Hayle Clark
Environmental Seminars
Spring Semester, 2015
Dr. Hedley Freake grew up with his 6 bothers and 1 sister in London, England. He was always good in school and this gave him attention with his parents. At the age of 18 he moved to Africa where he taught in a small school. He taught the students math and science. After a few years he moved back to London and starting going to college to get a degree in math. He realized after a year of school that a math major wasn’t what he wanted to do. Soon after he decided to go into the food industry where we worked as a chef in many different restaurants for a couple of years. This made him realize that this is the field he liked working and so he talked to the professors at the college in London. This is what got him interested in nutrition. In 193 he moved from London to the United States and finished his college career. He was the first generation college student in his family. Then in 1988 he moved to Connecticut and started teaching at the University of Connecticut. He also started a family of his own with his wife and their three kids. To this day he is still teaching at the University of Connecticut and his kids are all in college. Dr. Freake teaches students everyday about how important nutrition is.
Dr. Freake asked all of his students and groups that he talks to the question “What is food?” He asked everyone this question because it deals with nutrition. When asked this question people have different answer for what food is, but the definition he gave us was that food is any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb to maintain life and growth. Do you consider Coca-Cola Zero, Twinkies, Wheat, Wheat Bread, Corn, Pig, Snakes, Bugs, Dog, Starfish, or Boogers to be food? People look at food in different ways and what they believe to be food could be different from someone else. The main thing can classify food would be something in which it can be eaten. The food in which people eat must of the time is usually based on their culture or there circumstances. Dr. Freake says that people in the United States might have many different types of food and enough food to eat, but they still have a narrow and distorted concept of what food really is. Food in the United States is usually influenced by many different people such as the Nutritionism, government policies, industries, and the U.S. culture. An example of what food could be is in 1972 when a plane crashed in the Andes. They were there for a few days with much food and water, so after it runs out what are you going to do for food? Would you be able to eat people’s dead bodies? Or would you starve? Even though people don’t believe that other people can be food, in this case they can be considered as food.
There are many different views on what food is. In the classes that he teaches he has them read many different books in different years. He has them read a book called The Food Police by Jayson Lusk, which talks about industrial agriculture and how it has been an enormous benefit and it will be the solution to the current and the future food problems. This book explains all about the food and what people are going to do to solve food problems. He also talks about a book called Cooked by Michael Pollan which is about how cooking is the key. The food you eat is better if it is cooked at home and not bought from a store or restaurant. All of these books relate to what is in the food and what the food will do to you. For example he talks about how eating fruits[HC1] and veggies will give people a less likely chance of getting any form of cancer. This is because anti-oxidants within the fruits and veggies help to protect your DNA. The anti-oxidant is Beta-carotene which is in fruit and veggies. The Beta-carotene is the anti-oxidant that helps to protect people from cancer. Anti-oxidants are important because if you pick the wrong one or if you have the wrong dose then things can go wrong.
Dr. Freake talks about the difference between butter and margarine. He explains how butter is worse for people because it contains bad nutrients and for people to buy butter it is very expansive compared to margarine. This is show that butter is worse for the body even though it is consider to be food. Not all things that are consider food will be good for you. They sell the cheap items at the store that are not so good for you and the organic food or the food that is good for you is usually the items that are very expensive. People eat food everyday of their life, but for different people what food they eat is different and what they believe food to be consider is also different. Food should just be considered as anything that you can eat.