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... college aged students the education would target a group that is likely absorb the information, as well as pass it on to friends, family and children. Prevention of Disorderly Eating The Obesity crisis in America and the problems of disordered restrictive eating, makes the implementation of Nutrition Education immediately relevant. Disorderly eating can only be stopped through education and the filtering of the correct information. There is an opportunity to influence the behavior of our generation and stop the increase of obesity in America. III. Not Eating Nutritiously “From research to date, it is clear that children are not born with the natural ability to choose a nutritious diet, ” and children rely on parents and targeted education to gain Nutrition information. A nutritious diet must begin at home at a young age and be reinforced through a healthy eating foundation. Since the invasion of fast-food there has “been a decided change in the kinds of food young people eat. ” Starting at a young age, taste preferences are becoming sweeter, saltier and cheesier. A news reporter for the New York Times Magazine, asked a group of young Americans what they had eaten the previous day the response was, “two doughnuts for breakfast and half a sandwich and candy for lunch… or hash browns from McDonald’s. ” Metabolisms are known to be at their highest making parents and children less concerned with the Nutritional value of what the American children and young adults are eating. “Studies to date show a lack of concern for healthy eating on the part of young people and little normative support for healthy eating. ” In the San Jose Mercury News, a girl commented that she has observed her peers eating “the most fattening food you could ever imagine…they don’t care if they’re unhealthy. They just care about eating the tastiest foods. ” Students have “described healthy foods as having a place in some situations, such as at home or a relative’s house, ” and “unhealthy foods are stuff that your parents don’t like you eating. ” This phenomenon can explain what is known as the “Freshman 15.” Out of the home, an un-balanced diet at college during the Freshman year, led to a average gain of 15 pounds among first-year students. The “Freshman 15” is becoming so well known that the fear of the 15 pounds causes many college freshman to develop unhealthy restrictive eating habits. College Before coming to college, “most students learn nutrition from home economics classes, television, parents, labels of food packages, radio, books, and newspapers and magazines ” Without any formal education on the subject, most college students ”learn nutrition in a “black box” with little clue as to how the body uses energy. ” “College students make more food selection and food preparation decisions after moving away from home, while simultaneously adapting to an unfamiliar environment and lifestyle. During this transition phase several influential factors can contribute to the adoption of poor dietary practices. These factors include the availability of foods of low nutrient density, preoccupation with weight, financial restrictions, limited food preparation skills, restricted food storage and cooking facilities, difficulty with time management, and nutritional misconceptions. ” Overall, “college students frequently skip meals, consume large amounts of fast foods and alcohol, snack on high-calorie foods, avoid certain nutritious foods, and adopt unsound weight loss techniques. ” “College Students compromise a group whose dietary practices and nutritional status are of concern to nutrition professionals. These concerns are based on research that characterizes the diets of college students as low in energy, fiber, calcium, iron, vitamin A and carotinoids, and high in fat. These findings reflect poor food choices and suggest that college students could benefit from an enhanced awareness of and greater compliance with the recommendation presented in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Food Guide Pyramid. ” The benefit to college students, proposed by Nutrition professionals, include school performance, consumer awareness, healthier lifestyles and reduction in ailments and diseases. Enhanced awareness would come from defining nutrition in an academic arena and educating students through a college level curriculum led by a knowledgeable instructor, free of advertisements and corporate endorsements. IV. Defining Nutrition Nutrition will be defined according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest which “is a consumer advocacy organization whose twin missions are to conduct innovative research and advocacy programs in health and nutrition, and to provide consumers with current, useful information about their health and well-being. ” Center for Science in the Public Interest quotes a textbook definition as their source for the word, “Nutrition: The study of the nutrients in foods and of the body's handling of them (including ingestion, digestion, absorption, transport, metabolism, interaction, storage, and excretion.) A broader definition includes the study of the environment and of human behavior as it relates to these processes. " The Center for Science in the Public Interest goes on to define Nutrients as “Substances obtained from food and used in the body to provide energy and structural materials and to regulate growth, maintenance, and repair of the body's tissues. " In Food Politics, Marion Nestle describes the study of nutrition as based upon the concept of nutrients. People need nutrients to survive, “people must eat to survive. Humans require a continuous supply of energy, nutrients, other food components and water to maintain life, grow and reproduce. ” V. Advertising Advertising is the backbone of a consumerist society. Average consumers absorb information from advertisements for news, culture and education. Increasingly, advertisements are being geared to the mother-on-the run, and many times, towards the persuasive child consumers. Overall “the mass media is becoming more powerful in influencing the diet of America’s children. ” Marian Nestle agrees that Advertising affects what children say they want to eat. Nestle writes in her book that studies “have described how television viewing affects the caloric intake, health, fitness, and social outlook of American children. Children who watch the most commercials, tend to consume more calories, ” get the least amount of exercise and are demanding their parents buy advertised foods. Nestle points out that this finding is “consistent with the well-documented connection between hours spent watching television and obesity. ” Education on advertising would work to prevent this correlation between commercials and obesity. As obese as young Americans are getting who are watching television, the images on the television are becoming thinner. “To girls, the command is to be this, avoid fat and you deserve a wonderful life. To boys, it becomes a command to build abdominals, sculpt, become the ultimate muscle man—or you won’t be worthy. ” America has developed a culture that attacks people for being different sizes. Frances Berg writes in her book that, “taking on the media—television, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, advertising, billboards, music—will not be easy. But the media carry many destructive messages about body size, sexuality and woman that affect all areas of our lives. ” Overall, Education and awareness are not teaching American youth how to decipher between science news and commercial advertising. A “General Accounting Office investigation found it difficult to distinguish commercial from noncommercial activities in schools because such intrusion into everyday life is so intrinsic to U.S. society. ” Confusion over what is and is not education, multiplies the confusion consumers have about what they should include in their diet. Thousands of ordinary and intelligent Americans are convinced by nutritional claims that come from television, packaging, movie stars and the most publicized fad diets. Consumers In 1995 the Dietary Guidelines Alliance created an “All About You” campaign, to collect qualitative research about “the disparity between what consumers believe about the value of good nutrition and physical activity, and what they’re actually doing about it. ” Consumers responded that they “are tired of negative messages and they want to hear what to do, rather than what not to do…many believe they must give up the tasty foods they like to follow a healthful diet...consumers confirm that they’re confused about conflicting nutrition headlines and reports, and say this information is losing credibility with them. ” Headlines and reports that appear conflicting are in fact part of the research process. The International Food Information Council maintains that “the public’s unfamiliarity with the scientific process can make the evolutionary nature for research appear contradictory. ” For consumers, the constant struggle between being told not to eat something because it is unhealthy, and then hearing that the food product is ok, can make the public confused and skeptical towards health claims. American Students need to learn about this research process in College, in addition to skills to make them conscience consumers, combating commercials for foods of minimal nutritional value and promoting the prohibition of misleading health claims in advertising and on package labels. IV. Case Study: College Nutrition Course An experiment course was done by Jean D. Skinner in 1990, from the University of Tennessee by the Nutrition and Food Sciences and Agriculture Departments. “The study was designed to determine if changes in dietary behavior occurred during enrollment in an introductory nutrition course for non-majors and if reported changes matched the primary emphases in the course. ” This experiment was titled, “Changes in Students’ Dietary Behavior During a College Nutrition Course. ” Prior to this experiment there was little information available about the dietary behavior of college students, but there was no literature about the effectiveness of a Nutrition course and the potential long-term benefits. Laura McArthur, Frances Grady, Rachel Rosenberg and Alan Howard agree in another study from 2000 that “the misguided dietary practices and poor quality of college students are of concern…because of [the dietary practices and] possible adverse impact on the long-tem health status of these young adults. Considering that there are currently an estimated 14 million individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities…it is critically important to assess the need for nutrition education intervention. ” The implications of the study at the University of Tennessee, demonstrated that “for many college students, an introductory nutrition course may be their only formal exposure to nutrition education during college years or later in life.” The report found that this was one of the most reasonable times for effective education because of the appropriate changes that were taking place and the current application of the course to dietary behavior. In conclusion, literature from the experiment has indicated that a College Nutrition Course “would be worthwhile to assess the knowledge of college students about food composition, healthful eating, and the relationship between diet and health…College students already find themselves in an environment that affords ample opportunities for initiating various kinds of learning experiences about these topics. ” V: Implementation “Efforts to promote better food choices begin with education; simply put, an educated public is a healthier public. ” Leslie Lytle wrote an article in the Journal of Nutrition Education that looked at the effectiveness of Nutrition intervention on school-aged children. She found that “Nutrition education interventions are more likely to be effective when they employ educational strategies that are directly relevant to a behavioral focus and are derived from appropriate theory and research. ” For college students, Nutrition Education would be directly relevant to the behavior of making meal choices in cafeterias, the decisions over fad dieting discussed among students and the meal planning that takes place in the second and third years of college life. A Nutrition Course taught by a professor, would introduce an element of authority and legitimization to Healthy Eating, which would instruct students on proper nutrition for a lifestyle. The implementation of a College Level course on Nutrition would serve students with an opportunity to study the Nutritional Basics of Biology and Chemistry as well as the Economics of Healthy Food purchases, Media Awareness, Body Image and Decision Making. Lytle went on to write, that Nutrition Education “curricula [should cover] a variety of topics, such as the role of nutrients in the body. Food sources of nutrients, food production and processing, facts influencing food choices, and healthful eating in general. ” Science When studying Nutrition, the field of Bio-Chemistry looks at the chemical process of nutrients as it breakdowns within the body. Proteins, Carbohydrates and Fats each have unique properties, essential to the human diet. Bio-chemistry education would focus on the additional nutritious elements of food and the dietary components that are generally considered essential or beneficial to human health: Calorie Sources, Essential Amino Acids, Essential Fatty Acids, and Vitamins (Water-soluble and Fat-soluble). Minerals, Trace Elements, Fiber, Phytochemicals, Water, cholesterol, and Fatty Acids (Saturated, unsaturated, Polyunsaturated, Omega-3, hydrogenated, Trans-saturated.) The storing of starches to be converted into glucose as known in the Glycemic Index is part of the Honors Introductory Chemistry curriculum, according to the Chair of Chemistry at Santa Clara University, Dr. Patrick Hoggard. Hoggard writes, “Long-standing nutritional advice has been to keep sugar intake at a minimum, and make starch a high percentage of the diet. The reasoning was that sucrose (sugar) should be broken down to glucose and fructose quite rapidly, and these are then free to enter the bloodstream. Starch, on the other hand, consisting of long chains of glucose, should break down more slowly, releasing glucose to the blood at a steady pace. ” The Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and a Bio-Chemistry Professor at Santa Clara, Amy Shachter, commented that if people knew about the Chemical process of Carbohydrates and Proteins, they would never restrict themselves to a no-Carbohydrate diet. Psychology Ms. Jeanne Zeamba, a psychologist and Director of the Santa Clara Wellness center notices a “high demand ” for a structural Nutrition Education program at Santa Clara. Zeamba believes the course should focus on discovering food, what are fats, proteins and carbohydrates, and what a portion size is; education should talk about Healthy Weight Loss, the role of the media, the role of the Diet Industry and the danger of diet pills; the course should cover topics about the effects of diet on Mental Health and the tendency for depression, anxiety and entrenchment that comes with disorderly eating; Zeamba focused on the importance of Body image and Body size, discussing the need to be comfortable with individual’s natural body shape; and finally she recommends the need for students to be informed about how to pick meals at cafeterias and how to create meals on their owns. Nutrition Education would “stress the long-term benefits of making desirable dietary changes and the health risks associated with the types of poor quality diets often consumed by college students. ” Fad Diets and irregular eating habits can cause harm on the body and the digestive process in the long-run. Irregular eating can cause people to become Lactose intolerant, can cause low bone mass, irregular bowel syndrome, damaged esophagus, infertility, growth of facial hair, heart disease, diabetes, heart attacks and much more that we may not even know about today. Nutrition education in [school-base...