Food Rules Benchmark

Zucchini Fries

Recipe

4 large zucchini

3 cups grated parmasean cheese

pepper

oregano

3 cups of eggs whites

Olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, with oiled large non stick pan. Chop zuchinni into thin fry shapes. Dip into egg whites and bread with parmasean, oregano, and pepper mix. Place on pan and bake for 15 minutes, then flip on the other side and bake again until brown and crisp.

Nutrition:

I'd say that the nutrition for this is pretty okay. The zucchini baked itself is low in carbohydrates, only about 5 net carbs per large zucchini. So this meal is safe for diabetics, because it's very low on the glycemic index with a glycemic of 2, meaning it does not raise your blood sugar to a dangerous level. Mostly because half the carbs are fiber. The vitamins in zucchini are leaning towards high levels of copper, maganese, magnesium, vitamin k, vitamin c, potassium, folate, and vitamin A, while it contains some tract of all nutrients. The egg whites that cover the zucchini are high in protein. About 9 grams per cup, and about 1 carb per cup.  It's low in nutrients though, with only potassium and sodium, but a good source of protein. The parmesean cheese is very very high in fat, seeming as it is usually not that aged and because of industrial food processing. 1 cup is about 30 grams of fat, mostly saturated.  It's even higher in protein at a about 40 grams of protein in a cup. Parmesean cheese is primarily calcium, a lot of calcium, and then a little bit of iron and vitamin c. But high amounts of calcium. I used about half a cup of oil for the entire recipe. Which itself is about 108 grams of fat, which is a good mix of monounsaturated, saturated, and polyunsaturated fat. It's purely fat, and a a little bit of potassium

So all in all, this food in about a serving which seems like about a cup for most is about 28 grams of mostly saturated fat,25 grams of protein, and about 5 carbs. You would be eating a very high amount of calcium,  but with other nutrients such as vitamin k, maganese, magnesium etc. all the nutrients from the zucchini this is a pretty healthy snack.

The fat can help your body absorb the nutrients in the zucchini plus the calcium. There can be very reactions to your body eating this food. One fact is that it is baked and therefore some of the nutrients naturally gets lost on the way. Secondly it contains eggs and dairy. The eggs can cause gas, bloating, and allergic reactions to those who are allergic to them. The parmesean cheese doesn't cause me any problems though, considering I am kind of a lactose intolerant. I get lots of acne when I drink milk or consume dairy, but parmesan cheese never effected me.

Also since all of the foods in my recipe are processed industrially, there is always a zap away of most of the nutrients from being absorbable for the body, and most of the nutrients being present in the food.Then the whole zucchinis being full of pesticides and possibly being genetically modified thing that plays in.But the fat combined with the nutrients of the zucchini can make a nutritious meal.

The food is very high in fat and protein, meaning it will keep the eater satisfied after consuming a small portion and give them steady ongoing energy through the day to burn. It's a good snack for anybody of any activity level. And is a great replacement for other unhealthy choices because It tastes like fries, pepperonis, and resembles carby foods like lasagna. So it's a better decision to eat zucchini fries instead of that stromboli, and the cheese pizza, and those potatoes fries, loaded with doe, carbs, and just empty crap your body doesn't need and will leave you starving the next morning. The zucchini fries will not only satisfy your craving for something fast foody, but keep your hunger tame.

Environmental:

None of these products come from sustainable practices. Zucchini are imported from Oregon and sprayed with chemical fertilizers. They come from industrial agricultural which is inherently unsustainable ( deforestation, chemical pollution, importation, fossil fuels etc.). The cows used to produce the milk to create the cheese are factory farmed, loaded with horomones, and living in filth, disease, death, and great pain. The cheese is made on machines by cheesemaking factories, and imported from thousands of miles. Everything on that list is imported. The olive oil from Italy, the zucchini from oregon, the cheese from god knows where, but all of the ingredients come from harmful practices.

Politically/Economically:

The foods themselves aren’t bad, it’s the production, and economy that really make them not even food but imported products. Politically speaking the production/consumption style of these foods say yes to capitalism, and no to traditional ways of attaining food, and more sustainable ones. This meal is brought you by major corporations, and guilds of dudes who like to torture their food in the name of money, production, and takeover. As if we all couldn’t grow our own zucchini, pasture raise cows and culture and age our own cheese, or find our own oils to grind out and make.

This meals cost a lot of lives, land, and ozone that we are rapidly running out of.

Social:

The social is the political. I bought these at a supermarket, from a corporate chain store that exploits it’s workers who sells food products that exploit their workers and their land, and are all about eco-destruction. There was absolutely no social interaction involved in the purchasing of these items. I went to store, browsed through the colorful aisles and located my overpriced items, whose prices are inflated to generate profits for CEO’s and heads of corporations, not the workers, who are paid about 10 bucks an hour at this store. So they check out my items, and I pay the store, and I leave. 

If these items were being produced communally, I would have to talk to actual human beings about the actual foods I want, and make them with actual human beings. Instead, the processes of how the food is grown, imported, processed is all done by machines and their human slaves.

So this food, the way it was made, produced, attained, was pretty anti-social. When I brought it to share with others of course that was social. But the meal itself took a whole lot of antisocial behavior for one social event, which is kind of disturbing.

Reflection:

This unit I haven't learned much about things I didn't already know. Seeing as I just have a broad scientific background in nutrition for a high schooler. I learned about specific diseases and the origins of their names, but nothing truly significant that I wasn't aware of already. I think I learned a lot about GMO and how it effects the environment and it's possible dangers. We covered the Omnivore's Dilemna which is a book I was already aware of, because I had read it's counter book " The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Kieth, which I thought made more since. We should've talked about that book, because I think it makes way more sense and incorporates different sides of health debate.

Theres many things I think were wrong in what we learned. Michael Pollan is always pointing towards vegetarianism, but then we talk about how people with traditional diets don't have the flux of civilized diseases that we on a civilized diet get. Traditional diets are most comprised of meat, dairy, and vegetables. Local meat that is. But at the same time we are talking about how meat is bad for you and will give you all these diseases.

Also, the western diet has changed dramatically ever since the FDA proposed that a diet high in saturated fats and meat will kill you, consumption of grain, fruits, vegetables, and non-saturated fats has gone up in the past like 30 years, but heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses have also risen or stayed the same. Obesity has just grown,even though we are supposedly eating more like vegetarians. I think we focused on Michael Pollan too much, as if he is the chief of modern day health.  There is a whole bunch of things not being taken into consideration, like modern day medicine and how it effects what foods are pushed and which foods aren't.

Like for example to push cholesterol lowering drugs, there was this belief that having high cholesterol was a bad thing that was introduced in the 20th century, and the FDA had to create a diet that would lead to diseases in which high cholesterol was present. There was just a whole a bunch of useful science in this unit I felt was missing. I lot of perspectives of nutrition and diet that were missing. A whole lot of researchers and authors.

I think are biggest problem with our food system, is our food system itself. Capitalism, and agriculture are inherently harmful to the environment and not that healthy for us. There's evidence that the human brain has shrunk 5% over the last 10,000 years. Humans are shorter, and fatter. This is because of agricultural foods. The human brain could not have grown so big off of plant protein and wheat. Think of all the wheat and plants you'd have to eat to get the protein you can get in just two servings of steak. Like that's a lot of food, a lot of carbs you'd have to consume, and that can be a recipe for weight gain.

I don't think their is any choice I can make to counter the effects of living off of industrial agriculture. I can try to buy foods that aren't as bad as others, but in reality my consumer choice doesn't change the fact that what I bought took a whole lot of pollution, death, and suffering to import. And that I when I dispose of it the chemicals in my food product, and it's packaging will go back into the environment as pollutants.