Hello everyone! As you probably know, Justin Trudeau unveiled his cabinet today. I have so much hope for the future of Canada.

The top news story on CBC today was regarding smoked herring that Canada trades with Haiti, and the benefits of that. It talks about Haitians incorporate this into their diet with other food sources: rice, beans, vegetables, etc. It also mentions how many Haitians do not own a fridge and smoked herring does not have to be refrigerated so it is helpful to them to buy this. It is interesting how it mentions that the smoked herring is just one part of their meal, versus here where meat is central to our diet and rarely is accompanied with a substantial amount of vegetables or whole grains. Why is it that our Western diet is so wrapped up in meat? It seems that only if someone is dieting that they eat less meat, otherwise eating a large amount of meat is often praised in our Western culture.

This really connected to the main Tumblr post, which featured a meal with chicken being very prominent on the dish. Of course, chicken is seen as one the lightest, leanest sources of animal meat, so it still is signalling to the viewer that the poster is healthy and dieting, as the hashtags pronounce. Meat is central to our diet and rarely do we consider the economics, or the environmental impact of meat. We just view it for nutrition and health, without taking a larger picture of it, as the article of Haiti suggests that Haitians do: they value their food for the ways they create a meal with it, not having to put ingredients with it.

The top New York Times article was on children who are picky eaters. The article does a case study of a family that wanted to incorporate more vegetables and diverse meals to the family’s menu; even though their children were originally picky eaters. They found that the more they exposed their children to cooking and new ingredients, the more the children were willing to explore. The family found that now they eat much healthier and have new recipes that are diverse and healthier and the kids even like it. They provide a checklist of tips to the reader on how to deal with picky eaters. This article was really informative and interesting, as we continue to have very bland food in convenience stores and rising obesity rates.

The top Instagram post was also about making children happy with food as well. It pictures a boy drinking a hot chocolate from Starbucks, and presumably the Mom is saying that he is finally happy. This photo raised a lot of questions for me. Why do we teach children that junk food is such a treat? We do not teach our kids to look at the colours of vegetables, or teach them to grow herbs. We only make them eat healthy and then give them treats as a reward. Children should feel rewarded with healthy fresh food, kids can be excited about anything so we should try making them excited about the food they are eating.

Although these are not directly linked to the news stories, the social media posts are echoed through the new stories. It is interesting to see the most popular posts shift from day to day and how media reflects that. We absorb much of what we believe through the media so clearly the news is affecting how people think about food and post about food after absorbing that.

-A

Hello again! We had this class today and the seminar was on nutrition, very fitting for the media that I will be exploring for today.

Regarding CBC, the top news story is on the effects of chain restaurants listing the amount of calories in each item on the menus. Starting at the end of 2016, restaurants will be required to post the amount of calories for their menu items, this is a practice already done in some areas of the United States. However, there is no significant link between someone seeing the calories in something they might eat and what they actually do eat. A comparison study in the states showed no difference between a town that displayed calorie levels and a town that did not not. The article does not give any explanations to why peoples food intake does not change if they view calories however, and does not delve into how health could be properly managed other than watching your calories.

The top news story on New York Times was regarding an education convention in Orlanda, Florida. The article talks about how revisions of many social systems in the United States need to happen. It talks about how different health issues in the states are viewed, including a lot of mistrust in the industry. It discusses how there is a disconnect between the food industry and public opinion. One the areas in which the policy makers whom will be at the convention have talked about is getting more healthy food onto the retail scale, such as in grocery stores. This article was really fascinating as it talks about how to change diets and attitudes about food on a macro policy level.

The top post for Instagram was about ‘healthy’ candy, and how this treat does not have flour, sugar, or fake chemicals and favours. However, this likely is still not healthy for you and this truly shows how marketing can influence what someone thinks if healthy or good for them to eat.

The top Tumblr post was about the Atkins diet, which is a low carb diet. It is hash tagged with #lowcarb, #diet, #fitness, #atkins, and #avocado, all of which are very foodie/trendy words.

As both of the news stories cover different food trends, it is reflected as well in the social media posts that were posted for today. Between calorie intake boards, healthy treats, or the Atkins diet, it all works back to the New York Times article. The disconnect between what the public believes and what the health industry is working towards has a growing gap.

Growing up, I believed everything health wise from what I heard from magazines, and copied what celebrities ate. With the ever-increasing focus on social media and Instagram celebrities, there is even more misinformation on what is health and what food you should eat out there for people to see. We may not know exactly the intentions behind the health industry but most of us do not have a basic concept between what is presented to us and what is really true.

Till tomorrow.

-A

Works Cited

Bornstein, D. “The Art of Getting Opponents to “We””, New York Times, November 3 2015. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/the-art-of-getting-opponents-to-we/

The Associated Press. “Menus with Calorie Info may not Change long-term habits,” CBC News, November 3 2015. http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/menu-calorie-counts-1.3301442

Hello, welcome to day 2 of the media review for the diet trends, linking diet news on traditional news sites with prevalence of it on social media. It seems that the trend for today is all about sugar. Sugar has traditionally been an ingredient of debate, as sugar is in almost everything we eat. Sugar is something that is so common in our food today, and refined sugars are common causes of different diseases in our modern Western culture.

The top story on CBC was on how replacing sugar can give the dieter results much faster than someone who counts calories or controls their portion sizes. The article covers how in the past, doctors have told patients to lose weight by improving their diet in general and exercising more. Apparently, according to new studies, you will lose weight faster if you simply your sugar intake down and consume less sugar.

The top story on New York Times was concerning a federal case in the United States where sugar companies and corn companies are battling it out, concerning the labelling of fructose syrup and cane sugar and how much sides misrepresent the other. The battle and conflicts have a historical past, as it used to be that before, sugar was the bad guy and people switched off of it. Now, high-fructose corn syrup is getting the worse rap. Some scientists are arguing that both are relatively the same in terms of how the body metabolizes it.

The top post on Instagram was a recipe for a sugar free (minus natural sugars in the fruit) smoothie/milkshake that uses a fake sugar Stevia instead of regular sugar. Most of the comments on the post are expressing happiness over the fact that it does not continue refined sugars.

The top post on Tumblr was concerning a “fit girl shopping list” which includes no refined sugar or unhealthy things. The list was hash tagged with some telling key words: fitspo, weightless, diet, healthy, amongst others.  This focus on a healthy grocery list suggests to others a ‘right’ way of doing a healthy diet.

Sugar has been advertised in many different ways, and those advertisements have impacts on how we eat. In a study by  Ferguson, C. J., Contreras, S., & Kilburn, M., they demonstrate how the more advertisements for unhealthy food that children are shown, the more they want to consume those foods. However, with the news in the media today about the dangers and controversy surrounding sugar, it is indicted that people will consume less sugar. This is shown and demonstrated in the Instagram and Tumblr posts.

So far, my monitoring has noticed that is a strong link between what the media is telling us, and what our peers are then portraying to us online.

Till tomorrow!

-Alyssa

Works Cited

CBC News. “Replacing sugar can yield benefits in just days, study finds,” CBC. Oct 29, 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/toxic-sugar-dr-lin-1.3292169

Ferguson, C. J., Contreras, S., & Kilburn, M. (2014). Advertising and fictional media effects on healthy eating choices in early and later childhood. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(3), 164-173. doi:10.1037/ppm0000016

Leith, William. “The bitter truth about sugar,” The Telegraph. March 23, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/9160114/The-bitter-truth-about-sugar.html

Happy November 1st everyone! I welcomed the start of the new month by drinking a large cup of coffee and eating a delicious glory bowl with some friends. I figured that starting these two weeks of monitoring the web for diet news and trends, it would be beneficial for me to eat healthy and pay attention to the health of my own diet.

The only news article from CBC for today was on the new developments about processed meats and the dangers of it. It talks about the new developments from the World Health Organizations show evidence that the consumption of eating processed meats can cause cancer in humans; it does not show levels of risk. Therefore there is no guidance of how much is safe or at what level of consumption does risk factors come into play. It also explains how processed meats also has other health effects, not just cancer, so the danger of eating it has more than one reason.

The news article from New York Times was covering how our culture does not eat or value real bread anymore. There is a trend to go gluten-free and we do not include whole-grain, healthy bread anymore. The value of bread has also gone down because we as a culture switched to an industrial production method, which lowered the nutritional content of bread and created white flour, so we do not know what we are missing when it comes to healthy bread.

This idea of clean-eating and how it can benefit our culture is reflected in the posts on social media. The top 2 most popular posts on Instagram for #diet were:

Each of these photos have the hashtag diet, but also every single one has the hashtag #eatclean or #cleaneating.

The top 2 most popular posts on Tumblr were   which not have any clean-eating hashtags.

As our world becomes increasingly connected to the media, and we engage with it on an ever-increasing frequency, there is a world of information to learn about the links between media and social media. What we are exposed to shapes our view of who we are, and that includes our diet and our body image. In an article by D.M. Boyd and Elad Yom-Tov, it explores the links between coverage of anorexia and increased eating disorders. Although this is focused on anorexia, it does give some insight on other diet issues that the media brings up. The article mentions how the more than someone views content of anorexia, the more likely they are to experience body dissatisfaction (Yom-Tov, E. & Boyd, D.M., 2014). This can correlate to issues of eating clean, if someone is more likely to change their diet after viewing these images, these images have a much more powerful effect than previously thought.

It appears that thus far, there is a link between what news sites are writing about and what people are posting online. There is a high focus of pictures of bodies on Instagram and Tumblr, and this could contribute to body dissatisfaction as the article suggests. It is likely that this will be explored more in the coming two weeks.

Enjoy the last few minutes of fall…

Alyssa.

Sources

• Yom‐Tov, E., & Boyd, D. M. (2014). On the link between media coverage of anorexia and pro‐anorexic practices on the web.International Journal of Eating Disorders, 47(2), 196-202. doi:10.1002/eat.22195