"The trouble with processed food is that it's rarely clear what exactly it is we're eating"-Melanie Warner, "Pandora's Lunchbox
Nonprocessed foods are any foods in their natural state that haven't been altered. As I expected, finding and eating these foods and then feeling full and satisfied was extremely difficult being that I am a college student with a meal plan and limited access to choices. One of the main problems I encountered was the added need for me to stop and think about what I was about to eat. I do think about my daily calorie consumption but only to the point of staying under my daily limit, not necessarily exactly what I'm eating. My usual mindset is that I need to go to the cafeteria and get something quick for breakfast so I can get to class on time. This assignment made me realize that my need for a speedy and readily available meal tended to be the at the forefront of my decision of what to eat for the day. Although I didn't feel all that full at the end of the day, which caused me to eat a snack and larger processed meal later, a short while after eating I did notice a difference in my energy level. Usually after eating a meal like I did on Sunday I don't always feel that great. I get lethargic and sometimes even sick. After eating breakfast on Monday I felt as if I had extra energy to begin my day and I enjoyed that. I definitely consumed a lot of cheese on Sunday. It made me think of Kraft and if what I was eating was actually cheese or more of the cheese "product" Melanie Warner talked about in Pandora's Lunchbox. Although I am pretty sure the cheese used to make the food I was eating wasn't Kraft brand, I still felt heavily uneasy about it just knowing that although processed cheese is still just considered to be "cheese," what I was eating was far from natural. Although the package of popcorn I ate said it was made by Smartfood, i was curious to now more about the source and discovered that the popcorn brand is owned by Frito-Lay. That reminded me that consumers think that their food is being produced by hundreds and maybe even thousands of different companies but the power and production of food is really only being controlled by a handful of companies as displayed in the documentary Food, Inc. The popcorn's package boasts "no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives," but having learned what I did from the ingredients Frito-Lay puts into their products, I was not entirely convinced by "America's Favorite White Cheddar Popcorn." This second day made me come face to the face with the theory that processed foods can be almost considered addicting. As we learned in The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food by Michael Moss, a lot of the great foods I have come to love such as Cheetos, french fries and cheese breadsticks are hard to stop eating because of the way they have been engineered. For example, I have a snack size bag of Cheetos at least twice a week. The engineered taste and texture of the food, the sensory-specific satiety, can actually make the body think it hasn't eaten that much food and makes it crave more. Overall, I learned that it would be almost impossible for me to just cut out processed foods entirely so it's better to try to choose one snack at a time because even small positive changes can make a difference. Maybe I'll start with Cheetos. Sunday:Breakfast-French toast sticks and syrup Dinner-Three cheese lasagna and cheese breadsticks Drinks:Water with both meals and throughout the day Monday: Breakfast-Banana and grapes Lunch: Salad-just lettuce and carrots Snack: snack size Smartfood White cheddar cheese popcorn Dinner-Chicken tenders and french fries Drinks-Water with both meals and throughout the day
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