Professional Documents
Culture Documents
3. Explain the impact that the food industry has on human food
choices and the subsequent relationship to health and disease at
the individual, societal, and environmental level.
The food industry is centered on their own business values, which most
importantly is focused on manipulating the consumer to steer nutritional
choices towards the intended product. Advertising and interjection to
popular culture is undoubtedly an strong influence to the masses who
are receptive to daily life needs such as eating.
4. Provide examples of past and present nutrient and diet trends in
modern society and the positive and/or negative implications on
human health and the earths resources.
I remember back in the late 90s when my father used the Adkins diet,
which consisted of consuming additional protein and fewer
carbohydrates. In an uneducated theory, this diet rationalize that
excess protein would be eliminated naturally while simultaneously
supporting metabolic needs and reduction in carbohydrates would
promote weight loss. However, regular protein consumption in America
is also parallel with uncontrolled fat intake and other detrimental
nutrients.
6. Address diet and nutrient issues and concerns for weight control,
disease prevention, physical activity, food availability, and
biotechnology.
2. Reflect on how you thought about nutrition before you took this
course and how you think about it now that the course is over.
Have any of your assumptions or understandings changed? Why?
What assignments/activities/readings were influential in this
process? How will you approach (course topic) differently in the
future?
Kyle Delaney
HLTH 1020
Nutrition Perspectives
Research Paper
The inspiring outside medium as it relates to human nutrition is a news series from Vice News
that examined the use of Soylent, a total food replacement product (Merchant, 2013). The lead
reporter, Brian Merchant, interviews the key players of the Silicon Valley startup company that
is producing Soylent and making some ripples in how humankind perceives nutrition. The
founder and CEO is Rob Rhinehart, who was a software engineer and self-taught basic
nutritionist, combined his knowledge to create a basic nutrition cocktail for everyday use, which
became the product Soylent. Interestingly enough, his initial motivations were a familiar theme
to current culture; those who are too busy to make and eat food can be given a more time
effective option. Rhinehart also envisioned a more altruistic economic and environmental role by
providing a cheap food source to feed the growing population while not stressing the agricultural
demand.
The Vice news story enters when the Soylent company is beginning to ship initial orders to
customers after successfully crowdsourcing close to 1 million dollars in one month. While the
day Soylent diet while recording his progression via video diary and medical monitoring. As the
program explored the societal pros and cons of products like Soylent, the trial conducted by the
author gave a more personal perspective of what it is like to drink all your meals for a month
straight. To relate the themes from this video to my nutrition course, I will expand on four main
While the author Merchant was conducting the 30-day meal challenge, there emerged an issue of
the author feeling depressed and not wanting to engage socially with others, but this change in
psychosocial behavior was gradual over time. During the first week of using Soylent, Merchant
didnt mind drinking his daily Soylent meals. But by day 20, he smelled of Soylent, was
depressed, felt excluded by friends, and got sick from trying to drink alcohol socially. An
interesting observation from his video diary was the authors use of chewing gum to curb jaw
pain that arose from not using facial muscles to chew food.
Food is culture driven; and culture is driven by food. Eating influences start with our parents and
is shaped throughout childhood (Smith, 2015, p. 5). There is a common saying you are what
you eat; but this is more directed at the notion of health. I would also like to suggest that this
ideal can be said for ones sense of identity. The United States has often been call a melting pot
of culture or a picture mosaic, but it is in these distinct cultures where food, music, religion,
values combine to give each person a unique human experience. The process of eating food gives
us direct pleasure, either by the feeling of being satiated or more directly by a means of our
indulgences (Smith, 2015, p. 7). Food also provides a setting for socialization and sense of
community that is not much different from attending church, going to your favorite concert, or
even taking to your best friend on the phone. While I had previously given recognition of food
being a strong social and cultural tool, I had not imagined that such a void would be created by
altering our eating behaviors. I was not surprised that the author began daydreaming of food by
day 17, but I was surprised by his change in mood by becoming depressed and reclusive by the
Basic nutrients
At the time of filming this segment, there were only 31 ingredients to Soylent that provided a
total of 2400 calories. While it is known that metabolic needs are different for each person, age,
gender, activity level, and basal metabolism, part of the ingenuity of Soylent is due to powdered
delivery system that just needs added water. The addition or reduction of calories can be adjusted
by the amount of powder added. However, the adjustment of individual nutrients cannot be
adjusted in a specific way. The human body has an impressive capacity to generate some
important nutrients that may not be adequate in the system, such as Vitamin D, but there are
limits. Conversely, the body can also eliminate excess of materials like potassium, but chronic
high levels of many chemicals can cause various ailments, diseases, and even death (Smith,
2015, p. 284). Our health is driven by our allostatic load that we put on ourselves, meaning the
more unhealthy things we do in our life eventually catches up to us (Berger, 2016, p. 392). To
extend our lifespan, we must start early in our lives and this philosophy can be reduced down to
Jetsons, which was a futuristic family living their lives in a dystopian future. I remember scenes
of the characters taking prescription looking pills as food, or putting a small pill in a microwave
and instantly creating a huge thanksgiving dinner. Scientific engineering of the 1950s gave us
orange Tang and other chemically derived foods. Enriched breads and rice provides essential
(Smith, 2015, p. 127). We put fluoride in our public drinking water to help prevents tooth decay
and cavities. Physicians around the world regularly recommend prenatal vitamins to possibly
pregnant or expecting women (Berger, 2016, p. 393). We live in a world today that is safer and
I have always been aware of meal replacement products, but always viewed them as a fad. On
the other hand, working in medicine, I was aware of liquid meal nutrition for bariatric or ICU
patients. While the use of nutrition supplementation in a clinical setting has been around for
decades, there has been a very delicate balancing act of being able to provide nutrients with
metabolomic demands. By using this news segment as a current food trend perspective, I enjoyed
my ability to critique and reinforce the nutritional knowledge I have gained with this course.
Sustainability
With a world population approaching more than seven billion people, there are still 1 billion
humans who daily deal with hunger and food insecurity (Smith, 2015, p. 546). This significant
population size is even more devastating since there is simultaneously 1.4 billion tons each year
of food waste, and developed countries are some of the worst accusers. Rheinhart speaks to this
fact during the news segment, and feels that Soylent can help diminish or even eradicate hunger.
And there is some truth to this theory, why couldnt a cheap basic nutrients drink be used to
provide society with a strong tool to help those in need? Rheinhart even goes as far as to desire
that Soylent will be piped into households, just like drinking water public utilities.
Another purpose of Soylent according to Rheinhart was to ease the environmental impacts of
mass production of agricultural products and to enable a more local small scale farm to table
process. The increasing trend of a more informed public about their food choices has made
organic and natural food products billion dollar industries. Additionally the environmental
concerns of using pesticides, GMOs, and carbon waste of transportation are becoming food
The main theme that I took away was the social impact of eating. With our current culture of fast
paced on the go eating, it is easy to justify bare bone nutrition supplements over calorie laden
fast food. But what I found interesting was that during the authors 30 day challenge, his
psychosocial state began to change and even become alarming. The social satisfaction from
eating food with others and sharing experiences is not lost on me, but I definitely had not given
Berger, K. S. (2016). Invitation to the life span (3rd ed.) [with Salt Lake
Community College supplement]. New York, NY: Worth Publishers
Merchant, Brian (2013). Soylent: How I stopped eating for 30 days, Vice Media,
2013. https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/life-after-food-soylent-
motherboard/55cb6ae51ce00c683baee7a9