Reflection

We gave a presentation on our NGO and the survey in last class, and our classmates gave us the feedback. So I will sum up them here.
Many of them seem to be interested in our NGO, and want to join us. I'm really glad. Some of them are on a diet now, but they didn't know what is right or wrong diet so our presentation might be good oppotunity to reconsider their diet.
Many of them also understand that eating disorder is not so far from my daily life, and wrong diet lead to it. They said that it is important to spread the right information and knowledge to lessen people who have eating disorder.

EWASH

After the surveys, we established the NGO named “EWASH” because we would like to support people who want to be on a diet with a healthy way, and spread the information about eating disorder which is occurred by doing wrong diet.

We gave a presentation about EWASH and the surveys I showed you. I put on our PPT slide here. Please look at.

Mission

We would like to spread incorrect unhealthy diet to tell danger of them, and help people who try to stay healthy by diet. And we also want to tell what “diet” really means because many people misunderstand the meaning of the word. “diet” is not just losing weight! The really meaning of diet is not only to lose weight but also to gain weight to be healthy. We think that this situation is caused by media, so we investigate how people on media influence our understanding of standard proportion.

And, eating disorder and diet is closely related, so we give knowledge of eating disorder and its prevention and mental care and treatment for eating disorder.

Concrete Ways that We Try to Achieve Our Goals

I’ll introduce parts of our activities. We regularly visit junior high school and high school to teach dietary education for teenagers. And we hold the meetings for dieters or people who have eating disorder. They can talk with each other about their common problems, we think that will be a big help for them because some of them cannot confess their disease to other people. We also introduce them counseling.

Who We Network with?

We cooperate with schools, institutions where many people suffer from eating disorders and mental depression by diets, and hospitals. We hold some events with these institutions every year, and a lot of people who are interested in diet and eating disorder put together.

How We Recruit New Members

We usually recruit new members at our website.  We also offer new members at our visits to schools, institutions and hospitals. If you are interested in our activities, please join us!

Why We are Interesting?

If you become a member of our NGO, you can consult distress with members, and you can help your friends or family members with knowledge gained from us.

The result of our survey

We conducted two surveys related to diet and eating disorder in order to found our NGO. I'll introduce you the result of the survey about eating disorder.

First, we asked the question, “ Do you have knowledge of eating disorder?” The sum of people who answered “ Know well” and “Know” is 60%.

Next, we asked people who answered they have knowledge of eating disorder to tell what kinds of eating disorder they know. 82% of them know about anorexia, this is the highest rate, and 72% of them know about bulimia, and then only 10% of them know aboutEating disorder not otherwise specified (such as Binge eating disorder). We suggest that the information about anorexia and bulimia is spread through media like TV or magazines.

We also asked the question, “Does anybody around you have a eating disorder?” The rate of people who answered “yes” is 11%, and all of them answered their friends have eating disorder.

These results show that a few people have correct knowledge about eating disorder.

According to the two surveys we did, many people are dissatisfied with their proportion, but some of them regained their weight or hurt their health because they didn’t have right knowledge about diet. Moreover, we found that the wrong interpretation of the word “diet” has been spread. We became to think that reasons of such situations are TV or magazines, they give us many wrong information through this survey.

podcast

the podcast I have found, is "Is a Vary Low Calorie Diet The Right Choice For You?" by Helen Jones-Wray.
it talks about low calories diets are right or not. I thought this podcast is very good because not just saying it is right or wrong, the speaker first describes how calories are calculated, and how each nutritional element functions. She also tells the listeners the risk of a very low calorie diet, therefore, it is not forcing us to try a dangerous diet.

An example of circularity and circular reasoning

Just as what we did in the last class, we are going to provide you an example of circularity and circular reasoning this time.

A teenage girl who is right about the standard body shape is talking with her mother about her diets, that she wants to be skinny like models and become prettier. Then, her mother asks her why she wants to be skinny because being skinny does not necessarily mean someone is pretty. The girl answers, “Because skinny girls look much prettier!” Her mother says “no, you are wrong, ” then the girl told her mother, “go to the cities and look around, pretty girls are all skinny.”
     This is said to be an example of circularity and circular reasoning because the statement of the girl is
1) Skinny girls are prettier
2) Pretty girls are skinny.
Her statement above does not have a clear conclusion or specific evidence that why skinny girls are pretty or vice versa. Through whole conversation between the girl and her mother, there is no new statement explaining or prove that “why skinny girls are pretty.” That is why we chose this example.

Podcast

I found a pod cast named “60-second health.” It gives us a weekly one-minute report on the latest health and medical news. I learned some new information from the pod cast, for example, obesity is a big factor for both diabetes and heart disease but regular exercise even without changing diet might be a big help.

It’s short and easy to understand, so I found it to be interesting. This pod cast is made by Katherine Harmon who is a reporter of Scientific American. Scientific American is an American science magazine which is written by researchers on the front line, so I think the information introduced in the podcast  is correct.

An example of ad hominem

We talked about critical thinking in our last class. The concept that Sakurako and I try to explain is  "ad hominem." This is an attempt to weaken the opposing position by attacking at the person who put forward the argument rather than at his or her argument or claim.

Here is an emaple of ad hominem.

A doctor who is a little bit fat is studying the way to lose weight healthily, and these days, he publishes a book summarizing the results of his study. The doctor insists that it’s important to reconsider our eating habits and do moderate exercise. There are a lot of other information in the book from the medical or nutritional point of view. However, some people say that his study and his opinion are wrong. They think his study must not be right because he is a little fat, and if it is right he should be more slender. In short, they jump to the conclusion that his study is wrong by just watching his proportion, and attacked him nevertheless there is possibility that he is fat because of illness or he doesn’t act up to his theory by himself. There is no connection between the fact the doctor is fat and the results of his study but some people are under impression that his study is wrong. We think that’s an example of Ad hominem.