Me, HFCS & You
This coming week is the last week of classes for the Spring quarter. I haven't mentioned it much here in LJ, because I didn't want to jinx my final quarter that will get me my AA degree (finally). I still have a long distance to travel in academia, but this is a significant milestone after treading this winding path since 2003. I'm wrapping this up with ENG102 and PSY110 (general psychology).
English 102 is referred to as "composition," but I refer to it as "writing a research paper." Everyone has to take the class to get any associates degree, so I didn't have much of a choice. I consider myself a good writer. However, I loathe formal research papers.
The grade for the entire class is based on just 3 essays; a summary, an analysis, and the research paper. For the entire quarter, we were tasked with finding a topic of interest and doing all of our work around that topic. What did I choose? How high fructose corn syrup is causing obesity in the United States.
It's certainly a hot topic these days. There's no end to the number of newspaper and magazine articles written on this subject. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any books with significant information about HFCS. All of my source material is from medical journals and mostly from miscellaneous periodicals. I would love to cite more of the medical journals, but they're very technical. Still, I have enough to easily write a 15 page essay.
While looking up more potential sources for alternative details (side stuff for essay stuffing), I came across a link to a movie trailer for King Corn. It's not due out on DVD until the end of April, which isn't going to do me any good now, but it looks like it has all the ammunition I want right now against the corn industry.
Now that I'm nearing the end of this class, after gleaning through a horde of semi-relevant material, I feel no more enriched than when I started the class. I already knew everything a consumer can currently find out about this mystical ingredient.
The challenge will be to tactfully integrate "how the FDA is a bunch of useless figureheads" (or "how/why the FDA is allowing industries to make people sick") into my research paper. I think this is vitally important to add punch to the document, but it has to be in line with the topic or I get docked for it. By the way, have I mentioned that you shouldn't trust the FDA to protect you? If you didn't know that, you should. They're bought and paid for by the food and pharmaceutical manufacturers they were put into power to protect you from. Can you say, "conflict of interest?" Yeah.
My thesis has inevitably been change to how HFCS is one of a number of contributors to the obesity pandemic in the U.S., but certainly not the only one. People need to avoid sweet foods and eat a lot less than they currently do. In fact, I learned quite a bit of new information about obesity from my psychology textbook. Go figure. I think I'll have to cite it. :P
English 102 is referred to as "composition," but I refer to it as "writing a research paper." Everyone has to take the class to get any associates degree, so I didn't have much of a choice. I consider myself a good writer. However, I loathe formal research papers.
The grade for the entire class is based on just 3 essays; a summary, an analysis, and the research paper. For the entire quarter, we were tasked with finding a topic of interest and doing all of our work around that topic. What did I choose? How high fructose corn syrup is causing obesity in the United States.
It's certainly a hot topic these days. There's no end to the number of newspaper and magazine articles written on this subject. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any books with significant information about HFCS. All of my source material is from medical journals and mostly from miscellaneous periodicals. I would love to cite more of the medical journals, but they're very technical. Still, I have enough to easily write a 15 page essay.
While looking up more potential sources for alternative details (side stuff for essay stuffing), I came across a link to a movie trailer for King Corn. It's not due out on DVD until the end of April, which isn't going to do me any good now, but it looks like it has all the ammunition I want right now against the corn industry.
Now that I'm nearing the end of this class, after gleaning through a horde of semi-relevant material, I feel no more enriched than when I started the class. I already knew everything a consumer can currently find out about this mystical ingredient.
The challenge will be to tactfully integrate "how the FDA is a bunch of useless figureheads" (or "how/why the FDA is allowing industries to make people sick") into my research paper. I think this is vitally important to add punch to the document, but it has to be in line with the topic or I get docked for it. By the way, have I mentioned that you shouldn't trust the FDA to protect you? If you didn't know that, you should. They're bought and paid for by the food and pharmaceutical manufacturers they were put into power to protect you from. Can you say, "conflict of interest?" Yeah.
My thesis has inevitably been change to how HFCS is one of a number of contributors to the obesity pandemic in the U.S., but certainly not the only one. People need to avoid sweet foods and eat a lot less than they currently do. In fact, I learned quite a bit of new information about obesity from my psychology textbook. Go figure. I think I'll have to cite it. :P