Read the article, and try to find evidence of this article being true, one-sided, slanted, or false. Cite Evidence, and give an example of how it could be written differently.
Dirtying Up Our Diets
By JEFF D. LEACH
Published: June 20, 2012
OVER 7,000 strong and growing, community farmers’ markets are being heralded as a panacea for what ails our sick nation. The smell of fresh, earthy goodness is the reason environmentalists approve of them, locavores can’t live without them, and the first lady has hitched her vegetable cart crusade to them. As health-giving as those bundles of mouthwatering leafy greens and crates of plump tomatoes are, the greatest social contribution of the farmers’ market may be its role as a delivery vehicle for putting dirt back into the American diet and in the process, reacquainting the human immune system with some “old friends.”
Connect With Us on Twitter
For Op-Ed, follow@nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow@andyrNYT.
Increasing evidence suggests that the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us. As nature’s blanket, the potentially pathogenic and benign microorganisms associated with the dirt that once covered every aspect of our preindustrial day guaranteed a time-honored co-evolutionary process that established “normal” background levels and kept our bodies from overreacting to foreign bodies. This research suggests that reintroducing some of the organisms from the mud and water of our natural world would help avoid an overreaction of an otherwise healthy immune response that results in such chronic diseases as Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and a host of allergic disorders.
In a world of hand sanitizer and wet wipes (not to mention double tall skinny soy vanilla lattes), we can scarcely imagine the preindustrial lifestyle that resulted in the daily intake of trillions of helpful organisms. For nearly all of human history, this began with maternal transmission of beneficial microbes during passage through the birth canal — mother to child. However, the alarming increase in the rate of Caesarean section births means a potential loss of microbiota from one generation to the next. And for most of us in the industrialized world, the microbial cleansing continues throughout life. Nature’s dirt floor has been replaced by tile; our once soiled and sooted bodies and clothes are cleaned almost daily; our muddy water is filtered and treated; our rotting and fermenting food has been chilled; and the cowshed has been neatly tucked out of sight. While these improvements in hygiene and sanitation deserve applause, they have inadvertently given rise to a set of truly human-made diseases.
While comforting to the germ-phobic public, the too-shiny produce and triple-washed and bagged leafy greens in our local grocery aisle are hardly recognized by our immune system as food. The immune system is essentially a sensory mechanism for recognizing microbial challenges from the environment. Just as your tongue and nose are used to sense suitability for consumption, your immune system has receptors for sampling the environment, rigorous mechanisms for dealing with friend or foe, and a memory. Your immune system even has the capacity to learn.
For all of human history, this learning was driven by our near-continuous exposure from birth and throughout life to organisms as diverse as mycobacteria from soil and food; helminth, or worm parasites, from just about everywhere you turned; and daily recognition and challenges from our very own bacteria. Our ability to regulate our allergic and inflammatory responses to these co-evolved companions is further compromised by imbalances in the gut microbiota from overzealous use of antibiotics (especially in early childhood) and modern dietary choices.
The suggestion that we embrace some “old friends” does not immediately imply that we are inviting more food-borne illness — quite the contrary. Setting aside for the moment the fact that we have the safest food supply in human history, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and food processing plants and farmers continue to take the blame for the tainted food that makes us ill, while our own all-American sick gut may deserve some blame as well.
While the news media and litigators have our attention focused on farm-to-table food safety and disease surveillance, the biological question of why we got sick is all but ignored. And by asking why an individual’s natural defenses failed, we insert personal responsibility into our national food safety strategy and draw attention to the much larger public health crisis, of which illness from food-borne pathogens is but a symptom of our minimally challenged and thus overreactive immune system.
As humans have evolved, so, too, have our diseases. Autoimmune disease affects an estimated 50 million people at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. And the suffering and monetary costs are sure to grow. Maybe it’s time we talk more about human ecology when we speak of the broader environmental and ecological concerns of the day. The destruction of our inner ecosystem surely deserves more attention as global populations run gut-first into the buzz saw of globalization and its microbial scrubbing diet. But more important, we should seriously consider making evolutionary biology a basic science for medicine, or making its core principles compulsory in secondary education. Currently they are not.
As we move deeper into a “postmodern” era of squeaky-clean food and hand sanitizers at every turn, we should probably hug our local farmers’ markets a little tighter. They may represent our only connection with some “old friends” we cannot afford to ignore.
Thoughts: I thought I would be reading about dirt in my food and nearly spit out my noodles. However, once I started reading, I'd like to say thank you farmers! I cannot see why this article would be false. Toward the end, it mentions that "we have the safest food supply in human history" yet farmers are being blamed. Our immune systems are part of the reason we are ill, along with our environment. Farmers are the ones we should be thanking.
ReplyDeleteWritten differently: The article was ridiculously long and somewhat difficult to understand. A few words mentioned required me googling the definition for it. Personally, I feel like the article jumped around much too often, jumping from one topic to another. Readers go from "In a world of hand sanitizer and wet wipes.." to "However, the alarming increase in the rate of Caesarean section births.." A summarized, right-to-the-point article would have been much easier to read/understand. :)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis articles is quite hard to follow and overall boring to read and I do not understand much of the reading but I don't see why this article would be false it seems to be factual.
ReplyDeleteThis article could be written more to the point and use more common words I did not understand a lot of words. It is also a bit long and kind of drags on.
This article seems to be true, the author used some pretty good facts/explanations. Plus he didn't argue only one part of the subject.
ReplyDeleteMy problem was that it seemed like he tried too hard to write this. If he would have just kept it simple i wouldn't have had to skip whole sentences at times.
I feel like this article is very one sided. The author mostly states facts about how the food we eat now is ruining our immune system. He never talks about why some of our food is washed and packaged. Although I do agree that food nowadays isn't necessarily "all natural," some food does need to be washed in order to avoid harmful microorganisms. I really found this article interesting and I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I knew that farmers could potentially be killing us but I never gave it much thought. Overall, I think it is a valid concept and could be explored further. This article was extremely monotonous, I feel like Jeff D. Leach struggled to capture the main points effectively. There was tons of filler that just bored me; this article should be shortened to keep people interested.
ReplyDeleteThis article seems to be true, well at least to me. I say this because in the article it said, "OVER 7,000 strong and growing, community farmers’ markets are being heralded..." This is obviously a fact about all the farmer's markets that are around the world. I believe that this piece of writing is one-sided because it never mentions any positive information about how the food is packaged and what not. All it states is facts about how the food is bad because it's negatively affecting the immune system of the population. For example, within the article, there is a phrase that reads, "...farmers’ market may be its role as a delivery vehicle for putting dirt back into the American diet." The only problem was that it was difficult to comprehend, so I think that it could be written differently so that we can understand it better. The article could use simpler words and rephrase the sentences that are confusing.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this article is true, but one sided. It tells about how the dirt helps but not why we wanted to get everything clean in the fist place. Farmers may take the blame for the food, but we all need to step up to, "Food processing plants and farmers continue to take the blame for the tainted food that makes us ill, while our own all-American sick gut may deserve some blame as well."
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the article but I thought it jumpped a bit and that it needs to get cut down. For example, what does double tall skinny soy vanilla lattes have to do with anything? The parts that could get cut down would be where the author, Jeff D. Leach, got really wordy.
I think the author was extremely biased when he wrote this article. He states that, "While these improvements in hygiene and sanitation deserve applause, they have inadvertently given rise to a set of truly human-made diseases." He is merely droning on about how the dirt on the food helped the immune system and never a word of what the other side thought and providing a rebuttal for that argument. This article was indeed factual, but I feel as if he tried too hard to make himself sound intelligent and used too many unnecessary words.
ReplyDeleteI do believe this article is true; however, this article is one sided. This article only states information supporting that locally farm grown produce could potentially reduce the percentage of Americans getting sick, but does not introduce the other side of the argument, which is, the bacteria and microorganisms found on these community farmers' produce could be extremely dangerous if not sanitized or cleaned correctly. The writer should have mentioned both sides of the argument equally instead of leading the reader to just one side.
ReplyDeleteThough, I do agree that eating more locally grown produce would help the farmers and introducing some bacteria to immune system would benefit us. A good portion of the food we eat is prepackaged and contain a lot of unhealthy ingredients our bodies do not need. America's health problems are due to the fact that we eat so much processed food. Buying and eating more of the community farmers' produce is one solution, but not the only solution. He is insinuating that this is the only solution but it is not.
There are some ways Leach could have potentially written this differently. Like said before in class, America is at an eighth grade reading level. The best way for readers to understand Leach's argument is for him to use common words. I would get pretty uninterested too if I didn't understand or had to look up every other word. Like in the first sentence, "community farmers’ markets are being heralded as a panacea for what ails our sick nation". Instead of using heralded and panacea, he could have said, "community farmers' markets are claiming to be the cure for what ails our sick nation". It's easier to understand. The writer should consider the audience of his writing, I mean, let's be honest, America probably doesn't have the best attention span. Leach also jumped from topic to topic, making the article hard to follow. He should try to link each paragraph together somehow to make it flow. Another way he could have written it differently was to not be as wordy. Simple and straight to the point would be the best way to get his point across in an efficient way (not like me writing three paragraphs for this blog post...).
That's all :-)
After reading the article I find it to be true, yet very one sided. He uses valid facts such as " over 7000 strong and growing." However, he also rambles to much about unrelated topics and I think this could be a lot stronger of an article if he wouldn't have included that information and just stuck to the main points he was trying to get at. He said that " while these improvements in hygiene and sanitation deserve applause, they have inadvertently given rise to a set of human made diseases." This makes it sound like he only care about his side and what others say wouldn't matter. This article would be much improved with more approximate word choice and less rambling on about unrelated topics.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, why did he all-capitalize the word "over"? It seems a bit OVERexaggerated, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThe whole article was one-sided because Leach only talked about how community farmers' are going to be a solution to our sick nation, but he never mentioned the other side whereas the grown produce could inhabit bacteria and other microorganisms that may be a harm to us. Also not mentioning both sides of the situation makes the article weak and very biased.
Leach sort of mentioned his side and the other side by saying "The suggestion that we embrace some “old friends” does not immediately imply that we are inviting more food-borne illness," but he did not elaborate on it, which he should of. He cannot say "embracing 'old friends' do not immediately imply that we are inviting more food-borne illness," with no exact explanation of what he means "inviting". Another part where Leach was too focused on his side would be when he says "While these improvements in hygiene and sanitation deserve applause, they have inadvertently given rise to a set of truly human-made diseases."
A way that it could have been written differently would be to stay on topic. It seems as if he hops around a lot and goes off on a tangent. Also, it was said that the article is written in an 8th grade reading level. Most people, including me, would find this false, because the article was difficult to understand and had to be read multiple times in order to grasp the information. Leach should have been more straight to the point. For example, state his argument, support it, state the other side, compare and contrast, and then give a final overall conclusion.
I think this article is very one sided. The author states that organizations like the FDA are to blame. Although, there was a time they were created because too many people were getting sick from illnesses like salmonella. If the author had instead proposed his opinion and then stated the other side, this article would be more factual. He should have also interviewed an actual scienist or doctor, who could have justified his opinion. The writing was, like everyone said, too hard to understand in the beginning. His vocabulary was too large and advanced. For the hard words in the paper, he should have written the definition after. In conclusion, this article was written in a one sided manor and used vocabulary that was too hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteThis article it true, yet it is also one sided. The author only presented his side of the story, and did not really go in depth with the other side, thus leading people to go along with him. To make this article legit and accurate, he should have explained the other side, not simply throw in one sentence stating bleakly stating the other side. However, it is our own fault too because Americans have developed such bad eating habits and tend to consume numerous packaged and processed food items. If they were to go on a healthy eating plan and actually ate foods from the local farms, their immune systems would be far better.
ReplyDeleteThis article could be written differently/better if he would have clearly presented and explained both sides for one. Also, it appeared to be rather wordy, so most Americans would not be capable of reading it. Example being "As nature’s blanket, the potentially pathogenic and benign microorganisms associated with the dirt that once covered every aspect of our preindustrial day guaranteed a time-honored co-evolutionary process..." He needs to shorten the entire article, take out the information that is irrelevant to the topic, and be straight forth instead of dragging it out trying to make the viewers agree with his side. This article was way longer than it needed to be, for all he really had to do was present both sides, explain them, compare and conrast them, and lastly come to a conclusion, allowing people to form their own opinions.