The Marketing of Honda Motorcycles in the USA

The American Honda Motor Company was established as a subsidiary by Honda in 1959. During the 1960's the type of motorcycles brought by Americans underwent a major change. Motorcycle registrations increased by over 800,000 in five years from 1960. In the early 60's the major competitors were Haley – Davidson of U. S. A, BSA, Triumph and Norton of the UK and Motto – Guzzi of Italy. Harley-Davidson had the largest market share with sales in 1959 totalling a6. 6 million dollars. Many of the motorcycles produced were large and bulky and this led to the image f the motorcycle rider as being one who wore a leather jacket and went The Boston Consulting Group ( BCG ) report was initiated by the British government to study the decline in British motorcycle companies around the world, especially in the USA where sales had dropped from 49% in 1959 to 9% in 1973. The two key factors the report identified was the market share loss and profitability declines an the scale economy disadvantages in technology, distribution, and manufacturing. The BCG report showed that success of the Japanese manufacturers started with the growth of their own domestic markets. The high production for omestic demand led to Honda experiencing economies of scale as the cost of producing motorbikes declined with the level of output. This provided Honda to achieve a highly competitive cost position which they used to penetrate into the US market. † The basic philosophy of the Japanese manufacture is that high volumes per model provide the potential for high productivity as a result of using capital intensive and highly automated techniques. Their marketing strategies are therefore directed towards developing these high model volumes, hence the careful attention that we have observed them giving to growth and market The report goes on to show how Honda built up engineering competencies through the innovation of Mr Honda. The company also moved away from other companies who relied upon distributors to sell their bikes when the company set up its headquarters in the west coast of America. The BCG found that the motorcycles available before Honda entered the market were for limited group of people such as the police, army etc. But Honda had a â€Å"policy of selling, not primarily to confirmed motorcyclists but rather to members of the general public who had never before given a second thought to a motorcycle†( SP p. 16 ). The small, lightweight Honda Supercub sold at under 250 dollars compared to the bigger American or British machines which were retailing at around 1000 to 1500 dollars. In 1960 Honda's research team comprised of around 700 designer and engineer staff compared to the 100 or so employed by their competitors showing the value which the company placed on innovation. Production per man-year was 159 units in 1962, a figure not reached by Harley-Davidson Honda was following a strategy of developing region by region. Over a period of four to five years they moved from the west coast of America o the east coast. The report showed the emphasis which Honda paid to advertising when the company spent heavily on the advertising theme † you meet the nicest people on a Honda† thereby disassociating themselves from the rowdy, hell's angels type of people. Essentially the BCG is portraying Honda as a firm dedicated to being a low cost producer, utilising its dominant position in Japan to force entry into the U. S market, redefining that market by putting up the nicest people image and exploiting its comparative advantage via Pascale tends to disagree on many points of the BCG report. The report uggests that there was a smooth entry into the U. S market which led to an instant success. Pascale argues that Honda entered the American market at the end of the motorcycle trade season showing their impotence to carry out research in the new market. As they entered the market at the wrong time sales were not as good as they should have been and any success was not going to be instantaneous. Pascale also criticises the assumption that Honda was superior to other competitors in productivity. He says that Honda was successful in Japan with productivity but circumstances indicate that the company was not superior. The lack of funding from the ministry of finance and the ploughing back of profits into inventory meant they had a tight budget to follow. The BCG report shows that Honda had a smooth policy of developing region by region, moving from the west to the east. Pascale response is that this is partly true but reminds that Hondas advertising was still in Los Angeles in 1963, four years after setting up their subsidiary. The report to the British government showed that Honda had a deliberate strategy of disassociating themselves from the hells angels type of people by following the nicest people advertisement policy. Pascale shows that this was not an intentional move since there were disputes within the company with the director of sales eventually persuading to management against their better judgement. The BCG report found Honda pushed into the U. S market with small lightweight motorbikes. However Pascale says this is again not true. He argues the intended strategy was one of promoting the larger 250cc and 350cc as Honda felt that this was what the market wanted since Americans liked all things large. The bikes were unreliable which led to the promotion of the supercubs. These bikes salvaged the reputation of the company. An dea which hardly came from an inspired idea but one of desperation. Overall Pascale gives the impression that it was through an incidental sequence of events which led to Honda gaining a strong hold in the U. S market, mainly through the unexpected discovery of a large untapped segment of the market while at the same time trying to retain the The criticism made by Pascale can be further analysed by looking at the The strengths of Honda start with the roles which the founders played. Honda was an inventive genius with a large ego and a volatile temperament. His main concerns were not about the profitability of the ompany or its products, but rather to show his innovative ability by producing better engines. Fujisawa on the other hand thought about the financial section of the company and how to market the ideas. He often challenged Honda to come up with better engines. By specialising in their own abilities the two of them were able to pool together resources Another strength was the way the company utilised its market position. Strengths in design advantages and production methods meant they were able to increases sales in Japan even though there was no organisation within the company. Once there was a large enough demand for its products, mainly the supercub, Honda both in Japan and in America, moved from a sale on consignment basis to one that required cash on delivery. This seemed a very risky decision to make at the time but within three years they had changed the pattern within the motorcycle industry by shifting the power relationship from the dealer to the manufacturer. Mr Honda had cultivated a â€Å"success against all odds† culture into the company. This was tested when he sent two executives to the U. S with no strategy other than to see if they could sell something. The weaknesses within an organisation can become irrelevant if the strategy is strong and there is good leadership. An element of luck also helped Honda follow an emerging strategy. Restrictions placed on funds by the government for the U. S venture forced Honda to take an alternative route. If they had all the funds necessary they may well have gone through the normal distribution Honda entered the us market right at the end of the motorcycle trade season. When leaking oil and clutch problems occurred on their bikes it did not affect Honda as hard as it would have had they entered in the beginning of the season. Also people noticing the Supercubs led the company to produce a bike which was not at first supported by senior The success of Honda was not the result of senior management coming up with all the answers. In fact senior executives in most Japanese manufacturing companies do not take their strategic positions too seriously. Salesman, cleaners and those working on the manufacturing floor all contribute to the company is run and thereby influence its strategic position. It is this ability of an organisation to move ideas from the tom to the bottom and back again in continuos dialogue that the As a conclusion it is necessary to consider the theoretical side of Hondas strategy and see whether the company was in fact following a model. The first model is the Andrew's model. Andrew came up with the idea that there were two stages to corporate strategy, formulation and implementation. Formulation involved looking at the market, competitors and resources and formulating a corporate strategy which would be implemented throughout each process of the organisational structure. This model was also supported by Porter. This is how the BCG saw Honda, as a corporation, who had looked at the market, formulated a strategy to ope with the environment and competition pressures and implemented it, making all Hondas plans and activities deliberate. The second model known as the emergent strategy portrays a different image to the Andrews model and shows how Pascale viewed Honda. The model shows a realised strategy made up from a an intended strategy together with an emergent strategy which is not planned but emerges in relation to activities within the environment. Pascale seemed to think that in Hondas case a substantial proportion or the companies corporate strategy was emergent and less was actually intended strategy.

Toefl Essay Writing Topics Fundamentals Explained

Toefl Essay Writing Topics Fundamentals Explained The Truth About Toefl Essay Writing Topics Participating in a group procedure can be extremely rewarding for members of the group. Honest, dedicated practice is a whole lot more useful and potent. It's more important to pick the subjects that you're interested in than the subjects you will need to get ready for work or a career. The New Angle On Toefl Essay Writing Topics Just Released The structure doesn't have to be somewhat different, though. So, you may rest assured your term paper service is going to be delivered by means of a pro. The procedure is quite straightforward. If you would like to acquire high excellent research and thesis papers punctually and for a fair price, you should probably attempt using EssaySupply.com. Finding Toefl Essay Writing Topics on the Web To acquire the greatest scores, you will need three different, well-written reasons together with specific specifics. Stick to it so you won't receive any deductions to your score. Your score will be dependent on the caliber of your writing in addition to how well you answer the question. You may still get a great score with minor errors. Each section should have a minumum of one separate paragraph. Topics in the next list may appear in your real test. Risks can hamper the caliber of your paper and decrease your odds of submitting the paper fast and punctually. The Most Popular Toefl Essay Writing Topics It's possible to also practice brainstorming or planning reasons even if it's the case that you don't compose a comprehensive reaction. Your response ought to be around 150-225 words. It should be 150-225 words. Generally, an effective response is going to be 150 to 225 words. Getting the Best Toefl Essay Writing Topics You're going to be requested to compose many diverse kinds of assignments during your program, but four of the most frequent kinds of essays are described receive. You will be able to take notes as yo u listen to it though. You're permitted to take notes as you read and listen. Don't immediately begin writing. The majority of the questions are on current topics, therefore staying updated with what's going on in the world will truly help you think of ideas. There are a few ways that you can enhance your score by employing some basic strategies. You've been requested to choose a person to show others how to do some job. You may also decide to only practice the independent undertaking, if that's what you need to concentrate on. Ideas, Formulas and Shortcuts for Toefl Essay Writing Topics There are those who live their whole lives in the same area while other folks move several times. Some folks spend their entire lives in 1 place. Most people today work with or will probably work with several different kinds of people. Other people would rather travel alone. Being aware of what to do with essay feedback can be complicated. You will never know whether the writer is simp ly pretending to be good. Knowledgeable essay writers are extremely knowledgeable about the rules and guidelines when writing essays and this is what makes it simpler for them to compose the essay in accordance with your requirements. Choosing online essay writers isn't a nightmare anymore. When you compose the essay by yourself, you still have to visit the library to research on your favorite topic to discuss, etc.. Nevertheless, the topics will most likely be very similar overall. After reading the passage, then you will listen to a lecture on the exact same topic. Then you'll listen to a lecture regarding the identical topic. Learn all the ideas you need to understand as a way to ace TOEFL Writing! One of the most difficult sections to prep for on the TOEFL may be the essay. It can likewise be beneficial to review other TOEFL writing samples to receive a better idea about what a fantastic TOEFL essay appears like. Eventually, you are going to want to have a comprehensive TOEFL practice examit's the only method to be fully ready for the TOEFL. A great prep book can be absolutely the most important study tool you use, and we've got information on all the very best TOEFL prep books you need to consider. Almost a million people around the world took the TOEFL last calendar year. Although there's an abundance of TOEFL writing material on the. If you're going to succeed in the IELTS test you should be using and exposing yourself to English everyday.

The role of god in the ancient world Essay - 1736 Words

The questions about the existence of life and the creation of the world are always mind-boggling and fascinating, however, the real answer to these questions may never surface. All there is to rely on are the myths, stories and legends passed on from generation to generation by ancestors and the clues they have left. This essay will try to uncover the ancient Mesopotamian and Hebrew views on existence and creation by looking at sources like the Genesis and other ancient Mesopotamian texts and poems. Mesopotamians and Hebrews had contrasting views on how they explained the events in their lives, and through analysis of ancient sources, those differences will be outlined. In such populated and booming areas, human conflict was†¦show more content†¦Line four: â€Å"†¦the wise Mami†¦the one who creates mankind†, suggests that the Mesopotamians owed their existence to the mother goddess â€Å"Mami† who is also known as Nihursaga, Nintur and Nintu. The po em describes Mami as the creator of â€Å"Lullu† which is an allusion to Adam of the Old Testament. The ancient text also reveals the Mesopotamian belief that people were created from a mixture of divine blood and clay. Clay is a good analogy to describe people because humans are brought into the world soft, fragile and ready to be molded and hardened by the world and their experiences in it, so they can provide the ultimate service to god. Another important note is that clay is typically found in Israel. A second form of worship in the ancient world was called monotheism and was widely practiced by Hebrews. The Hebrews and Mesopotamians were geographically located close to one another. This may be why their creation stories show so many similarities. The creation story from Genesis: 2:1-24 (p.43) reveals that god created life in seven days. According to the text, god created man from the â€Å"dust of the ground† by breathing life into his nostrils and was to cultiv ate and take care of the Garden of Eden. God created a beautiful paradise filled with lush fruits and exotic animals. Later on, god realized that Adam would need a partner to accompany him. ByShow MoreRelatedAncient Egypt : Religion And Religion1374 Words   |  6 Pageswere connected with religion. Gods were represented with many things in nature like animals. Religion and life were very combined. Many aspects of Egyptian culture and civilization are connected with religion. Nature aspects like the sun and river is answered with what the gods do in mythology. Ancient Egypt had an organized system with beliefs about the supernatural, belief was an polytheistic one, and part of the culture and lives of people. All these features and roles are all part of the religionsRead MoreHow Did The Religion Of Ancient Greeks Played A Role?1201 Words   |  5 PagesRivers Ms. Finney How did the religion of ancient Greeks played a role in their daily lives? 10 November 2016 How did the religion of ancient Greeks played a role in their daily lives? In the ancient Greek world, religion was personal, direct, and present in its citizens’ daily lives. During this time, they participated in animal sacrifices and offerings, created myths to explain the beginning of the human race and gave reverence to their gods by building temples which controlled the urbanRead MoreAnalysis Of Lysistrata And Homers The Iliad1120 Words   |  5 PagesThe ancient Greek culture is rich in many elements and is hence reinforced through the diversity and authenticity of the ancient Greek tales. It is through the ancient Greek tales, that the true depiction and discernment of the ancient Greek society comes to life. 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Even thoughRead MoreThe Importance of Greek Mythology1650 Words   |  7 Pagesmythology Today, the ancient Greek myths still fascinate readers throughout the world. There are thousands of books written about the importance of Greek mythology in the formation of modern-time societies. There are hundreds of movies created about the adventures of Greek heroes. Apparently, the events, creatures, and people described in the ancient Greek myths were not real; however, their mythical nature does not undermine the importance of Greek mythology in defining the world of fantasies and inRead MoreHistorical Characteristics Of Ancient Egypt Essay1299 Words   |  6 Pagesimpacted by the Sahara Desert, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, and running through the civilization is the Nile River. These geographical characteristics play a vital role in the development of the politics, religion, and architecture of the ancient Egypt civilization. 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Ancient Greek religion is a type of polytheism called â€Å"Monarchial Polytheism.† That is, they believe in several different gods and deities but thereRead MoreAncient Creation Myths1669 Words   |  7 PagesCreation Myths of the Ancient Greeks, Mesopotamians, and Chinese Zach Lenart Ancient Mythology East and West Professor Shawn Youngblood October 2, 2012 Lenart-1 Creation myths of are often examined, but more often than not they are looked at individually. Much more can be learned if different myths are analyzed at the same time, recognizing similarities and differences as well as overlapping themes in these myths. We can learn about many aspects of a culture from their creation myths

The Impact Of World Music On Music And Culture - 1168 Words

Jongseok Kim Ethnomusicology 25 Professor Ruskin 24 October 2014 Paper 1 The following readings from Bohlman, Byrne, and Fairley emphasize world music and globalization. According to Bohlman, world music is music people face ubiquitously, and includes popular, folk and art music practiced by either professionals or amateurs; it may be Western or non-Western, acoustic, electronic, and so on. Bohlman notes that world music can be marketable, profane, or sacred, and that musicians may highlight genuineness while greatly relying on media to propagate it to as many markets as they can. The consumers of world music may accept the music as however they may please, thus essentially world music is anything people may want to classify it as, as it†¦show more content†¦Such view shows a positive implication as optimists finds such hybridity a fundament of music broadening out into history and culture, and the growing interest and development of music amongst people. Ultimately, Fairley notes of Jowers’ conclusion that world music in turn brings serio us attentiveness to present economic and political matters, and the role of the West in enduring exploitation. Moreover, according to Byrne, world music is a term that typically refers to non-Western popular, traditional, and classical music. He notes that world music is a marketing and â€Å"pseudomusical† term. He thinks the use of the term—world music—is merely a â€Å"label for anything that is not sung in English or anything that does not fit into the present Anglo-Western pop music.† Fairley notes that local and global are not merely contrasting descriptive terms, but rather â€Å"different perspectives of the same process† (Fairley 273). Fairley states that in straightforward analytic terms, ‘global’ and ‘local’ are vague terms with numerous vantage points. He further discusses of the Cooder Paradigm, which can be explained as a confrontation between local musicians and musicians with global reputation. He notes that local musicians are musicians known only within their own geographically defined market, whereas global musicians are those who bring attention to the global audience (Fairley 283).

What Was the American Diet Like 50 Years Ago Free Essays

string(67) " and used almost twice as much cooking fat and oil as women today\." at was the I. What was the American diet like 50 years ago? a) Over the past 50 years, American diets have changed from leisurely family meals that were usually prepared at home using natural ingredients to today’s prepackaged, processed and convenience foods that are often eaten on the run with little thought towards nutrition or content. b) American diets have evolved in the last 50 years from natural ingredients to processed, high fat ingredients and will continue in the future to include convenience foods but with a greater emphasis on healthier choices. We will write a custom essay sample on What Was the American Diet Like 50 Years Ago or any similar topic only for you Order Now ) This wasn’t always the case. â€Å"Fifty years ago, people sitting down to a meal were simply looking for something hot, filling and, in most cases, inexpensive† (Heymsfield 142). c) Throughout the century, Americans experimented with various diets. d) In the 1950s, Adele Davis published a cookbook exploring a healthy approach to food. e) In the 1960s, there was a movement to use unprocessed food, natural ingredients and macrobiotic cooking (Klem 439). f) The notion of a balanced diet was still quite abstract. ii) People weren’t as well informed about nutrition as they are today. ) While nutritional research was revealing new information about everyday foods, the American household underwent an important structural shift (Klem 438). h) In the 1940s and 1950s women began to enter the workplace in large numbers, it was then that the country became caught up in an explosion of convenience items. iii) Time for food preparation became more limited, and the industry responded with a wide variety of pre-packaged foods. iv) Products like Bisquick, Spam, instant oatmeal, canned tomato sauce and pre-sliced American cheese began to appear (Klem 438). ) By the 1950s, the refrigerator had replaced the old-fashioned icebox and the cold cellar as a place to store food. v) Refrigeration, because it allowed food to last longer, made the American kitchen a convenient place to maintain readily available food stocks (Heymsfield 144). vi) This also allowed for pre-prepared foods such as TV dinners, which became very popular. j) Swanson’s was one of the first TV dinners, which came out during this time. k) Frozen dinners and fast food chains arose and became a growing trend. vii) Meals became quick and simple. viii) People started eating things for taste and popularity, not for ealth reasons. l) In the 1960s and 1970s, when nutritional research really began to gain the nation’s attention, food manufacturers started to offer options that were bot h quick and health- conscious. ix) Instant orange juice and vitamin-fortified cereals appeared (Klem 440). m) Cereals came out to make people eat more grains, but over the years, large companies have decided that to make their cereal sell, they have to make it taste better. x) They added things like sugar, candy pieces, chocolate flavors, and numerous other things which are high in calories and high in fat in order to make their product taste better. i) This has made the idea of something healthy turn in to something less healthy over the years. n) The movement toward convenience finally caught up with movement toward healthy eating. o) This represents a drastic change from the 1950s, when people ate far more of their meals at home, with their families, and at a leisurely pace. p) â€Å"A hundred years ago there was no such thing as a snack food—nothing you could pop open and overeat,† says Mollie Katzen, author of The Moosewood Cookbook and many others, and a consulta nt to Harvard Dining Services. ii) â€Å"There were stew pots. Things took a long time to cook, and a meal was the result of someone’s labor. † q) The 1950s were also an era in which the kitchen—not the television room—was the heart of the home. r) In 1941, the federal government established the first Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs), and the concept of basic food groups was introduced. xiii) This period was also the â€Å"golden age for food chemicals† with hundreds of additives and preservatives brought to market for the first time. ) Convenience was most important, and by the 1950s, a large variety of convenience foods made meal preparation easier than ever before. t) Advancements in technology also led to faster meal preparation. u) During the late 50s and 1960s, American’s attitudes towards nutrition changed as scientific research and other factors combined to heighten awareness. v) In 1959 came the discovery that eating polyunsatu rated fats might lower serum cholesterol. xiv) This was followed in 1961 by further evidence linking cholesterol with arteriosclerosis. ) By 1962, nearly 25% of American families said they had made dietary changes that included less cholesterol. x) That same year, Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, provided fodder for the debate concerning the possibility of synthetic chemicals reaching humans through the food chain. xv) There was controversy about food chemicals in general, and the modern consumer movement was launched in 1965 following publication of Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe At Any Speed. y) 50 years ago women still managed to burn up many more calories than their counterparts today. vi) Research suggests the housework and general exercise that stay-at-home housewives did in 1953 were more successful at shedding the pounds. z) The mothers and grandmothers of today’s generation burnt well in excess of 1,000 calories a day through their domesticated lifestyle , according to the study by the woman’s magazine Prima. xvii) But females today get through only 556, even though seven in ten think they are healthier than the post-war generation. {) Modern women also consume a lot more calories, 2,178 a day now as opposed to 1,818 then. viii) This could be down to eating more junk food, the study suggested, as women in 1953 were more likely to cook meals from scratch with a mixture of ingredients. |) Not everything in ‘the old days’ appears to have been healthier, according to Prima, which compared the lifestyles of women in 1953 and those of today. xix) They would often eat twice as many eggs and used almost twice as much cooking fat and oil as women today. You read "What Was the American Diet Like 50 Years Ago" in category "Papers" xx) They also ate more sugar and less chicken. }) Most meals were served with vegetables, although it was more likely to be swede, turnips and sprouts rather than the aubergines, mange- tout or ro cket favored today. ) Appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers have also played their part in reducing the amount of calories burned, the research showed. xxi) Women in 1953 would spend three hours a day doing the housework, an hour walking to and from the shops in the town center, an hour on the shopping itself and another hour making dinner. ) Many had lunch to prepare, too, as many husbands came home to eat in the middle of the day. ) More calories would have been burned, of course, walking the children to and from school, since the family car was still a rarity. Today, women drive, rather than walk, have freezers, which mean fewer shopping trips, and use supermarkets, which provide everything under one roof. xxii) It is all a far cry from 50 years ago when they would have to traipse between the butcher’s, to the baker’s, the greengrocer’s and other specialist stores. ) Women 50 years ago didn’t, however, have the benefit of 45 minutes on t he treadmill or an evening class in Pilates. xxiii) In 1953, their idea of relaxation was listening to Housewives’ Choice while they washed up the breakfast things or Mrs. Dale’s Diary when they stopped to enjoy tea and a biscuit for elevenses. ) The children needed playing with, too, as few families had a TV set to keep them quiet. xxiv) Evening entertainment involved listening to the radio again, curling up with a book or playing board games. xxv) And in a less disposable age there was always plenty of darning and mending to do by the fire. ) Prima editor Maire Fahey said the magazine decided to study the contrasting lifestyles following an earlier survey, which revealed how today’s women were neglecting their health. xvi) ‘It is telling that modern technology has made us two-thirds less active than we were. It goes to show the importance of exercise in the battle to maintain a healthy balance. ‘ ) Exercise and diet are not the only things to radically change over the last half-century. xxvii) Fitness and nutrition in the United States have changed tremendously in the past five decades. ) Cutting calories and exercise was th e most popular method of weight loss 50 years ago. xxviii) Some fad diets such as the Mayo Clinic diet–created in the 1930’s–were existent, but not the most common option in weight loss. II. Where do most of our foods come from other than America? a) Here in the US, we have several key issues. b) Specifically, every year we produce less and less of the food that our ever-growing population needs. c) There’s one word that sums up nearly everything we need to know about the food industry in the United States: conglomeration. d) According to the USDA, only about 1/3 of our fruit and nuts and 1/8 of our vegetables are imported. i) About two-thirds of those imports occur during the months of December to April, showing a strong seasonal component to it. ) Mexico is far and away our biggest supplier of fruits and vegetables, taking the top spot in both categories by about a 2-to-1 margin over 2nd place. f) Canada takes 2nd place in vegetables with China a distant third. (Note that these are in dollar figures, not volume, but the relationships should hold when converted. ) g) In the fruit category, most of it comes from Central and South America, with only China (4th) to break up the Top 6 of Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Ecuador. ) The US actually does produce most of its own red meat. i) As of 2008, only about 10% of our red meat was imported, predominantly from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. j) Fish and shellfish are our major protein imports, with nearly 80% of those being imported. k) Most of that comes from China, Canada, and Thailand. l) There is one bright spot here: most of the food Americans consume is still produced here. i. Currently, between 10 and 15 percent of all food consumed by U. S. households is imported. m) According to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), nearly two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables and 80 percent of seafood consumed domestically come from outside the United States. n) On the other hand, we are seeing a marked increase in imports over time. o) According to USDA data, from 1999 to 2010, there was a 43. 25% increase in import volume (111% increase on a dollar basis). ii. Population growth is a partial contributor, but in that same time period, the US population only increased about 10%. p) The top three countries that we import from are Canada, Mexico, and China. iii. We are actually Mexico’s largest trading partners, buying 77% of their exports. q) From 1995 to 2006, imports from China grew five-fold: r) According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the United States imported $4. 1 billion worth of seafood and agricultural products from China in 2006. iv. In 1995, it was $800 million. v. From 2006 to 2008, it went up another 25%. s) In 2008, Chinese imports reached $5. 2 billion, making China the third-largest source of U. S. food imports. About 41 percent of this import value was from fish and seafood, most of it farm-raised. Juices and pickled, dried, and canned vegetables, and fruit accounted for the other 25 percent. vi. According to the USDA, about 60 percent of all American apple juice, 50 percent of garlic, 10 percent of shrimp and 2 percent of catfish are imported from China. III. How has the typical American diet changed our health and affected rates of disease in this country? a) The sedentary 20th-century lifestyle and work habits brought its own unpleasant consequences, which were overeating and excess weight. a) The number of overweight Americans increased from 1970 to 1990 (Klem 440). ) By the 1990s, Americans had become more conscious of their diets, eating more poultry, fish, and fresh fruits and vegetables and fewer eggs and less beef. ii) They also began appreciating fresh ingredients. c) As Americans became more concerned about their diets, they also became more ecologically conscious. iii) Some Americans turned to vegan or vegetarian diets, or only started eating organic foods, which ar e foods grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. d) At the end of the 20th century, American eating habits and food production were increasingly taking place outside the home. v) Many people relied on restaurants and on new types of fully prepared meals to help busy families in which both adults worked full-time. e) Another sign of the public’s changing food habits was the microwave oven, probably the most widely used new kitchen appliance, since it can quickly reheat or cook food and leftovers. v) Since Americans are generally cooking less of their own food, they are more aware than at any time since the early 20th century of the quality and health standards applied to food (Heymsfield 147). ) Two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and half of these are obese. (Overweight means having a body mass index, or BMI, of 25 or greater, obese, 30 or greater: to calculate BMI, a widely used measure, take the square of your height in inches and then divide your weight, in pounds, by that number; then multiply the result by 703. g) Even adults in the upper end of the â€Å"normal† range, who have BMIs of 22 to 24, would generally live longer if they lost some fat; add in these people and it appears that â€Å"up to 80 percent of American adults should weigh less than they do,† says Walter C. Willett, M. D. , D. P. H. ’80, Stare professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the School of Public Health. h) The epidemic of obesity is a vast and growing public health problem. i) He notes that three aspects of weight—BMI, waist size, and weight gained after one’s early twenties—are linked to chances of having or dying from heart disease, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and several types of cancer, plus suffering from arthritis, infertility, gallstones, asthma, and even snoring. i) â€Å"Weight is much more important than serum cholesterol,† Willett asserts; as a cause of premature, preventable deaths, he adds, excess weight and obesity rank a very close second to smoking, partly because there are twice as many fat people as smokers. vii) In fact, since smokers tend to be leaner, the decrease in smoking prevalence has actually swelled the ranks of the fat. j) The obesity epidemic arrived with astonishing speed. k) In 1980, 4 6 percent of U. S. adults were overweight; by 2000, the figure was 64. 5 percent: nearly a 1 percent annual increases in the ranks of the fat. iii) At this rate, by 2040, 100 percent of American adults will be overweight and â€Å"it may happen more quickly,† says John Foreyt of Baylor College of Medicine, who spoke at a conference organized by Gifford’s Oldways group in 2003. l) Foreyt noted that, 20 years ago, he rarely saw 300-pound patients; now they are common. m) Childhood obesity, also once rare, has mushroomed: 15 percent of children between ages six and 19 are now overweight, and even 10 percent of those between two and five. ix) â€Å"This may be the first generation of children who will die before their parents,† Foreyt says. ) Today, Americans eat 200 calories more food energy per day than they did 10 years ago; that alone would add 20 pounds annually to one’s bulk. o) A recent paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition argued that th e poor tend toward greater obesity because eating energy-dense, highly palatable, refined foods is cheaper per calorie consumed than buying fish and fresh fruits and vegetables. x) One explanation for our slide into overconsumption is that â€Å"the character of modern Americans is somehow inherently weak and we are incapable of discipline,† says Ludwig. i) â€Å"The food industry would love to explain obesity as a problem of personal responsibility, since it takes the onus off them for marketing fast food, soft drinks, and other high-calorie, low-quality products. † p) Never in human experience has food been available in the staggering profusion seen in North America today. xii) We are awash in edibles shipped in from around the planet; seasonality has largely disappeared. q) Food obtrudes itself constantly, seductively, into our lives—on sidewalks, in airplanes, at gas stations and movie theaters. iii) â€Å"Caloric intake is directly related to gross nationa l product per capita,† says Moore professor of biological anthropology Richard Wrangham. xiv) â€Å"It’s very difficult to resist the temptation to take in more calories if they are available. r) People keep regarding it as an American problem, but it’s a global problem as countries get richer. † s) Still, the lavish banquet’s first seating is right here in the United States of America. t) â€Å"The French explanation for why Americans are so big is simple,† said Jody Adams, chef/partner of Rialto, a restaurant in Harvard Square, speaking at the Oldways conference. v) â€Å"We eat lots of sugar, and we eat between meals. u) Indeed, the national response to our glut of comestibles is apparently to eat only one meal a day—all day long. xvi) We eat everywhere and at all times: at work, at play, and in transit. v) But the most powerful technology driving the obesity epidemic is television. xvii) â€Å"The best single behavioral predictor of obesity in children and adults is the amount of television viewing,† says the School of Public Health’s Gortmaker. w) â€Å"The relationship is nearly as strong as what you see between smoking and lung cancer. viii) Everybody thinks it’s because TV watching is sedentary, you’re just sitting there for hours—but that’s only about one-third of the effect. xix) Our guesstimate is that two-thirds is the effect of advertising in changing what you eat. † x) Furthermore, in some future year when the Internet merges with broadband cable TV, advertisers will be able to target their messages far more precisely. â€Å"It won’t be just to kids,† Gortmaker says. â€Å"It’ll be to your kid. † y) Since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last half-century, technology has enabled us to conduct an increasingly immobile daily life. ) Even a century later, before the invention of the automobile, many farmed o r at least used their bodies vigorously every day. xx) â€Å"At higher levels of activity, people seem to balance their caloric intake and expenditure extremely well,† he says. xxi) â€Å"If our grandparents were farmers, they were moving all day long—not jogging for an hour, but staying active eight to 12 hours a day. {) The way we do our work has changed, and so has the way we spend our leisure time,† he continues. xxii) â€Å"The average number of television hours watched per week is close to a full-time job! ) People used to go for walks and visit their neighbors. Much of that is gone as well. † xxiii) Not only do many adults spend their work lives in front of computer screens, but also the design of public spaces outside their offices eliminates physical activity. xxiv) In skyscrapers, it’s often hard to find the stairs; electronic sensors in public restrooms are eliminating even the most minimal actions of flushing toilets or turning faucets on and off. }) Furthermore, modern children â€Å"don’t have to forage or walk long distances,† says Lieberman. xv) â€Å"Kids today sit in front of a TV or computer. xxvi) They ride to school on a school bus. xxvii) We even have them rolling their school backpacks on wheels because we are afraid of them overloading their backbones. † ~) In sum, we no longer live like hunter-gatherers, but we still have hunter-gatherer genes. xxviii) Humans evolved in a state of ceaseless physical activity; they ate seasonally, since there was no other choice; and frequently there was nothing to eat at all. ) To get through hard winters and famines, the human body evolved a brilliant mechanism of storing energy in fat cells. The problem, for most of humanity’s time on Earth, has been a scarcity of calories, not a surfeit. ) Our fat-storage mechanism worked beautifully until 50 to 100 years ago. xxix) But since then, â€Å"The speed of environmental change has far surpas sed our ability to adapt,† says Dun Gifford of Oldways. xxx) Our bodies were not designed to handle so much caloric input and so little energy outflow. ) Different scholars and popular writers have argued that human beings have â€Å"evolved† to be carnivores, herbivores, frugivores, or omnivores, but anthropologist Richard Wrangham says we are â€Å"cookivores,† grinning at the neologism. xxi) â€Å"We evolved to eat cooked foods,† he declares. â€Å"Raw food eating is never practiced systematically anywhere in the world. † ) Cooking might be considered the first food-processing technology, and like its successors, it has had profound effects on the human body, as in the growth of bones. ) Various signals influence human growth; some come from genes, and others come from the environment, particularly for the musculo-skeletal system, whose job is engaging with the environment. xxxii) Less chewing of cooked food, for example, has altered the anatomy of our skulls, jaws, faces, and teeth. xxiii) â€Å"Chewing is a major activity that involves muscular forces,† says skeletal biologist Daniel Lieberman. â€Å"It has incredible effects on how the skull grows. † xxxiv) Chewing can transform anatomy rather quickly; in one study, in which Lieberman fed pigs a diet of softened food, in a matter of months their skulls developed shorter and narrower dimensions and their snouts developed thinner bones than those of pigs eating a hard-food diet. ) The same thing happens with human beings. xxxv) â€Å"Since the beginning of the fossil record, humans have become much more gracile,† Lieberman says. xxvi) â€Å"Our bones have become thinner, our faces smaller, and our teeth smaller—especially permanent teeth—although we have the same number of teeth. ) More recently, with the Industrial Revolution, people have become more sedentary; they interact with their environment in a less forceful way. xxxvii) We load our bones less and the bones become thinner. Osteoporosis is a disease of industrialism. † ) In today’s world, where we not only cook but eat a great deal of processed food that has been ground up before it reaches our mouths, we don’t generate as much force when chewing. In fact, for millennia human food has been growing less tough, fibrous, and hard. ) â€Å"The size of the human face has gotten about 12 percent smaller since the Paleolithic,† Lieberman says, â€Å"particularly around the oral cavity, due to the effects of mechanical loading on the size of the face. Fourteen thousand years ago, a much larger proportion of the face was between the bottom of the jaw and the nostrils. † xxxviii) The size of teeth has not decreased as fast (genetic factors control more of their variation); hence, modern teeth are actually too big for our mouths—wisdom teeth become impacted and require extraction. The health hazards of sedentary life seem like an adult problem, but actually, the skeletal system is most responsive to loading when it is immature. xxxix) There is only one window for accumulating bone mass—during the first two decades of life. xl) â€Å"Peak bone mass occurs at the end of adolescence,† Lieberman explains, à ¢â‚¬Å"and we lose bone steadily thereafter. Kids who are active grow more robust bones. ) If you’re sedentary as a juvenile, you don’t grow as much bone mass—so as you get older and lose bone mass, you drop below the threshold for osteoporosis. ) Furthermore, females get osteoporosis more readily than men because they start with less adult bone mass; as life spans lengthen, says research fellow in cell biology Jennifer Sacheck, of Harvard Medical School, older men will also begin showing symptoms of osteoporosis. ) Weight-bearing exercise only slows the rate of bone loss for adults; pre-adolescent bone growth is far more important to long-term skeletal strength. Hence, the sedentary lifestyles of today’s youngsters—and the cutbacks on school physical-education programs—may be sowing the seeds of widespread skeletal breakdown as their cohort matures. The dramatic upsurge in consumption of carbonated soft drinks, paired with the simultaneous d ecline in milk drinking, may also weaken future bones. xli) Both milk (lactose) and soda (sucrose, fructose) are sweet, but soda is sweeter, and today’s consumers are hooked on sugar. xlii) â€Å"We probably evolved our sense of sweetness to detect subtle amounts of carbohydrates in foods, because they provide energy,† says Walter Willett. ) â€Å"But now the expectations of sweetness have been ratcheted up. xliii) A product is not deemed attractive if it is not as sweet as its competitor. ) Sugars added to foods made up 11 percent of the calories in American diets in the late 1970s; today they are 16 percent. With agriculture, human health declined, says Lieberman, partly because farming is such hard work, and partly because it allows higher population densities, in which infection spreads more easily. ) â€Å"There was more disease, a decrease in body size, higher mortality rates among juveniles, and more stress lines in bones and teeth,† Lieberman says. ) Cu ltivating grain also allowed farmers to space their children more closely. liv) Hunter-gatherers have long intervals between births, because they do not wean children until age four or five, when teeth are ready to chew hard foods. (â€Å"You can’t feed babies beef jerky,† jokes Lieberman. ) xlv) Farmers, however, can make gruel—a high-calorie mush of roots or grains like millet, taro, or oats that doesn’t require chewing—and wean children much sooner. ) Grains, the source of products such as bread, baked goods, and corn syrup, did not become plentiful in the human diet until the establishment of agriculture. xlvi) So grain farming allowed bigger families and has changed the human situation in endless ways. But while people have eaten grains for a hundred centuries, until the last half-century, most grains consumed were not heavily processed. † ) In the last 50 years, the extent of processing has increased so much that prepared breakfast cere als—even without added sugar—act exactly like sugar itself,† says pediatrics specialist David Ludwig. ) In 1981, David Jenkins, a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto, led a team that tested various foods to determine which were best for diabetics. xlvii) They developed a â€Å"glycemic index† that ranked foods from 0 to 100, depending on how rapidly the body turned them into glucose. This work overturned some established bromides, such as the distinction between â€Å"simple† and â€Å"complex† carbohydrates: a baked russet potato, for example, traditionally defined as a complex carbohydrate, has a glycemic rating of 85 (ffl12; studies vary) whereas a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola appears on some glycemic indices at 63. xlviii) Eating high-glycemic foods dumps large amounts of glucose suddenly into the bloodstream, triggering the pancreas to secrete insulin, the hormone that allows glucose to enter the body’s cells for meta bolism or storage. lix) The pancreas over-responds to the spike in glucose—a more rapid rise than a hunter-gatherer’s bloodstream was likely to encounter—and secretes lots of insulin. ) But while high-glycemic foods raise blood sugar quickly, â€Å"they also leave the gastrointestinal tract quickly,† Ludwig explains. â€Å"The plug gets pulled. l) † With so much insulin circulating, blood sugar plummets. This triggers a second wave of hormones, including stress hormones like epinephrine. li) â€Å"The body puts on the emergency brakes,† says Ludwig. lii) â€Å"It releases any stored fuels—the liver starts releasing glucose. iii) This raises blood sugar back into the normal range, but at a cost to the body. † ) One cost, documented by studies at the School of Public Health, is that going through this kind of physiologic stress three to five times per day doubles the risk of heart attacks. ) Another cost is excess hunger. ) The p recipitous drop in blood sugar triggers primal mechanisms in the brain: â€Å"The brain thinks the body is starving,† Ludwig explains. liv) â€Å"It doesn’t care about the 30 pounds of fat socked away, so it sends you to the refrigerator to get a quick fix, like a can of soda. ) Glycemic spikes may underlie Ludwig and Gortmaker’s finding, published in the Lancet two years ago, that each additional daily serving of a sugar-sweetened beverage multiplies the risk of obesity by 1. 6. ) Some argue that people compensate for such sugary intake by eating less later on, to balance it out, but Ludwig asserts, â€Å"We don’t compensate well when calories come in liquid form. lv) The meal has to go through your gut, where the brain gets satiety signals that slow you down. On the other hand, you could drink a 64-ounce soft drink before you knew what hit you. ) Since humans can take in large amounts of food in a short time, â€Å"we are adapted to receiving much hi gher glycemic loads than other primates,† says Richard Wrangham, speculating that nonhuman primates may be poor models for research on human diabetes because they have a different insulin system. lvi) The only component of the hunter-gatherer diet likely to cause extreme insulin spikes is honey, which Wrangham feels â€Å"is likely to have been very important, at least seasonally, for our ancestors. What is certain is that hunter-gatherers never experienced anything like the routine daily glucose-insulin cycles that characterize a modern diet loaded with refined sugars and starches. lvii) Constantly buffeted by these insulin surges, over time the body’s cells develop insulin resistance, a decreased response to insulin’s signal to take in glucose. lviii) When the cells slam their doors shut, high levels of glucose keep circulating in the bloodstream, prompting the pancreas to secrete even more insulin. This syndrome can turn into an endocrine disorder called hype rinsulinemia that sets the stage for Type II, or adult-onset, diabetes, which has become epidemic in recent years. ) Ironically, U. S. government agencies’ attempts to deal with obesity during the last three decades—encouraging people to eat less fat and more carbohydrates, for example—actually may have exacerbated the problem. ) Take the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Guide Pyramid, first promulgated in 1992. ix) The pyramid’s diagram of dietary recommendations is a familiar sight on cereal boxes—hardly a coincidence, since the guidelines suggest six to 11 servings daily from the â€Å"bread, cereal, rice, and pasta† group. ) The USDA recommends eating more of these starches than any other category of food. lx) Unfortunately, such starches are nearly all high-glycemic carbohydrates, which drive obesity, hyperinsulinemia, and Type II diabetes. ) â€Å"At best, the USDA pyramid offers wishy-washy, scientifically unfounded adv ice on an absolutely vital topic—what to eat,† writes Willett in Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. â€Å"At worst, the misinformation contributes to overweight, poor health, and unnecessary early deaths. ) â€Å"Clearly, some food industries have for many years successfully influenced the government in ways that keep the prices of certain foods artificially low. lxi) David Ludwig questions farm subsidies of â€Å"billions to the lowest-quality foods†Ã¢â‚¬â€for example, grains like corn (â€Å"for corn sweeteners and animal feed to make Big Macs†) and wheat (â€Å"refined carbohydrates. â€Å") ) Meanwhile, the government does not subsidize far healthier items like fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. xii) â€Å"It’s a perverse situation,† he says. â€Å"The foods that are the worst for us have an artificially low price, and the best foods cost more. lxiii) This is worse than a free market: we are creating a mirror-world here. † ) Govern mental policies like cutting school budgets by dropping physical education programs may also prove to be a false economy. ) â€Å"There’s fast food sold in school cafeterias, soft drinks and candies in school vending machines, and advertising in classrooms on Channel One. ) Meanwhile there are cutbacks in physical education, as if it were a luxury. What was once daily and mandatory is now infrequent and optional. † ) Consider the flap that arose after the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report in 2003 recommending guidelines for eating to improve world nutrition and prevent chronic diseases. lxiv) Instead of applauding the report, the DHHS issued a 28-page, line-by-line critique and tried to get WHO to quash it. lxv) WHO recommended that people limit their intake of added sugars to no more than 10 percent of alories eaten, a guideline poorly received by the Sugar Association, a trade group that has threatened to pressure Congress to challenge the United States’ $406 million contribution to WHO. ) By the last decade of the 20th Century, Americans had become much more adventuresome eaters. lxvi) Variety of choice is nearly unbelievable. lxvii) Ethnic cuisine, once shunned, enjoys increasing popularity and the new foods introduced via that route add greatly to the variety of food choices. ) The trend toward eating out of the home continues to grow; in 1998, 47% of the food dollar was spent away from home. xviii) However, the concern for nutrition was higher than ever and that fact probably contributed to keeping some meals at home. ) Today’s families seem busier than ever. lxix) Rushing between work and school often leaves parents scrambling for time to prepare nutritious, good-tasting meals for their children. ) In fact, 44 percent of U. S. weekday meals are prepared in 30 minutes or less. ) As the quality of our diets has deteriorated over the last 50 years, certain diseases have become rampant. â€Å"Directly related to food, you hear a lot of talk about obesity-related problems in terms of diabetes, coronary artery disease and high blood pressure, and those happen in both men and women,† lxx) â€Å"Those are the general categories of ailments; there are also many specific diet-related disorders. † ) A majority of individuals are making less healthy food choices for better time management. ) Whether for good or bad, changes in diet and fitness have morphed the way people live. ) In the 1960s, it was still common to plant a garden or a fruit tree for food. xxi) Nowadays, this is not the case; in fact it is less common to grow a garden in the U. S than it was 50 years ago. ) Even quick, pop in the microwave or oven meals have become more popular, despite the fact that the invention of the TV dinner occurred in 1944. lxxii) Between working and conflicting schedules, there are not as many home-cooked, healthy meals on the plates of children today. ) Obesity has reached epidemic proportions. lxxiii) In 2007 and 2008, 34 percent of Americans were obese and another 34 percent were overweight, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. xxiv) In 1960 and 1962, only about 14 percent of Americans were obese and 31. 5 percent were overweight. lxxv) Since 1976, the number of o bese children from ages 2 to 5 has nearly doubled. ) In 2011, people are looking for weight loss at a quick pace with diet pills, diet shakes, surgery and different diets such as the cabbage soup diet. lxxvi) There are more fad diets and methods of weight loss than ever before. IV. Are food allergies on the rise? If so, why? a) The number of kids with food allergies went up 18 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ) About 3 million children younger than 18 had a food or digestive allergy in 2007, the CDC said. c) A recent study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that visits to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital Boston for allergic reactions more than doubled from 2001 to 2006. i) Although this is just one hospital, the findings reflect a rise in food allergies seen in national reports, said Dr. Susan Rudders, lead author and pediatric allergist-immunologist in Providence, Rhode Island. d) One theory is that the Western diet has made people more susceptible to developing allergies and other illnesses. i) The children in the African village live in a community that produces its own food. iii) The study authors say this is closer to how humans ate 10,000 years ago. iv) Their diet is mostly vegetarian. e) By contrast, the local diet of European children contains more sugar, animal fat and calorie-dense foods. v) The study authors posit that these factors result in less biodiversity in the organisms found inside the gut of European children. f) The decrease in richness of gut bacteria in Westerners may have something to do with the rise in allergies in industrialized countries, said Dr. Paolo Lionetti of the department of pediatrics at Meyer Children Hospital at the University of Florence. vi) Sanitation measures and vaccines in the West may have controlled infectious disease, but they decreased exposure to a variety of bacteria may have opened the door to these other ailments. g) Another theory is that children need to get exposed to common allergens, such as nuts and shellfish, from a much earlier age, to avoid developing allergies. vii) Some doctors have been recommending waiting until 2 or 3, but Ferdman at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is a proponent of giving kids nuts very early. iii) This could occur through breastfeeding or an unintended exposure to highly processed foods in the Western diet that may contain hidden sources of the allergens. h) Cooking practices can also affect the development of food allergies. ix) For example, roasting a peanut enhances its allergenic potential compared to other forms of preparing peanut. x) Peanut allergy is more common in the U. S. where peanuts are roasted, as compared to China where peanuts are boiled. V. Is the fast food industry hurting our waistlines and our health? How? ) American emphasis on convenience and rapid consumption is best represented in fast foods such as hamburgers, French fries, and soft drinks, which almost all Americans have eaten. b) By the 1960s and 1970s fast foods became one of America’s strongest exports as franchises for McDonalds and Burger Kings spread through the world (Klem 443). c) The effect of fast food chains was infectious; they had become accepted in American society. d) Traditional meals cooked at home and consumed at a leisurely pace gave way to quick lunches and dinners eaten on the run as other countries mimicked American cultural patterns. ) In some ways, American food developments are contradictory. f) Americans are more aware of food quality, yet are still eating unhealthy foods due to their increasing dependence on convenience, and are a lso regularly eating fast foods (Heymsfield 148). i) â€Å"It’s hard for people to give up traditions,† states nutrition expert, Kathy Johnson. g) Spurlock’s total immersion in fast food was a one-subject research study, and his body’s response a warning about the way we eat now. h) â€Å"Super Size Me† could be a credo for the United States, where people, like their automobiles, have become gargantuan. i) â€Å"SUVs, big homes, penis enlargement, breast enlargement, bulking up with steroids—it’s a context of everything getting bigger,† says K. Dun Gifford ’60, LL. B. ’66, president of the Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, a nonprofit organization specializing in food, diet, and nutrition education. i) Steven Gortmaker, professor of society, human development, and health at the School of Public Health, observes that the convenience-food culture is so ubiquitous that even conscientious parents have trouble s teering their children away from junk food. ii) â€Å"You let your kids go on a ‘play date,’† says the father of two, â€Å"and they come home and say, ‘We went to Burger King for lunch. ’† j) He notes that on any given day, 30 percent of American children aged four to 19 eat fast food, and older and wealthier ones eat even more. k) Overall, 7 percent of the U. S. population visits McDonald’s each day, and 20 to 25 percent eat in some kind of fast-food restaurant. v) But taking the family to McDonald’s for, say, Chicken McNuggets, French fries, and a sugar-sweetened beverage—a meal loaded with calories, salt, trans fats (the most unhealthy, artery-clogging fats of all, typified in â€Å"partially hydrogenated† oils), fried foods, starch, and sugar—makes Gortmaker shake his head. â€Å"I can’t imagine a worse meal for kids,† he says. â€Å"They call this a ‘Happy Meal’? † l) H umans can eat convenient, refined, highly processed food with great speed, enabling them to consume an astonishing caloric load—literally thousands of calories—in minutes. ) Gortmaker, Ludwig, and colleagues did research comparing caloric intake on days when children ate in a fast-food restaurant to days when they did not; they soaked up 126 calories more on fast-food days, which could translate into a weight gain of 13 pounds per year on fast food alone. m) Pumping up portion size makes good business sense, because the cost of ingredients like sugar and water for a carbonated soda is trivial, and customers perceive the larger amount as delivering greater value. vi) â€Å"When you have calories that are incredibly cheap, in a culture where ‘bigger is better,’ that’s a dangerous combination,† says Walter Willett. ) Furthermore, â€Å"Portion sizes have increased dramatically since the 1950s,† says Beatrice Lorge Rogers ’68, profe ssor of economics and food policy at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. vii) For proof, consider a 1950s advertising jingle: â€Å"Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/12 full ounces, that’s a lot. † Well, it’s not a lot any more. o) For decades, 12 ounces (itself a move up from earlier 6. 5- and 10-ounce bottles) was the standard serving size for soft drinks. viii) But since the 1970s, soft drink bottles have grown to 20 and 24 ounces; today, even one-liter (33. 8 ounce) bottles are marketed as â€Å"single servings. ix) It doesn’t stop there. The 7-11 convenience store chain offers a Double Gulp cup filled with 64 ounces of ice and soda: a half-gallon â€Å"serving. † Surely, the 128-ounce Gallon Guzzle is on the horizon. p) Soft drinks are becoming America’s favorite breakfast beverage, and specialty sandwiches and burritos for breakfast are fast-growing items, part of the trend toward eating out for all meals . q) The restaurant industry—which employs 12 million workers (second only to government) and has projected sales of $440. 1 billion this year, according to its national association—ranks among the nation’s largest businesses. ) Today, Americans spend 49 cents of every food dollar on food eaten outside the home, where, according to Rogers, they consume 30 percent of their calories. x) That includes take-out food (which some parts of the restaurant industry now style as â€Å"home meal replacement†). s) â€Å"In some ways, you can see obesity as the tip of the iceberg, sitting on top of huge societal issues,† says Willett. xi) â€Å"There are enormous pressures on homes with both the husband and wife in the work force. t) One reason things need to be fast is that Mom is not at home preparing meals and waiting for the kids to come home from school any more. ii) She is out there in the office all day, commuting home, and maybe working extra hours at night. xiii) This means heating something in the microwave or hitting the drive-through at McDonald’s. u) There really is a time issue—people do have less time. v) Technology may have entrenched that passivity, while making food preparation easier and faster. w) Three Harvard economists, professors of economics Edward Glaeser and David Cutler, and graduate student Jesse Shapiro, argued in a recent paper that improved technology has cut the time needed to prepare food, allowing us to eat more conveniently. iv) For example, in 1978, they note, only 8 percent of homes had microwave ovens, but 83 percent do today. Food that once took hours to prepare is now â€Å"nuked† in minutes. x) Technology can also change what we eat. xv) Potatoes used to be baked, boiled, or mashed; the labor involved in peeling, cutting, and cooking French fries meant that few home cooks served them, the economists point out. xvi) But now factories prepare potatoes for frying and ship them t o fast-food outlets or freeze them for microwave cooking at home. ) Americans ate 30 percent more potatoes between 1977 and 1995, most of that increase coming in the form of French fries and potato chips. z) In general, technology has enabled the food industry to do more of the work of preparing and cooking what we eat, increasing the proportion of processed victuals in the nation’s diet. xvii) Frequently, processing also folds in more ingredients; russet potatoes, for example, contain no added salt or oil, though most potato chips do. {) Within our laissez-faire system of food supply, the food vendors’ actions aren’t illegal, or even inherently immoral. viii) â€Å"The food industry’s major objective is to get us to intake more food,† says Gortmaker. xix) â€Å"And the TV industry’s objective is to get us to watch more television, to be sedentary. |) Advertising is the action that keeps them both successful. xx) So you’ve got two hu ge industries being successful at what they are supposed to do: creating more intake and less activity. xxi) And since larger people require more food energy just to sustain themselves, the food industry is growing a larger market for itself. † }) That industry spends billions of dollars on research, says Willett. xii) â€Å"They have carefully researched the exact levels of sweetness and saltiness that will make every food as attractive as possible,† he explains. xxiii) â€Å"Each company is putting out its bait, trying to make it more attractive than its competitors. ~) Food industry science is getting better, more refined, and more powerful as we go along. xxiv) They do good science—they don’t throw their money down the drain. ) What we spend on nutrition education is only in the tens of millions of dollars annually. xxv) There’s a huge imbalance, and it tips more and more in favor of the food industry every year. Food executives like to say, à ¢â‚¬ËœJust educate the consumer—when they create the demand for healthier food, we’ll supply it! ’ xxvi) That’s a bit disingenuous when you consider that they are already spending billions to ‘educate’ consumers. † ) The food industry itself has begun to make certain investments in the direction of healthier eating. xxvii) â€Å"In the future, I see a convergence between food and health,† says Goldberg. xxviii) â€Å"The food industry has been warned of the backlash that could hit them, like it did tobacco. ) He suggests that the food industry will become more responsive to consumers’ health concerns regarding issues like bioengineered ingredients in foodstuffs. ) People â€Å"want a diversity of sources for their food, and traceability of sources,† he says. ) â€Å"The bar code will become a vehicle not just for pricing, but for describing and listing ingredients. † ) Even fast-food chains are changing; in the past year, they reported a 16 percent growth in servings of main-dish salads. ) Willet sees no reason why healthy eating should not be as delicious and attractive as junk food, and the franchisers may be headed that way as well. xix) McDonald’s is currently testing an adult meal that includes a pedometer and â€Å"Step With It† booklet along with any entree salad. In its kids’ meals, Wendy’s is trying out fruit cups with melon slices instead of French fries. xxx) Yogurt manufacturer Stonyfield Farm has launched a chain of healthful fast-food restaurants called O’Naturals. ) Doritos themselves are getting healthier. xxxi) Fitness expert Kenneth Cooper, M. P. H. ’62, founder of the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas, has been working with PepsiCo’s CEO, Steven S. Reinemund, to develop new products and modify existing items in a healthier direction. The company’s Frito-Lay unit last year eliminated trans fats from its salty offe rings. xxxii) Frito-Lay introduced organic, healthier versions of Doritos and Cheetos under the Natural sub-brand. † xxxiii) As a result, 55 million pounds of trans fats will be removed from the American diet over the next 12 months,† Cooper says. ) PepsiCo is in 150 countries, and many of their healthier products will soon be promoted throughout the world. ) Physical fitness is good business for the individual and for the corporation. † ) PepsiCo sells plenty of food and beverages from vending machines, many of them in schools. xxiv) â€Å"You don’t resolve the obesity problem in children by taking the vending machines out of schools,† Cooper declares. â€Å"Kids will still get what they want. xxxv) Put better products in the machines and get physical education back in the schools. † ) Accordingly, PepsiCo is stocking some school machines with fruit juices from its Tropicana and Dole brands, Gatorade, and Aquafina bottled water; others offer F rito-Lay products that meet Cooper’s â€Å"Class I† standard: no trans fats and restricted amounts of calories, fat, saturated fat, and sodium. Fast food has become a staple for many individuals. xxxvi) Though fast food was developed in the 1930s, it has peaked in popularity during the past two decades. ) According to CBS HealthWatch, at least a quarter of all Americans eat at McDonald’s once per day. 1) How have your own dietary practices changed over the years? 2) How have your dietary practices changed since taking a course in nutrition? How to cite What Was the American Diet Like 50 Years Ago, Papers

Strategic Management Theory and Practice Process

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Management Theory and Practice Process. Answer: Introduction The industrial disaster is a unique concept of the post-industrial age that is created by man. The industrial disaster have led to thousand since conception of the industrial revolution. Many of these disasters were avoidable and other were unforeseen and accidental. In this literature, it will cover on the industrial disasters and the reasons for each of the cases. On the first case of the industrial disaster was the Willow Island disaster in 1978(Reason, 2016). On this tragedy, it had been a result of the plunging concrete, which compelled scaffolding to breakdown. Fifty-one building staff were wiped out in the tragedy. This tragedy is widely considered as the most awful construction mishap in the USA historical past. The tragedy happened while the Allegheny energy system was constructing a completely new power plant that got a pair of natural compose of cooling down towers(Simons, 2013). In accordance with the Occupational Safety as well as the Health Administration research inves tigation, the reason for the catastrophe was from a number of faults, short cuts that experienced activated the occasion of the mishap. The scaffold was connected to the concrete that experienced almost no time to properly cure. There was bolts that had been lost, along with the current bolts, which were put, to use were of insufficient grade. Flanking this, there was clearly one gain access to ladder, which limited on the ability to evade. Furthermore, there seemed to be adjustment of the concrete hosting device that needed not recently been effectively evaluated. Simply because it is apparently the situation the builder were hurrying to speed on the structure(Straub and Zecher, 2013). The next event is the imperial sugar refinery explosion in 2008. The explosion of the imperial sugar was an industrialized tragedy in Port Wentworth. 13 persons were killed off even more than forty-two were wounded while the dust explosion took place at the sugar refinery(Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis, 2015). The sugar refinery was a four stony building, the workforce pointed out that the issue was ancient with lots of their machines dating back for longer than 20 years. Nevertheless, the site was held into operating as it provides an excellent usage of the rail as well as the shipping and delivery link since means of transportation(King, 2013). The probable cause of the disaster was fueled by the massive accumulation of the combustible dust of the sugar throughout the packaging building. Outdated construction materials and methods further caused the increase of the fire. The ceiling itself was made of wooden tongue and groove design(King, 2013). The third industrial disaster is the LAmbiance plaza collapse, which occurred in 1987. This plaza was a sixteen stony residential project that was under the construction in the Bridgeport. It was an erect partially frame that collapsed killing twenty-eight construction workers(Williams, 2013). The root cause of the tragedy was the malfunction was because of substantial pressure that was put on the floors of the slabs by lift slab technique. The selection of this event was based upon the school of thought that established the inadequacies to the lift slab building consequently there was clearly a necessity to highlight on the construction procedures. Concepts and terminologies in management In looking at the cases it is significant to highlights some concepts in order to analyze on the case basis of the failures that caused the disasters. Some of the terms to note and their importance of these aspects are as follows; information, decision-making, command and the control. Information in management it refers to a system in which provides the managers with the tools to organize, evaluate and manage effectively of the department in the organization(Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis, 2015). The decision-making defines the course of action that is purposely chosen from a given set of various alternatives in order to achieve the organizational or the management objective and goals(Hill and Jones, 2013). The process of making the decision is continuous and it is indispensable components to the management of any organization activities. In regards to the management the command and control entails generally to maintain the authority within a distributed decision making platform(Shafri tz, and Jang, 2015). Important of these concepts in management and relationship between them The managers run the organization and without the management in any organization, there is no chain of command and control that can take place(Shafritz, and Jang, 2015). In the decision-making, process the manager in the organization relays instruction to the other employee who adhere to and formulate them accordingly. There ensure they that the employees follow a given chain of command in whatever they do, and without the management there would be chaos in the organization. In any organization, it needs the management skills, which act as the backbone of the management. In any organization, there should be management in order to make the organizational structure(Hill and Jones, 2013). Moreover the determine how the different aspects within the organization will interact. In any organization, the link between the management and firm is the most vital role to achieving productivity and success. The managers design on the structure for the production systems. They step up a structure, which will guide the organization from decision-making, command and the control, and every employee should adhere to the regulations and policies set. The managers are the drivers for the decision-making and the work force should follow and execute them accordingly. Theories and justification to support these aspects One of the theories to justify on the cases above is the contingency theory. On this theory, it asserts that when the managers make the decision, they should take into accounts of all shortcoming in any given situation and act on those aspect that is the key to the situation that has occurred(Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis, 2015). In the cases above the management of those companies should be held accountable for the shortcoming of the events. The main source of errors were due to lack of diligence of the management in their operations. Another theory that can be applied in the management of these organizations is the bureaucratic management theory. On this theory weber focused on the division of the organization into various hierarchies, to establish a strong line of authority and control(Williams, 2013). Further, it stipulate that the organization is able to develop a comprehensive and a detailed standard for the operating procedures for all the tasks. In the cases of disaster that h ad occurred if the management had adopted this theory, there would be no issues of substandard materials, no shortcoming in any department and there is strict adhering to procedures. Flaws that brought the disaster in the cases The main flaw that caused these organizations lied in the boardroom, with a serious issue of skills gap and the risk blindness as the other cause. The inability of the board to influence the executive was the main cause of failure and occurrence of the disasters(Reason, 2016). A blindness of a board to the risk can adversely cause chaos and crisis. This occurs especially where there is defective flow of the information from the board, and inadequate leadership on the organization ethos by the management. Conclusion In this paper, it has looked at some of the most devastating industrial disaster that have occurred in the world. Further, it has explored on the root cause of these disasters, and why the choice of the cases. It was also predominant to look at the various management aspects, how they influence the organization, the theories, and the flaws that brought these disaster. The aspects that have been highlighted tend to look at the broad contextual aspect of larger picture of what can happen if management is not keen on the operation of the organization. References Clegg, S. R., Kornberger, M. and Pitsis, T, 2015. Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. s.l.:Sage. Hill, C. W and Jones, 2013. Strategic management theory. s.l.:South-western/Cengage Learning. King, R., 2013. Safety in the process industries. s.l.:Elsevier. Reason, J., 2016. Managing the risks of organizational accidents. s.l.:Routledge. Shafritz, J.M., and Jang, Y.S, 2015. Classics of organization theory. s.l.:Cengage Learning. Simons, R., 2013. Levers of control: how managers use innovative control systems to drive strategic renewal. s.l.:Harvard Business Press. Straub, E and Zecher, C, 2013. Management conttrol systems: a review. Journal of Management Control, pp. 23(4), pp.233-268. Williams, C., 2013. Principles of management. s.l.:South-Western Cengage Learning.

Negative and Positive Impact of Mis free essay sample

A management information system (MIS) is a system or process that provides information needed to manage organizations effectively Management information systems are regarded to be a subset of the overall internal controls procedures in a business, which cover the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures used by management accountants to solve business problems such as costing a product, service or a business-wide strategy. Management information systems are distinct from regular information systems in that they are used to analyze other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. Academically, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making, e. g. Decision Support Systems, Expert systems, and Executive information systems. When this all of this activities run in the organization it face some positive and negative impact. Here in this assignment try to focuse some of this negative and positive impact of MIS in Organization. We will write a custom essay sample on Negative and Positive Impact of Mis or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Introduction Information systems have become integral, online, interactive tools deeply involved in the minute-to-munite operation and decision making of large organizations. Over th last decade, information systems h ave fundamentally ltered the economics of organizations and greatly increatly increased the possibilities for organizining work. Theories and concepts from econnomics and sociology help us understand the change brought about by ITInformation systems and the organizations in which they are used interact with and influence each other. The introduction of a new information sysytems will affect organizational structur, goals, work design, values, competitions between interest groups, decision making, and day to day behavior. At the same time, information systems must be designed to serve the needs of important organizational group and will be shaped by the organization’s structure business processes, goals culture, politics and management. information technology can reduce transaction and agency coasts, and such changes have been accentuated in organizations using the internet. New systems disrupt established patterns of work and power relationsships, so there is often considerable resistance to them when they are introduced. Information technology (IT) has changed the way the world does business and has had a great affect on traditional management functions. Management no longer has to rely on manual processes and a paper trail to perform everyday transactions. IT has automated many of these key management activities. For instance, e-mail has accelerated communication while the Internet allows instant access to branch offices, bank accounts and information. According to agency theory, the firm isviewed as a nexus of contracts among self-interested individuals rather than as a unified-maximizing entity. 5) Reduce the cost of acquitring and analyzing information: Inforamtaion tecnology, by reducing the costs of acquiring and analyzing information, permitts organizations to reduce agency costs because it becomes easier for manager to oversee a greater number of emloyes. 6) Increase revenues: When the agency caot was reduce and alsio the cost of acquiring and analyzing information was lost by this time ultimatly tincrease the revenues of an organization. Organizational Impacts: Therories based in the sociology of complex organizations also provides some understanding about how and why firms change with the implementation of new IT. 1) Flatterns Organization: Large, bureaucratic organizations, which primarily developed before the computer age, are oftten inefficient, slow to change and less competitive than newly created organizations. Some of these large organizations have downsized, reducing the number of employees and the number of levelss in their organizational hierchies. ) Encourages task force-netwark: Information technology may encourge task force-networked organizations on which groups of professionals togather-face to face or electronically for short periods of time to accomplish a specific task, once the task is accomplished, the individuals join other task forces. 3) Increasingly relics on knowledge and competence: The shape of organizations flattens become professional workers tend to be self-managing, and decision making should become more decentralized as knowledge and information become more widespread. No Boundary: IT majes very easy way of communication so their have no boundary in the organization. 5) Create and distribute new product: It in the organization base can ally with suppliers, customers to create and distribute new products and services. 6) Increasing flexibility of Organization : Information systems give both large and small organizations additional flexibility to overcome the limitations posed by their size. ) Help to reach of larger Organization : By information systems small organizations use informatio systems to acquire some of the muscle and reach of larger organizations. 8) Customization and personization : IT makes it possible to tailor products and services to individuals. 9) Achive agility and responsiveness : 10) It bound up internal politics : information systems inevitably become bound up in organizational politics because they influence access to a key resource-namely iinformation. Information systems can affect who does what to whom, when, where, and how in an organization. 11) It potentially change an Organization : Many new information systems require changes in personal ,individual rouutine that can be painfull for those involved and require retraining and additional effort that may or may not be compensated. 12) Rapidly rebuilding key bussiness process : Businesses are rapidly rebuilding some of their key business processes based on Internet technology and making this technology a key component of their IT infrastructures. If prior networking is any guide, one result will be simpler business processes, fewer employees, and much flattter organizations than in the past. 13) Help to take decisionor Improve decision making policy : Information systems pass all the data to the proper level at an instance so it can easy to take any kind of decision instantly. Anf it also help to improve decision making policy. 14)Help to understand and change the Or mganization culture and politics : Information systems become bound up in organizational politics because they influence access to a key resource. Once the Internet is open, the benefit of people using it to the Internet resources will be accompanied by its negative impact. Therefore, at a time when the Internet applications have penetrated to all the aspects of our nation, to our military forces, we must control and to our best ability destroy its negative impact, making sure that while we can fully enjoy the power of the Internet in our nation and our military, we can also destroy the problem at its root, before it even begins to germinate.