Metacognitive Analysis

           Coming into this English class, I expected a more in-depth understanding of what this English class had to offer but what I didn’t expect was how it was going to be done.  Expecting essays as a normal English class would have, I was wrong. I didn’t expect the offerings of this class to be taught through a blog. As we gathered information on what our topic was for our blog, I began to think about what all this information was going to lead to. I soon realized that it all this information I collected in my blog led to a hybrid essay, which is a combination of two or more different writing styles that can work together to create a joint work piece.

            As I began my own hybrid essay of my own using my blog as a raw material, I had no idea of how I wanted to piece it together. I had no idea of what type of writing styles I wanted to work with. I didn’t know what I wanted to combine with an essay. An essay writing style was one of the combinations we had to work with for our hybrid essay. The problem was finding another combination that can work well with the essay writing style.

            As I continued to find that other combination, I began to look for that other piece in some of the posts we had to produce for our blog. I then realized that I can use an interview to work with the other writing style. I thought about how an interview can help produce an essay with the results I got from it. I came to an understanding that interviewing me would be a great way to put my own words into an essay form. An interview would work well with the combination but that wasn’t the end of what process was to my hybrid essay. I still needed to find how I wanted to piece it together.

            One problem with my conclusion was that I couldn’t interview myself with my own questions. I then began the quest to find questions I could use for my interview. I referred back to the prompt that was given to us for possible options and then I see that there are questions there to use to help frame our hybrid essay. Rather than using one of those frames, I decided to use all of them to help build my interview necessary for this project. I might have not used these frames the correct way but I felt like I should have used all of them to help portray my own combination of styles to show my jointed work piece.

            I felt and believe that this was a good way to portray my own understanding of my own blog for the reason that I showed my work as a reader and the creator of this blog. Not only do I feel like I portrayed my blog in the correct way, I also learned how to contribute other writing styles in a way where they both work in a way where they flow with each other. I also learned that essays are not necessarily a limited type of writing. An essay can have many other contributions that can also help it flow better than a simple ordinary essay I have come to know. Whether my hybrid essay flowed correctly or not well enough, I learned how to compose to types of writing works into a single jointed piece of work.

            

Hybrid Essay

Ivan Aguilar

Professor Sean Pessin

English 114B

April 22, 2013

Hybrid Essay

            Over the course of the production of my blog about obesity, I have learned many things about it and this is a topic that I believed I had quite a good understanding of. I’ve learned about obesity in a human body perspective such as being overweight (or obese) is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. I’ve also learned about obesity in a societal perspective such as being overweight (or obese) is associated with health problems that have a significant economic impact on health systems and the medical costs. They have both direct and indirect costs and risks.

            Although obesity is really about medical and societal issues, I really didn’t believe obesity can have myths about itself and to add on, these myths are being spread as a fact and are believed by many people. One myth that really astonished me was that high fructose corn syrup uniquely contributed to obesity. The reason is because that when you think of food being high on something, you automatically believe that it can do no good to your body so food having high fructose corn syrup automatically leaves you thinking that it can do damage to your body but it actually doesn’t. It does the same to your body as any other sugar. This one myth is the number one myth that people keep spreading as a fact. The only reason it is being treated as a fact is because this false convention is being spread by these certain groups of people who have wisdom on food such as green eating activists and assorted other food cops. Of course, since it is being spread by these food authoritative figures, become gullible and easily believe this false piece of experience. The reason being that these green eating activists and “cops” are trying to take advantage of their own society to perpetuate another myth that table sugar is a healthier alternative to high fructose corn syrup.

            Something I would have liked to continue researching would be how some authoritative figures take advantage of the public and lie to them about certain food facts just to take advantage. It’s just interesting and hard to believe that there are authoritative figures out there that do not care for the health of the public and are willing to lie. It really is a very important factor why our society is obese and why it keeps getting worse. These authoritative figures shouldn’t be seen as authoritative if they have a huge part on the negative impact it has caused to our society. Rather than promoting healthiness, they secretly promote a negative impact. Although society has begun to promote healthiness and staying fit with having days to go outdoors instead of being indoors, they continue the lifestyle of an unhealthy living.

            As I continued producing my experimental blog about obesity, I noticed that I might have contradicted myself a bit. As I began my blog, I began with producing blog entries about why obesity is what it is and why it shouldn’t be around in any society but as I continued, I began to defend the obesity problem with saying that it also has its advantages. I realized that obesity is the number one problem to face America in recent years but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you must not have any fat in your body whatsoever. Having some fat in your body doesn’t harm you at all and actually does have advantages that help protect you from certain diseases and heart complications. That doesn’t also necessarily mean that you should eat as much as you can to gain weight. It’s about keeping your body at a moderately healthy weight. You don’t need to be extremely muscular or be extremely obese to be healthy. Keep your body and your lifestyle at a moderate level to keep from contacting many diseases and complications.

            With that being said, I believe that this problem that is facing America as we speak has the right to be called the number one problem facing America. America has taken a huge amount of damage due to this problem we call obesity. Whether it is economic problems or health care problems, obesity has damaged America in many different levels. With all the money already being spent on health care and trying to treat this so called disease, it is still expected for the price to rise well over 100 billion dollars to try to treat it. It’s not even a guarantee that this disease will even be treatable although so much money is being spent. Spending this much money is definitely a huge blow to society in an economic level. People don’t realize what damage they are giving to society in a wholesome way but people keep giving the damage without realizing that at the same time they are receiving it.

            One-third of the US is obese and the numbers keep rising, so that means that more than one-third of the population are in danger of obesity-related conditions which include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death. Being obese takes a huge toll of damage to the body, which eventually will lead to death with all the complications that come along. With that one-third of the population being obese, it is spread out in all of the US. Each state in the US has about 25 and above percent of obesity prevalence, which I might add, is still increasing and rapidly. The children will follow in their parents’ footsteps and will also live an obese lifestyle. Children are what will change the future in the United States but not giving the children some motivation to not follow these footsteps, instead they encourage it.

            Children’s prevalence towards obesity has grown rapidly as well with the promotion of all this fast food on television.  The percent of obesity is above 30% in every state just in children. That isn’t the necessarily the children’s fault though. The parents’ busy lifestyle, such as work and other time-occupying endeavors is the blame. They aren’t really there to regulate what the children should eat to keep them healthy and in shape but this busy lifestyle prevents that so to make things easier, they decide to buy them fast food and promote the prevalence of obesity.

            When I began this blog, I would speak about obesity as a whole but then slowly, I realized that I began pushing my attention towards children and how obesity affects them. I didn’t realize this until the end of my research on obesity. My focus shifted towards children without realizing it and I slowly turned my blog into children’s obesity. As soon as I realized it, I asked if children or adults would have a bigger impact on society as a whole. I was conflicted on whether I should continue this blog as a whole society or only solely focusing on children. I then realized that in order for children to become obese, the adults had to take a part on that effect on children, which meant that this blog had to be seen as a whole rather than focusing only on children. Children are the effect of what the adults have caused due to their own decisions and lifestyle, so seeing the effects of obesity as a whole society was a better decision.

Work Cited

. N.p.. Web. 23 Apr 2013. <http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/what_we_do.aspx?id=82>.

. N.p.. Web. 23 Apr 2013. <http://www.obesitymyths.com/>.

. N.p.. Web. 23 Apr 2013. <http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html>.

Hybrid Essay

Ivan Aguilar

Professor Sean Pessin

English 114B

April 22, 2013

Hybrid Essay

            Over the course of the production of my blog about obesity, I have learned many things about it and this is a topic that I believed I had quite a good understanding of. I’ve learned about obesity in a human body perspective such as being overweight (or obese) is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. I’ve also learned about obesity in a societal perspective such as being overweight (or obese) is associated with health problems that have a significant economic impact on health systems and the medical costs. They have both direct and indirect costs.

            Although obesity is really about medical and societal issues, I really didn’t believe obesity can have myths about itself and to add on, these myths are being spread as a fact and are believed by many people. One myth that really astonished me was that high fructose corn syrup uniquely contributed to obesity. The reason is because that when you think of food being high on something, you automatically believe that it can do no good to your body. So food having high fructose corn syrup automatically leaves you thinking that it can do damage to your body but it actually doesn’t. It does the same to your body as any other sugar. This one myth is the number one myth that people keep spreading as a fact. The only reason it is being treated as a fact is because this false conventional is being spread by these certain groups of people who have wisdom on food such as green eating activists and assorted other food cops. Of course, since it is being spread by these green eating activists and assorted other food cops, people become gullible and easily believe this false piece of experience. The reason that these green eating activists and “cops” are trying to take advantage of their own society to perpetuate another myth that table sugar is a healthier alternative to high fructose corn syrup.

            Something I would have liked to continue researching would be how some authoritative figures take advantage of the public and lie to them about certain food facts just to take their money. It’s just interesting and hard to believe that there are authoritative figures out there that do not care for the health of the public and are willing to lie. It really is a very important factor why our society is obese and why it keeps getting worse. These authoritative figures shouldn’t be seen as authoritative if they have a huge part on the impact it has caused to our society. Rather than promoting healthiness, they secretly promote a negative impact. Although, society has begun to promote healthiness and staying fit with having days to go outdoors instead of being indoors continuing the lifestyle of an unhealthy living.

            As I continued producing my experimental blog about obesity, I noticed that I might have contradicted myself a bit. As I began my blog, I began with producing blog entries about why obesity is what it is and why it shouldn’t be around in any society but as I continued, I began to defend the obesity problem with saying that it also has its advantages. I realized that obesity is the number one problem to face America in recent years but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you must not have any fat in your body whatsoever. Having some fat in your body doesn’t harm you at all and actually does have advantages that help protect you from certain diseases and heart complications. That doesn’t also necessarily mean that you should eat as much as you can to gain weight. It’s about keeping your body at a moderately healthy weight. You don’t need to be extremely muscular or be extremely obese to be healthy. Keep your body and your lifestyle at a moderate level to keep from contacting many diseases and complications.

            With that being said, I believe that this problem that is facing America as we speak has the right to be called the number one problem facing America. America has taken a huge amount of damage due to this problem we call obesity. Whether it is economic problems or health care problems, obesity has damaged America in many different levels. With all the money already being spent on health care and trying to treat this so called disease, it is still expected for the price to rise well over 100 billion dollars to try to treat it. It’s not even a guarantee that this disease will even be treatable although so much money is being spent. Spending this much money is definitely a huge blow to society in an economic level. People don’t realize what damage they are giving to society in a wholesome way but people keep giving the damage without realizing that at the same time they are receiving it.

            One-third of the US is obese and the numbers keep rising, so that means that more than one-third of the population are in danger of obesity-related conditions which include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death. Being obese takes a huge toll of damage to the body, which eventually will lead to death with all the complications that come along. With that one-third of the population being obese, it is spread out in all of the US. Each state in the US has about 25 and above percent of obesity prevalence, which I might add, is still increasing and rapidly. The children will follow in their parents’ footsteps and will also live an obese lifestyle. Children are what will change the future in the United States but not giving the children some motivation to not follow these footsteps, instead they encourage it.

            Children’s prevalence towards obesity has grown rapidly as well with the promotion of all this fast food on television.  The percent of obesity is above 30% in every state just in children. That isn’t the necessarily the children’s fault though. The parents’ busy lifestyle, such as work and other time-occupying endeavors is the blame. They aren’t really there to regulate what the children should eat to keep them healthy and in shape but this busy lifestyle prevents that so to make things easier, they decide to buy them fast food and promote the prevalence of obesity.

            When I began this blog, I would speak about obesity as a whole but then slowly, I realized that I began pushing my attention towards children and how obesity affects them. I didn’t realize this until the end of my research on obesity. My focus shifted towards children without realizing it and I slowly turned my blog into children’s obesity. As soon as I realized it, I asked if children or adults would have a bigger impact on society as a whole. I was conflicted on whether I should continue this blog as a whole society or only solely focusing on children. I then realized that in order for children to become obese, the adults had to take a part on that effect on children, which meant that this blog had to be seen as a whole rather than focusing only on children. Children are the effect of what the adults have caused due to their own decisions and lifestyle, so seeing the effects of obesity as a whole society was a better decision.

Work Cited

. N.p.. Web. 23 Apr 2013. <http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/what_we_do.aspx?id=82>.

. N.p.. Web. 23 Apr 2013. <http://www.obesitymyths.com/>.

. N.p.. Web. 23 Apr 2013. <http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html>.

Goodbye

Over the course of these last few months, I have been informing you with all sorts of information, from how children are obese and what promotes it to how obesity affects your body and what harm it can do. With this said, I really do hope a achieved my goal I was out to achieve from the beginning which was to inform you on what the risks and dangers there are to living an obese lifestyle. I tried to be as well-informed as I can to convey this information to you, my audience. I tried to get as much information as I can on what obesity can do to yourself and on a larger scale, on the whole society. Now that I believed I reached my goal, I hope that my information has done some good and allowed you to understand the concept of the dangers and hopefully, you will go on and inform others about the dangers and facts about obesity.

Public Reading

Complications of Obesity.

One of the biggest side effects of having an obese lifestyle is heart disease and heart failure. Until recently the relation between obesity and coronary heart disease was viewed as indirect. Long-term longitudinal studies, however, indicate that obesity not only relates to but independently predicts coronary atherosclerosis. This relation appears to exist for both men and women with minimal increases in BMI (Body Mass Index). Left ventricular hypertrophy is common in patients with obesity and to some extent is related to systemic hypertension. Left ventricular hypertrophy is the thickening of the myocardium muscle of the left ventricle of the heart and systematic hypertension is the elevation of arterial blood pressure. However, abnormalities in left ventricular mass and function also occur in the absence of hypertension and may be related to how severe the obesity can be. This relationship may be a cause and effect that when weight increases, so does blood pressure, whereas when weight decreases, blood pressure falls. Increased left ventricular volume and wall stress promotes increased stroke probability. However, in obese patients, the absence of hypertension increases stroke volume and cardiac output as well as diastolic dysfunction. These changes in the left ventricle are related to sudden death in obese patients. Having an obese lifestyle really is more complicated and more severe than you really think. There are many other complications from obesity that don’t immediately implicate death but the more complications you receive, the closer you are to death. That was just a few of many complications that can be acquired due to obesity.

Check out the website to learn more about the complications:

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/96/9/3248.full

A Preventable Disease

There is presently a global epidemic in all age groups and in both developed and developing countries. It is a preventable disease of clinical and public health importance, it’s known as obesity. The increasing prevalence of obesity places a large burden on health care use and costs. Weight loss is associated with significant health and economic benefits. Effective weight loss strategies include dietary therapy, physical activity and lifestyle modification. Several experts have suggested the best methods of assessing and treating obesity. Currently, weight loss therapy is recommended to help people with their obesity problem. Dietary therapy should ensure an intake reduced by 500 to 1,000 calories per day. It definitely helps eat less and eat healthier. Low calorie diets containing 1,000 to 1,200 calories per day for most women and between 1,200 and 1,600 calories per day for men can result in sufficient weight reduction. It is recommended by experts to go through low calorie diets because the results are impressive for the reason that it is safe and will benefit your body whether you have the disease or not. Physical activity increases energy expenditure and also reduces the risk of heart disease more than that achieved by weight loss alone. This means that exercise can be a huge benefit from recovery or prevention of obesity. Physical activity or exercise should be increased slowly to a level that ensures at least 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, and preferably all, days of the week. Exercising doesn't necessarily mean that you should overwork your body to try to try to get back in shape. Slow and moderately heavy exercise can help a lot more over time if it is done correctly.

Check out other ways to prevent obesity here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790820/

Obesity Myths

Ever since obesity has become an epidemic going around the United States, along came the presumptions about how obesity came along and how it is why you’re obese. Of course these presumptions are just myths that people believe about obesity. Obesity is not preventable with the diet you consume because obesity is caused more by the life style you live. Obesity does have partial blame on the food you consume but it’s not entirely its fault. Obesity is caused more by what is done before you consume the food. This is just one of the myths about obesity and there is many more. Another is that high fructose corn syrup is a big cause on why you become obese. This is a myth because it actually doesn’t have a unique way to contribute to obesity. Like the website says, “A calorie is a calorie and a sweetener is sweetener.” It is not substantially higher in fructose than any other sugar. Each sugar contains the same amount of calories. Still, the myth that table sugar is “healthy” and high fructose corn syrup is “unhealthy” has grown from a poorly researched scientific hypothesis into a full-blown urban myth. Table sugar is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. High fructose corn syrup is either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, with the remainder being glucose. This is just one of the myths about obesity and what obesity is caused by. There are many more that embellish the obesity causes. You might find some that might surprise you.

Check out other myths here:

http://www.obesitymyths.com/

Facts about Obesity

Obesity is taking over America and it isn't being subtle. It’s storming up problems all over America. More than one-third of adults are obese and that isn't including the children that are following in their parents’ footsteps. Obesity has done a toll of damage to the American people such as heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. These are just some of the leading causes of preventable death. Although you think it can’t get any worse, well it is. The obesity rate still keeps growing and rapidly. In 2011, 39 states had a prevalence of 25% or more. This means that more than 25% of the population of each of those 39 states was obese. 12 other states were even worse than those 39 states.  12 other states had a prevalence of 30% or more. The south of the United States had the highest prevalence of obesity with 29.5%. No state met the nation's Healthy People 2010 goal to lower obesity prevalence to 15%.  Rather than lowering the prevalence, in 2010, there were 12 states that doubled the goal percentage of prevalence.  Non-Hispanic blacks have the highest age-adjusted rates of obesity with 49.5% compared to Mexican Americans who have an obesity rate of 40.4%. All Hispanics have the rate of 39.1% and non-Hispanic whites have an obesity rate of 34.3%. Being a Hispanic and seeing that we make up 39.1% of the number one health risk to face America is pretty surprising but understandable at the same time for the reason being that our food is so heavy with grease and fat.


Check out other facts here:
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

A Sacrificial Society

We all know what kind of damage your body can receive from being obese: Obesity is associated with the development of osteoarthritis of the hand, hip, back, and knees. It increases the risk of breast cancer in men and women. Obesity is the most common factor of nonalcoholic steatophepatitis, a major cause of liver disease. Those are just a few harmful effects obesity can cause but ever wonder what obesity can do as a whole to the society you live in? In other words, what will happen to society if obesity keeps spreading? Well if obesity keeps spreading, the cost of health care will become more and more expensive because it cost more to treat people with an obesity problem. Health care costs that average about 40 percent above those for normal weight individuals. Treating a person with an obesity problem cost more than 40 percent above the cost of a normal weight individual. Altogether, obesity-related economic costs are well over $100 billion dollars annually and are still expected to grow and exceed that cost. Not only that, but obese workers tend to bring in less money to the down-spiraling economy. Obese workers tend to miss more days of work compared to the average worker and tend to cost the company more money with compensation, medical, and disability claims. More than 1,000 employees cost employers about $285,000 per year in extra costs due to obesity and even with these effects already taken place, according to the article, the effects of the obesity trend that began in the 1980s are still not yet fully apparent.



Read full article here:

http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/what_we_do.aspx?id=82

Being Overweight Can Help Your Life Grow Longer?

Being overweight has many cons, but does it have any pros? Apparently it does according to this article. There has always been questions about the link between being overweight and how long someone will live. In this article there are two opposing standpoints. One being that being overweight actually affects your lifespan positively or on the other hand, negatively. According to Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, being overweight actually helps you lifespan. With the research she established, she came to the conclusion that being overweight helps decrease the risk of death. She claims that one-third of all Americans fall under this category of overweight and will happen to live longer than people who are below that weight. Then on the other hand, Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, claims that Flegal has overlooked this association of body mass and lifespan. He says that her analysis doesn't address the bigger, more important issues of quality of life. If an overweight person does live longer, is he or she living with chronic diseases? He claims that it's more than just looking at your BMI (Body Mass Index) to come to a conclusion, but being overweight does have it's benefits. According to Dr. Steven Hymsfield, of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La, "If you fall and you fall on vulnerable bone, like the hip, having a little extra fat there might protect you from hip fracture,"

You can read the full article here and decide for yourself whether you think your lifespan will get longer as you get bigger:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/02/168437030/research-a-little-extra-fat-may-help-you-live-longer

Some Fat Can Be Good After All

Obesity... It's a bad thing right? Not necessarily. I'm not saying being extremely overweight is a good thing and is what you should be aiming for. No, what I'm saying is that some body fat is a good thing. According to a research study of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, women who are full-figured have less chance of having plaque-clogged arteries. These plagued-clogged arteries are catalysts for heart attacks and strokes. To be more specific about this "good" kind of fat, being overweight is not a bad thing as long as it's in the right places. This is hard to believe but the extra weight has a protective effect. Just as the article says, "this isn't a ticket to eat all you want and become a couch potato." Having some fat is the protective shield your body needs.

You can check out the whole article here:
http://channels.isp.netscape.com/homerealestate/package.jsp?name=homerealestate/goodbodyfat/goodbodyfat