noodles can contain up to 25 types of food additives. Common are citric acid and sodium glutamate, which may lead to low calcium syndrome among students. In general, people who buy snacks have never seen the list of ingredients in the food packaging bags. Many people are familiar with nutrients in the food additive tables and used to ignoring some terms they feel strange. They only see the date of production and prices and they do not know which things they cannot eat.

Michael Pollan provides a useful suggestion in his essay, Unhappy Meals. He emphasizes the importance of rejecting food which contains unfamiliar, unpronounceable, and more than five food additives. “None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed” (11). As for myself, I never paid attention to food additives before unsafe food news has exposure to society and I once knew little about the secrets of food additives. However, after I did some research about different types of food additives, the relationship between some food and I have changed gradually. As for myself, access to the production process and the ingredient list of a food help me become a better and healthier eater. I used to eat snack based on their appealing appearance and delicious taste; however, now I begin to define and study each snack before I taste them. Changes can be seen from I would judge whether the food is healthy or not. I would study and compare the difference of ingredient lists. Some terms of food additives are no longer strange to me.

For instance, I will not eat food with color additives, flavorings and sweeteners, and food preservatives. Quinoline yellow, or E104, is a good example. It is easily found in the ingredient list of soft drinks, sauces, candies, and ice creams. It is banned in Australia, Japan, Norway and the U.K. due to leading to potential liver cancer (Gonen 1). Moreover, Sulphur Dioxide, or E220, can be found in many potato products. Even though it is not banned anywhere, it will reduce vitamin B1 and cause fetal abnormalities and DNA damage to the human body (2). Some additives may have medicinal value but most of them have potential harm. In addition, since dairy products, edible oils, seasonal foods and alcoholic beverages are among the major catalog of unsafe foods in China, decreasing the frequency of eating them and choosing reliable brands are both important for me when I return home.

Moreover, since snack accounted for the largest intake of additives in daily life, it is essential for people to decrease the snack eating frequency. Eating an organic breakfast is a good solution to avoid eating snack. Although it is widely accepted that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the study of Krisha Thiagaraja and Mohammad R.Torabi, The Irregular Breakfast Eating and Associated Health Behaviors in 2009, indicating that nearly one-fifth of young people between 19 and 29 years of age stated that they never ate breakfast (9). I consider eating organic breakfast regularly as the most significant food safety promotion strategy because skipping breakfast is always associated with more snack eating. Compared to regular healthy breakfast eaters, the logical analysis of Thiagaraja and Torabi show that students who always skip breakfast are more likely to eat snacks. Their finding indicates that breakfast skippers will nibble snakes between meals; some others have to compensate their calories from the non-nutritive beverages. Thus, students with regular and healthy breakfast eating have a lower risk of illness due to less snack eating between meals (9). There are a lot of food additives in unhealthy and non-nutritive snack and beverages; many people eat snack due to their irregular eating times, thus, eating organic breakfast is a good way to ensure food safety.

Indeed, I am very envious when I see other food lovers talk about the importance of a nutritious diet and their delicacy manifesto. Because it is hard for them to imagine that “What else can I eat” can become a person’s pet phrases in a country. My cousin is 1 year old now. My sister tries to stop breastfeeding and decides to feed him formula milk. However, China’s milk scandal leads her to suspect the quality of milk powder. She asks me to buy formula milk from the United States and bring it back to China. It is sorrowful that the food quality, or even children’s food quality cannot be assured.

Solving food safety issues that are currently going on is the public polls in China. It should be taken to survey the broad opinions as to find the solution for food safety problems. I propose food safety is the foundation of eating because it relates to the future of a nation. If dairy companies can put poison in baby’s milk and pharmaceutical factories can recover expired drugs with high price and reproduced, then all other healthy eating promotion programs and all other eating recommendations are meaningless. With the rapid economic development in contemporary China, to ensure food safety is corresponding to sustainable development in terms of issues about human health.

Overall, rejecting unsafe food through paying attention to the cooking process, reading the list of ingredients, and eating breakfast, is my eater’s manifesto in order to pursue a healthy lifestyle. At least one thing can be determined is that paying attention to your health is always the best investment.

Work Cited

Assuring food safety and quality: guidelines for strengthening national food control

systems. Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and

World Health Organization, 2003.Print.

Demick, Barbara. “Food safety gives China a headache.” Chicago Tribune. 2011. Print.

Gonen, Julia. “Food Additives.” Drjuliagonen. Web. 23.May.2013.

Thiagarajah, Krisha, and Mohammad R. Torabi. “Irregular Breakfast Eating

and Associated Health Behaviors: A Pilot Study Among College Students.”

The Health Educator (Spring.2009): vol.41, No.1. Print.

Pollan, Michael. Michael, Pollan. "Unhappy Meal." The New York Magazine. 2007.

Print.

Hillers, Val. “You Can Prevent Foodborne Illness.” Pacific Northwest Publications.

April,2009. Print.