'Not From Concentrate'

Reading Journal Entry

• The article I read was Freshly Squeezed: The Truth About Orange Juice in Boxes by Alissa Hamilton
• The article was about the process of making boxes of orange juice that are labeled 'Not from Concentrate'
• I was never much of an orange juice fan, mainly because of the after taste it gives off. After reading this article, I know why. The manufacturers who produce boxed orange juices are completely stripping whole oranges of anything that could potentially make them go bad in less than a year. And all while doing this, they're taking away the flavor of the oranges all together. So in order to get a flavor and scent that consumers approve of, they hire flavor and fragrance companies to create something similar to a real orange. Disgusting, right?
• The one thing I noticed about the writer's strategy was the way she stayed biased throughout the entire article until the end, where she suggested eating an actual Valencia orange in the morning to save yourself from ingesting chemicals and drinking what some would consider 'fake orange juice'.
• Because almost all of the American population drinks orange juice first thing in the morning, I think it's important for everyone to read this article or at least research the topic themselves; ignorance isn't always bliss

'Pink slime'

Reading Journal Entry

• The article I read was "'Pink Slime' distracts from food safety fight" by Brent Jones.
• The article talked about how the recent controversy of 'pink slime' blew up all over the media and distracted the government from focusing on more important issues involving the food industry.
• One thing I did like about the writer's technique was his use of bullet points. I feel that if you're really trying to get a point across without adding too much unnecessary information, bulleting is the way to go. Another thing I thought was a good idea was his use of hyperlinks. This is good for the reader to see sources of the information that the writer is relaying, and to find out more information on specific details of the article.
• I do recommend that people read this article mainly because the controversy of 'pink slime' was so widespread throughout the media, that people need to realize there's many more problems with the food industry. Another reason why is because the article points out that this 'pink slime', although a gross thought, is proven to be more safe than most other raw meat. 

Lab-Made Meat; Ethical or Not?

Reading Journal Entry

• I read the article How long will it be before you can eat meat that was made in a lab? by Michael Spector
• The article is about how ever since the discovery of stem cells in mice, scientists are able to make meat in a test tube. The article questions the boundaries humans will have to be willing to cross once we start to realize how dangerous our consumption of meat really is the ourselves and the planet.
• One thing that came to my attention was the amount of energy and resources the meat industry uses. According to the article, "The global livestock industry is responsible for nearly twenty per cent of humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Cattle consume nearly ten per cent of the world’s freshwater resources, and eighty per cent of all farmland is devoted to the production of meat." I never stopped to think that as each week passes, there are millions of people eating meat every single day; it doesn't stop, just like anything else really. So when you think about it, the idea of science-produced meat is economically genius, although the thought of it does make me feel a bit queasy. There will come a day where the world will have to consider this idea, and it's all our fault.
  
• Before reading this article, I didn't know that these were actual experiments that were going on. In the article, the author described how the scientists would go about creating this meat. " In-vitro meat can be made by placing a few cells in a nutrient mixture that helps them proliferate. As the cells begin to grow together, forming muscle tissue, they are attached to a biodegradable scaffold. There the tissue can be stretched and molded into food, which could, in theory, be sold, cooked, and consumed like any processed meat." It then goes to say that nowadays there's a good percentage of food that we consume that is either over-processed or completely made in a lab, so what's wrong with making meat in a lab? But as I said before, the thought of my piece of steak or the bacon I eat in the morning was made in a test tube of cells and nutrients.. Makes me want to gag.
• I would definitely recommend everyone read this article because it's a look into what we should expect to happen in the future if we don't stop having such a bad effect on the enviornment.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Reading Journal Entry 

• I watched Michael Pollan's interview on ABC's Good Morning America
• The interview was about Michael's book "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual". He gathered reader's tips and rules for buying, preparing and eating food, and put the most important one's in a book with illustrated pictures by Maira Kulman. 
• One of the rules was "Always order the small". Michael said that when McDonald's first started out, their only available soda size was 7 ounces. Nowadays a small is 16 ounces, that's over double the amount of what it used to be. I work at Starbucks Coffee shop and our small, or "tall", is 12 ounces. It's funny to watch first-time customer's faces when they see how tiny the small cups are, and they usually end up upgrading to the next size, a 16 ounce cup, but that's not the biggest we have. Our largest sized cold cup is a whopping 31 ounces, it's only available for tea and brew iced coffee, but you would not believe how many people ask to get sugary frappachinos or even some of our not-so-healthy lattes in them. So I can relate to this rule because of the overwhelming amount of people that don't know how unhealthy they're being by just ordering a drink.
• He makes a point about how the way we eat is what's been passed down from generation to generation in our own families. The things we've learned are better than anything that science will ever discover because, when you think about it, before the FDA was founded and before all of the diet fads, people ate just fine. There was no science reports about finding causes of cancers or diseases in food, but because of the new age and way of farming we have to worry about those things.
• I would say this is a really informative video to watch if you're a lover of food. There are tips of how to better enjoy your meals, what to avoid, and rules that you should eat by.