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.

A Good Website

http://www.webmd.com/diet/default.htm

I think this is an example of good websites. This website is operated by WebMD.
This website does not have advertisement at all, and the web page is fairly organized, and easy to see.  In this website, there are all kinds of information about healthy foods, and healthy ways of diets. It does not force the inappropriate and unhealthy diets.

A bad website

I think this website is also bad one.
http://www.lesenfants-lefilm.com/howto10kg.html

There is no information about the author of this wabsite, and a date of publication is not mentioned, too.  There are some grammatical errors.
I think the author present a limited perspective because there is no xternal evidence supporting the author's claim and the facts written on it seem not to be correct. It recommend fasting diet or diet shakes, and the author suggest we can lose 10kg in a short term. I think it's too dangerous.
Some links are listed on the website, but almost all of them are advertisement of diet products. I think hey want us to buy their products.

A Bad Website

http://wpets.jp/product/detail/474

This website has been operated by Stepworld Co.,Ltd. since 2003. Here it advertises the beauty good, supplements and dieting foods. The reason that I thought this website is an example of bad websites is because, first of all, the web page is not organized; there are too much of advertisements appealing everywhere, and the pictures used for before after, are obviously Photoshop processed (only the ones used for “after.”). Also, since it is a website which sells merchandise, the price should be clearly stated; however, it does not show up until I drag it down to the very bottom of the website. There are users’ comments towards this dieting drink sold here, but we never know if it is true because there is no space for the users to actually post comments on this website. The worst thing about this website is that it leads an inappropriate and unhealthy diet by creating advertisement which makes the viewer believe as though it is rapidly effective shortly while we know it is not. 

A good website

I think this website is good to know what you should eat or whether your diet is appropriate or not.

http://package.toppan.co.jp/shokuiku/

The website was found in 2006, and the publisher of the website is Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. It was adopted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan. The mission of the publisher is to spread about what is a well-balanced diet and to promote food education for children. The publisher provide contact information, you can contact them clicking  "お問い合わせ" at the bottom of the website. They provide data or sources to support their opinions, for example, they show some figures about Japanese food guide spinning top which was decided by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The information on this website seems to be correct because the website was adopted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 2006, which is one of Japanese governmental institutions. So I think it is good with accuracy. There is no spelling or grammatical errors on the website, and it is written in easy Japanese so that children can understand.

Healthy diets from various perspectives -- A doctor

I want to introduce another perspective. He is a doctor and he teaches some classes related to medicine at university. I’m taking his class, so I summarize his opinion from the medical point of view.

 

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Recently, we get too much information about diet through the Internet, TV program, and so on. I think some of them believe all of them, so I’m very sorry that many of the information introduced on them are wrong. For example, diets which keep eating one type of food every day are dangerous because it is nutritionally unbalanced and keeping your health good becomes difficult. I declare that there is no food that makes your weight lose if you keep eating one food. The best way to stay healthy is eating various kinds of food.

I think media sometimes give us information about diet in order to earn money by advertising particular food or products.

Real meaning of the word “diet” is to be healthy, not to lose weight. If someone whose weight is too light tries to gain weight, it is also “diet”. I really want to tell you that if you are thin and overweight, you are more likely to contract a disease. And, according to some researches, the possibility that thin people like fashion models contact a disease is much higher than people whose weight is standard. So, please think about what is the most important thing to you. If you want to be healthy and to live longer, don’t be particular to lose weight.

Healthy diets from various perspectives -- A representative of the diet foods company’s advertisement post

When talking about diets, diet foods cannot be ignored. As we see the TV commercial, varieties of diet foods are going around nowadays such as protein shakes, enzyme drinks, some sort of jellies and so on… The commercial the dieting products companies make all seem very attractive, and make the consumers feel like products will give immediate and dramatic effects. However, are they really so? Are they really giving you the effects they show on the commercial or advertisement? Let me assume that the speech below is by a representative of the diet foods company’s advertisement post.



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     Hello, I am a representative of one of the diet foods companies’ advertisement post. We are producing effective diet foods for dieters. Unlike USA or other countries in the west, Japanese people believe slender as the virtue, and we know most of them are young women. Therefore, by consider what young woman would prefer, we finally decided to produce dieting protein shakes and jellies. I know young women love sweets, and they want to be conscious of “being women” all the time.

However, for actually selling the products, the advertisement takes the most important role. We have to create the attractive commercial on TV and the internet. The most effective way is to show before and after, and dramatically introduce the dietetically effective ingredients in the products. Of course, we choose the before after which had changed the most, even though it does not mean everyone could change the same; but what is the problem if we say “there are individual differences?” We are not lying. 

Healthy diets from various perspectives -- A obesity woman

     It is sometimes said that obesity is genetic, but some people get fat because of thier mental state. I'll introduce an opinion of a girl who is diagnosed as corpulence. Her story was broadcasted on Japanese TV program " the sekai gyoten news." After all, she successed diet, but I summarized her story only when she was suffering from obesity.
http://www.ntv.co.jp/gyoten/oa/130213/03.html


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     I’ve loved eating since I was little, and my favorite is Chinese food used a lot of oil. When I was 16, I gave birth to a baby boy but I became a single mother because I couldn’t get along with my husband. I had a lot of things to do then, for example: part-time job, going to high school, taking care of my baby, and so on. Actually, I was always tired and got stressed. I felt relieved only when I am eating fatty food. My weight was getting heavier and heavier, but I didn’t care. Then, I’ve thought that “I know that obesity is not good for my health, and that I have to control my diet to be healthy. But I want to eat what I love until I’m satisfied. I only get one life, so I want to spend happy time eating them. I certainly feel happy when I’m eating. Is it bad thing? I don’t think so. I understand there is a possibility that I cannot live long because of obesity, but yet, if so, I won’t regret.”

     My family and friends became worried about my health because my weight reached over 200kg, so I started going on a diet. I tried to eat a lot of vegetables and not to eat fatty or sweet food. But I’ve gained all the weight back because I felt stress of not being able to eat what I love.

Healthy diets from various perspectives -- A perspective from a girl with anorexia

There are many girls on diets while they do not need to, and by unnecessary diets, some of them might fall into eating disorder.  This speech below is from the perspective of an 18-year old girl who has been trying to lose her weight by not eating enough, and has finally made herself anorexia.

     Here is an interesting video to give you the basic idea of what anorexia is.

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I have been on diet for 3 years, and now I am suffering from anorexia. When I was 15 years old, I was feeling uncomfortable being “fat.” Back then, my height was 155cm, and I weighed 47kg with BMI of 19.6. Now, I know it is normal or even less than standard. However, my friends around me were all skinny, and the models in the fashion magazines I was reading were so pretty. That had made me think the way that skinnier is better, and only being skinny like models is a fine virtue. I became very sensitive about how others see me, and started to think as though I was the ugliest person in the whole world.

My eating habits back then, was quite normal; not eating much of sweets or snacks. However, I was thinking that eating is directly causing gaining weight, which is not true. Since I did not have enough knowledge, I quit eating breakfast, then soon after, lunch and dinner. I was kind of happy seeing my weight on the scale dropping dramatically, somehow. I could not stop any more, and eventually I came to where my body and brain refuse any foods; I was not able to keep food down any more. I was in the middle of 17 this time, and my weight was only 28kg. How miracle I was still alive.

Finally, with passionate persuasion of my parents and friends, I started to take a physical and mental counseling at the hospital. I was diagnosed as anorexia. Now, I am able to eat little by little, but my internal organs which had been damaged by anorexia over years, could never be cured completely.

Introduction of our topic

Hi. I'll introduce you our topic, "healthy diets."

The controversial issue we have chosen is the relationship between the food we eat and how we gain weight, and the right ways to lose weight. I am interested in this topic because many Japanese people are on diets in order to get skinny like models. However, I am sure not all of them are taking the right ways to lose their weight. Also, many Japanese people do not have right knowledge in diets, and are sacrificing their health in order to reach their dieting goals. I think diet is not about just losing weight but to get rid of unneeded fat in the body, and of course, stay healthy, and I would like to find out more on the effects the food gives on our bodies by hearing opinions of others as well.

Some people believe that eating vegetable mainly and avoiding carbohydrates and fats are the right ways to lose weight while others insisting that skipping dinner is the fastest method. There might be people who say, do some exercise and slowly improve the level of a basal metabolism are the best. Since there are lots of information going around about diets, there should be as much as opinions on the relationship between foods and our diets.

Useful websites on diets

Hello, I will introduce you some websites which might help.

As the resources, we used Library Spot(http://www.libraryspot.com/) and refdesk.com.(http://www.refdesk.com/fastfact.html) Library Spot was more helpful with finding the medical related references.

On yahoogroups.com, we have found groups encouraged being on raw food diet(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfood/), water cleansing diet(http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/cleansingdiets/), which is to drink water a lot and flush away toxins in the body, and cut-down carbohydrates diet(http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Graduate-lowcarblifestyle/). There are many kinds of groups and each of them is encouraged being all kinds of diets, however, it seems like raw food diet is the most popular method. They are the ones below just to show as the examples...

In one of the scholarly articles we have found, it complains about the danger of cutting the carbohydrates in diets. It explains that carbohydrates contain glucides which burns into energy instantly comparing to other nutritive factors such as proteins and fats, so if we cut down carbohydrates, it takes time to make up energy, and gives lots of pressure to the body. Also, lacking of glucides disturbs the function of brains. The other article claims the danger of raw food diets. Since raw food diets take the method of eating uncooked foods, it cools down the body and that would lower the level of digestive functions. When looking in the long term, raw food diet could possible leads to the serious malnutrition, which means lack of nutrition.