The Book Diet for a New America - Research Paper Example

HLTH 1020 Foundations of Nutrition Project: Nutrition Perspectives (100 points) Objective: Discover different ways of approaching nutrition, how it impacts our daily lives and what choices we can make to improve our health and our world 1. Choose a book or documentary from the following list (25 points): Ans. The book selected is "Diet for a New America by John Robbins" 2. Write a paper including the following: 1. Give a summary of the book/documentary (25 points) The book "Diet for a New America" is an eye opener as it has shown the way for a perfect approach to adopt healthy living, unlike other books which provide the readers with various recepies to be lean and thin, this book is remarkable as it revolutionizes the eating habits by switching over to the vegetarian diet. This is an imperative thought as it has given consideration to moral and ethical values as well as advantages of being vegetarian. The book provides details of truth persisting with meat eating and highlights the fact that by avoiding meat eating, various health related predicaments such as high cholesterol levels that is responsible for unhealthy heart condition which may lead to high blood pressure and stroke, cancers of various tissues and organs, deformity of bones due to excessive body weight, osteoporosis, hypoglycemia even after consuming the food, anemia, diabetes, stones in kidney or gallbladder, ulcers in various parts of body, multiple sclerosis and asthma could be prevented. The reader is bound to change the eating habit from non-vegetarian diet to healthy vegetarian diet. The book highlights the importance of vegetarian diet intake by focusing on issues that arise due to social, economical and personal quandary due to ill-health. Human beings must care for other inhabitants of the planet by avoiding non-vegetarian diet, this is a step towards healthy life. The author gave utmost importance to the vegetarian diet to lead a happy and contented life and grow to be healthy grandparents free from health dilemmas. The author wrote that it is the prime responsibility of every individual to create an environment that is healthy for coming generations too which is possible by consuming eatables that initiate good health. 2. Which book/documentary did you choose? Why? (5 points) The book selected is "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins. The book is selected as it provides a new insight to the Americans about their diet and diet style and generates concern about the environment and its conservation; animals and their protection for ethical and moral reasons. The book is carefully and methodologically written and American diet is well researched. The author took efforts to understand the imperative issue as non-vegetarian diet generates health hazards , non-vegetarian nutrition is poorly appreciated in actual sense. People eat what is pleasing to tongue and do not realize to eat what is good to keep them fit and healthy in all senses. 3. Who is the author? What is their nutrition background? (5 points) John Robbins (D.O.B= 26/10/1947), author from America. He is a son of Irma and Baskin Robbins who run an ice-cream parlor. He had different opinion about the facts of nutrition. He left his fathers ice-cream parlor to promote plant based products in the diet for the betterment of self, society as well as for the environment. In 2001 he published his book "The Food Revolution" provides details about the GM (genetically modified) food, organic food items as well as factory farming. Morgan Spurlock presented a short interview with John Robbins in his documentary "Super Size Me". Thus, the author is a well known public figure and people like to read and implement his research and findings to stay healthy. Besides "Diet for a New America", John Robbins has the following publications on nutrition and therefore he is well experienced in the field of nutrition- "May All Be Fed: Diet For a New World", published in 1992. "Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing", published in 1996. "The Awakened Heart: Meditations on Finding Harmony in a Changing World", published in 1997. "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World", published in 2001. "Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World’s Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples", published in 2006. "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less", published in 2010. 4. When was this book written/documentary produced? Do you think the themes are still applicable today? Why or why not? (10 points). The book was produced in the year 1998. It is still applicable today as the book is widely read and appreciated. It is highly engrossing and is eye-opener for personal life decisions. Diet is the integral part of our routine and if it is healthy everything is going to be fine but if the diet is faulty it is going to affect our systems drastically. It is a book that highlights the fact that well-being of every individual is directly linked with the progress of fundamentally novel responsiveness to non-human existence. 5. Compare and contrast 3 topics in the book/documentary to your textbook. (Example: servings of fruits and vegetables recommended daily) (15 points) Eating fruits and vegetables on the daily basis, it should be part of our daily life. They are healthy and do not cause side effects instead of taking meat to fulfill protein requirement. Not to kill animals for food due to ethical and moral contemplations, as killing animals for food not only generates a feeling of anguish and temperament to slaughter anyone, but it is also unethical. Human rights towards environment and other inhabitants of the planet do not allow us to kill anyone for food even animals must not be killed for food. 6. What did you learn about nutrition from completing this assignment? (15 points) a. What new idea/point of view did you learn about? After reading the book "Diet for a New America by John Robbins", I could understand that enhanced industrialized conditions to meet the growing demands of food, methods adopted to process meat possess devastating implications on health. Methods encompassing de-beaking the birds, tail-docking, dehorning and castration of animals are absolutely unethical and brutal. Lot of pesticides are used in generating animal feeds, animals are reared with hormone therapy to promote fast growth, besides these, tonics, sedatives or aesthetics and antibiotics are also given to the animals which gets accumulated in consumers (human) body. Eventually, these chemicals turn out to have deleterious consequences in the form of arteriosclerosis, cancer of various organs, bone deformation, osteoporosis, onset of premature puberty, loss of memory and other degenerative diseases. Thus, book motivates individuals to adopt healthy and vegetarian dietary habits. b. Will you incorporate the themes/ideas you learned about in your own life? Why or why not? Yes, definitely I would like to incorporate good and healthy eating habits in my life to stay away from all the predicaments induced by animal food or meat. Works Cited Robbins, J. "Diet for a New America". 2nd edn. HJ Kramer. 1998. Read More