Health / education
June 29, 2009It is not good that non-medicine or health science graduates of the UP Manila should finish with little knowledge or appreciation of medicine or even the human body. There’s too much of environmental science but, for those taking degree programs in the social sciences and humanities, there’s little of even basic human anatomy. It is neglect – the school is assuming that everyone is going to take anatomy in their curriculum, and the rest who are not taking it are relatively unimportant in the allocation of the University’s (poorly-paid) human resources.
The UP Manila, in line with its claim of being the health sciences center of the country, should open a GE course that will address the seeming ignorance of non-medicine related graduates on matters that concern the human body. History 4 is a step towards that goal, but what I mean is a subject under the MST cluster. One of the goals of the GE course should be to produce students that are conscious of their health and of health issues that affect the nation.
***
It is demoralizing to find a professor who doesn’t know what his pancreas should do.
But then, I don’t know either.
***
Why is the library closed during lunch breaks? Is this temporary, or is it a new policy?
For a person in my condition, reading in the library is infinitely better than eating at our awful canteen. Paper cellulose may be indigestible, but neither is the chemical and pathogenic cocktail they serve there.
I’m dispossessed of a place I can call “my own”. There’s none left.
Which brings us to the question “Why didn’t I graduate last April?”
Notification
I’m lending myself vulnerable to surveillance, but then, we have to inject some predictability into our lives to give it order and amenable to synchronization.
Sunday or Monday: Five to nine
Thursday: Three to nine
Friday: Three to nine
***
Savoir pour prévoir, prévoir pour pouvoir. (Know in order to predict, predict in order to be able to do something.)
Attributed to Condorcet (France, eighteenth century)
Tubed experience (June 2009)
June 26, 2009
Here is the complete list of films and TV series I watched this month.
1 Liter of Tears (Japan) – Very good
Boys Over Flowers (Korea) - Just good
Chi bi / Red Cliff 2 (China) - The best!
Mei Lanfang / Forever Enthralled (China) - Just good
Heartbreak Library (Korea) - Excuse: actor-driven choice (but the story is somewhat good too)
Art of Seduction (Korea) - Good
Kekexili / Mountain Patrol (Tibet) –Very good
The Perfect Couple - Excuse: actor-driven choice (naman! kasi yung sis ko e, ito peborit)
This July, I’m increasing the number of Japanese and Chinese films to watch.
I hope I don’t get to be actor-driven this month.
Nutritionism
My development studies professor asked us to read and reflect on this:
http://services.inquirer.net/print/print.php?article_id=151481
After reading the articles, I immediately looked for a copy of the book In Defense of Food (and I got one). Pollan argues that what we consume as “food” is no longer food – they are edible food-like substances. Though Pollan discusses more about the evils of contemporary Western diet, his arguments are somehow applicable in the rest of the world; after all, even diets tend to follow the Western lead anywhere (globalization of diet?)
The book’s title implies that food is under attack and that it needs defending. Who’s the attacker? According to Pollan, food is under attack from the Nutrition Industrial Complex (probably a play from the well-established Military-Industrial Complex of the US), scientists and food marketers eager to exploit every shift in the nutrition consensus. The Nutrition Industrial Complex has constructed an ideology of nutrition that has reduced eating into (1) the ingestion of nutrients, (2) an affair guided by “experts” in nutrition, and, (3) a tool for the latest concept of physical health.
What is nutritionism?
Pollan devotes a chapter on the definition of nutritionism, which, by the way, isn’t his. The word was coined by Gyorgy Scrinis, an Australian sociologist. It is an ideology, and as far as all ideologies go, it is unscientific. The key assumption of nutritionism is that food is the sum of its nutrient parts. Eating, therefore, becomes the practice of ingesting nutrients. However, nutrients are chemicals that most people don’t understand or have no way of identifying; people need “experts” to guide them into ingesting the nutrients. Thus the establishment of very powerful and paternalistic nutrition-food science-food marketing institutions that dictate what people should eat for the purpose of health promotion.
The history of nutritionism is bloody. Generally there are three macronutrients: proteins, carbohydrates and fats. It is to the nutritionist’ interests to see them all three in a war against each other. Because of the vastness of the domains of each of the three macronutrients, civil wars flame within their own empires (animal protein versus plant protein, saturated fats versus unsaturated fats, refined carbohydrates versus fiber). What results is confusion among the people. And where there is confusion there is fear and an opportunity for deceit. Nutritionists feed, if not the physical body, the public’s need for order and assurance. Nutritionists choose their side (the Good) and wage a holy war against the other (the Bad) and lead the people to a crusade to save their bodies from the evils of unscientific and “unbalanced’ eating.
I think this belief, that there are “good” and “bad” nutrients, is based on Western culture’s destructive way of analyzing things. Western thought is very simplistic (reductionist in Pollan’s terms) and tends to break complex things into simpler ones at the expense of losing the whole picture. We mistake the trees (nutrients) for the forest (food). The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Eating 6 units of nutrient X and 5 units of nutrient Y extracted from Food A is not as good as eating Food A, whole and unprocessed. Sadly, this is not the view nutritionists take. As long as industrial and artificial products designed to be “food” have the same nutritional value as the real food they are modeled after, they are the same. No, not the same. Better. Better for them and for the food industry hell-bent on making money, regardless if it makes us sick, and the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry more focused on reversing the damage (for those who can afford it) than preventing it in the first place.
Escaping nutritionism
Escaping nutritionism is hard since most of the foods we have today is processed. Going back to nature – living in thatched huts and hunting game isn’t an appealing or practical prospect for most of us. But we can turn back from the Western diet, a diet characterized by the predominance of industrial products. Pollan tells of an algorithm that is informed of ecological and social relationships that should guide us towards healthier eating. Broadly summarized: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
A Law of Attraction
June 25, 2009I came across this passage while I was studying for my Communication III class:
Some scholars have argued that we are most attracted to people who confirm our identity. This confirmation can come in different forms, depending on the self-image of the communicator. People with relatively high self-esteem seek out others who confirm their value and, as much as possible, avoid those who treat them poorly. Conversely, people who regard themselves as unworthy may look for relationships in which others treat them badly. This principle offers one explanation for why some people maintain damaging or unsuccessful relationships. If you view yourself as a loser, you may associate with others who will confirm that self-perception. Of course, relationships can change a communicator’s identity as well as confirm it. Supportive relationships can transform feelings of inadequacy into self-respect, and damaging ones can lower self-esteem (Adler & Roman, 2006, p. 10).
So that’s why!
