Nutrition You need a sheet of paper for this activity.

Write a one paragraph response. Do you tend to eat more natural or artificial foods? Does it matter to you if your food contains non natural ingredients? Do your food choices tend to align with the choices of your family?

What ingredient do these foods have in common?

THEY ALL CONTAIN/ARE MADE WITH CORN The meat comes from corn-fed cattle, the bun and condiments contain high fructose corn syrup and the fries are cooked in corn oil. Even the shake contains corn syrup solids and cellulose gum derived from corn.

Who Cares? Obesity – Americans are on average eating 200 more calories a day than they were in the 1970s. – Overproduction leads to overconsumption – High fructose corn syrup Cost – The corn system receives more subsides from the U.S. government than any other crop Health – Can cause issues with your digestive system

You Are What You Eat? “Todd Dawson, a plant biologist at the University of California-Berkeley, can test a strand of hair to determine how much corn is in your diet or mine by looking for a form of carbon found in corn. "We are what we eat with respect to carbon, for sure. So if we eat a particular kind of food, and it has a particular kind of carbon in it, that's recorded in us, in our tissues, in our hair, in our fingernails, in the muscles," Dawson says. Dawson tested a strand of my hair: 69 percent of the carbon came from corn. This may seem high, but it is typical for Americans. "We're like corn chips walking because we really have a very, very large fraction of corn in our diets, and we actually can't help it because it's an additive in so many of the foods we find on the market shelves," Dawson says. Europeans eat a diet with far fewer processed foods and corn-based sweeteners. Dawson tested his own hair after three months in Italy: 5 percent corn. Source: ndex.html?_s=PM:HEALTH

Looking at packaging Groups of 3 Make a chart with 3 columns: Product name, Corn Ingredients, Other Ingredients I Don’t Know Look over the Nutrition Facts label on your packaging and fill out the chart. Groups will rotate products several times.

Discuss 1.Which corn-derived ingredients are most commonly found in the sample of foods examined in class? 2.How do you feel about the idea that corn has been “hiding” in these foods, often behind different names? Does it matter to you? Why or why not? 3.How do you feel about consuming products with labels you can’t fully decipher? Do you believe companies have an obligation to tell consumers what they are consuming, i.e. providing an ingredient key? 4.How frequently do you read the Nutrition Facts panels on the foods you eat?

FALSE & MISLEADING LABELING

For homework Who should decide what information is provided on food packaging and labels? Consumers? The government? The food industry? Write an individual personal philosophy statement (5-10 sentences) about what consumers should be able to learn about their food from packaging and Nutrition Facts panels