Popular Culture
HUMN 341 – E1WW
Elisabeth Nixon, Ph.D. Candidate
Assignment 5-1
Weekly Written Analysis - 5
Jamie Hinson
One major current popular culture topic is nutrition and dieting. There are so many advertisements in today’s world offering different ways of dieting and eating healthier. All of the fast food restaurants, such as Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Subway, offer different options on the menu that are more nutritious than ever. They offer a variety of salads, fruit, vegetables, and all white meat chicken; which is much healthier than a big fat juicy cheeseburger. There are even advertisements on television for different weight-loss and nutrition programs; such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutrisystem. Also, there are numerous amounts of diet pills available as well.
People today are constantly counting carbohydrates and calories. However, “there are several kinds of diets:
Weight-loss diets restrict the intake of specific foods, or food in general, to reduce body weight. What works to reduce body weight for one person will not necessarily work for another, due to metabolic differences and lifestyle factors. Also, for a variety of reasons, most people find it difficult to maintain significant weight loss over time — among individuals that have lost 10% or more of body weight, only 20% are able to maintain that weight loss for a full year.
Many professional athletes impose weight-gain diets on themselves. American football
players may try to "bulk up" through weight-gain diets in order to gain an advantage on the field with a higher mass.
Individuals who are underweight, such as those recovering from anorexia nervosa or starvation, may adopt weight-gain diets which, unlike those of athletes, have the goal of restoring normal levels of body fat, muscle, and stores of essential nutrients”, (Wikipedia.com, 2008).
Society has led people to believe that everyone should look a supermodel. There are so many people in this world who were not built like a supermodel and who try anything and everything to try and look like a supermodel. Even celebrities try all of these different types of nutrition tips and dieting plans to try and look a specific way. For this reason, nutrition programs and diet plans are very popular in today’s world.
Reference
Wikipedia.com. (2008). Dieting: From Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved on June 16, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieting.
3 comments:
It's amazing how many types of diets are out there, and how many diet pills, drinks,and foods there are. I find it interesting how people dine with others as entertainment, yet when someone is dieting they are pretty much by themselves. I'm a firm believer in the saying "it's not what you eat, it's how much you eat". I think if society enjoyed things in moderation, there would be less overweight people, but in todays world we have a tendency to overindulge, and convenience foods like McDonalds and Wendys leave us tempted by the latest and greatest "new" hamburger.
Jamie,
I think it is funny how people can say that they have tried many diets with no results. It is nothing more than a moneymaking scheme, because we all know the best diet is the smallest one. Exercise coupled with proper eating habits it the key. People will try any pill or any diet if they think that it will help then lose weight with the least amount of effort. Our neighbor is on an “apple diet” (whatever that is) right now. I don’t think it is going very well because she was walking in with a pizza tonight—maybe it was an apple pizza?
I like how fast food places show all the different kinds of salads they offer, sad thing is the calories in some of those salads have more than the calories listed for their sandwiches. I tell myself when I go to a fast food place and say 'what's the difference of me going to McDonalds when I can make the hamburger at home to'. That's how I make it okay in my mind! It's just a matter of controlling what you are buying and how often you are really going.
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