My part of the final research paper... The very first draft !!!

Since each of the group member has their own additive, my part will only focus on carmine. However, there are other additives as well, including aspartame and partially hydrogenated oil... Okay, here we go!!!
Carmine is one of the additives that our group is focusing on for our research project. As an additive, carmine is not as well known or life-threatening as aspartame or partially hydrogenated oil, at least not to those who aren’t allergic to it. We often hear about people dying from heart diseases due to excessive consumption of partially hydrogenated oil, or cancer tumor’s growth in rats due to the aspartame consumption in dietary sugar. How often there is a media report on death due to the consumption of yogurt or fruit juice? Not very often. However, from several sources that we’ve found during our research, carmine can have serious health effects in certain people as well. For example, in his medical report, Dr. James Baldwin and his team of doctors from the University of Michigan’s Department of Internal Medicine described a case of anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, due to carmine dye allergy. In his report, Dr. Baldwin described a patient who underwent skin-prick tests along with other open oral challenges to each of the components of the popsicle that was colored with carmine. Within a few hours of consuming the carmine-colored popsicle, the patient experienced symptoms of anaphylaxis such as nausea, urticaria and hypotension. However, the same patient had no visible response to other components of the popsicle, according to the skin prick tests and other open oral challenges. Thus, carmine additive can have negative side effects when consumed by those whose are allergic to it. Dr. Baldwin also discussed the chemistry of carmine, which was formed by carminic acid or C22 H2O O13 (cited). According to Dr. Baldwin, carmine is not FDA’s certifiable color additive and need not to be specified by name. Therefore, he urged the general public, especially those who are allergic to carmine, to be educated and aware of the diverse food and other products that are colored with carmine. Because this article was written in 1997, I felt it was quiet outdated. Today, many companies are listing carmine on their products, under the list of ingredients. However, the advice Dr. Baldwin gave in this report is still very valid as he encouraged people to be more involved and knowledgeable about the products they consumed.
The report on carmine from Dr. Baldwin and his team at the University of Michigan caught the attention of many, including the CSPI, Center of Science in the Public Interest. In return, CSPI decided to protect the people through pushing for a ban on this additive. Yet, the FDA had a different take on this issue. The disagreement attracted many media sources, including the Washington Post and its reporter, Cindy Skrzycki. In her article, Skrzycki discussed the ongoing debate between the FDA and the CSPI over the carmine additive. For many years, the food industry has been listing carmine as “color added” or “artificial color” under the product’s ingredient list, instead of listing the additive’s insect derivation. The FDA had claimed this additive to be safe in the past, yet, recent medical reports have shown that this additive can indeed cause serious allergic reactions in a limited number of people (cited). The main argument came down to the CSPI pushing for the ban of carmine in our products versus the FDA refusing to do so. However, for right now, both sides settled for a better labeling of the additive under the list of ingredient. The pro of this solution is that the consumers got to know the additive beyond “color added”. Unfortunately, according to the author, this solution still doesn’t guarantee the protection the consumers needed, especially if they don’t know what carmine is. Even though this article was published in mid-2006, the FDA is still pushing food companies to list carmine on the product. The con of this process is the cost of label change, which can cause up to three millions dollars. On the other hand, banning carmine and thus, avoiding its consequences can save up to 26 million dollars in return (cited). Beside, there are many alternatives to replace carmine, such as grape skin extract, annatto extract and beet powder. If the food industry can successfully replace carmine with the substitutes mentioned above, we would be able to achieve one of the green chemistry’s principles as our food become more effective and nutritious while having little or no toxicity.
While doing research on carmine, we also found an article that supported the use of carmine. It was written by Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate, CEO of Arial Software and executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, in 2004. His article started off with how carmine was made, which was similar to my previous articles. However, as it goes on, the article spoke more positively of carmine than the rest of my sources. The main argument of this article can be summed up into which coloring additives are worst. As the author said in his article, “Would you rather be eating pigment created by insects, or one derived through the refining of fossil fuels?” The author also argued that even though carmine can cause severe allergic reaction, that only effect a very small percent of the population, while the rest are fine from eating it. This article offered a very interesting piece of information about carmine that our group wasn’t aware of. We know carmine can cause serious allergic reactions but we weren’t well-informed about the percent of people that effected. All we know is that the chemicals in our bodies are different from one person to the other. Thus, when we are consuming additives such as carmine, the level of severe in health effect can also be different (cited), making it difficult to measure the percent of people who are affected by it. However, he did mention another downside of carmine, which was its unclear labeling, which can mislead the vegetarian consumers to purchase products that they don’t want.

Carmine might not be that bad for you... as long as you're not allergic to it.
A non-bias evaluation of carmine additive!
Our group focuses on food additive and the health effects of the three additives, including carmine, aspartame and partially hydrogenated oil. Because one of the important aspects of our project is about the health effects, we do have the tendency to point out or search for the bad side of these additives. That's not a hard task as we found out that all of these additives that I've mentioned earlier all have some type of health effects on one person or the other. However, While doing research on carmine, we also found an article that supported the use of carmine. It was written by Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate, CEO of Arial Software and executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, in 2004. His article started off with how carmine was made, which was similar to my previous articles. However, as it goes on, the article spoke more positively of carmine than the rest of my sources. The main argument of this article can be summed up into which coloring additives are worst. As the author said in his article, “Would you rather be eating pigment created by insects, or one derived through the refining of fossil fuels?” The author also argued that even though carmine can cause severe allergic reaction, that only effect a very small percent of the population, while the rest are fine from eating it.

I dedicated my holiday weekend to writing my part for the Thunderword article. Our group is determined to make this article super-awesome and make sure it got published on the first shot. So this is my first draft/brain puke, whatever you want to call it! Here we go...

Another popular item on our list of lunch food is yogurt. At the first look, it seems to be the perfect fit to a healthy diet. Full of nutrients such as vitamins and calcium, yogurt is good for you....until you look at the list of ingredients. One of the food additives that is often used in yogurt, such as Yoplait and Dannon, to give it that delicious, creamy-looking, pink color comes from a ground-up insect called the cochineal. This additive is also known as Carmine, a fancy name for dead, ground-up bugs. Since this additive comes from an insect in nature, many food company listed it as "natural additive". If you are allergic to the insects and/or carmine, consuming it can bring a devastating result. People had been reported to have anaphylaxis, a severe form of hypersensitivity allergic reaction, from eating food with carmine additive. However, there are many alternatives to this additive as well. For example, a company called Canandaigua Wine recently introduced a substitute product derived from grape skins. Also, food company can just use the real fruit extract such as strawberry or rasberry, instead of cochineal insect. Beside, since carmine is added to our food for the main purpose of look, we can just eliminate the additive and simply have white strawberry yogurt. Trust me, it can't be worst than eating bug!

Today, we are each working on a different aspect of the research process. I was looking for more articles on carmine. There are so many mix results from a wide range of research on this additive. Sources such as the University of Michigan said that carmine can cause many dangerous and life-threatening allergic reactions. Other sources claimed that carmine is not that unhealthy. It's just the idea that it is ground-up bug that is kind of gross. The main problem is the unclear labeling on the products including carmine. I'm planning to look more into scientific journals for research on this food additive. Other members of the group focus on different tasks. Sarah is editing the long proposal that I've fixed last night. We are planning to revise it and resubmitted to Karen. Rachel is watching and taking notes on Youtube videos that focusing on Aspartame and Formaldehyde. I'm also planning to write my part of the article for the Thunderword today. However, more research is needed!

Today, we talked about several issues that came up during the meeting with Karen, Ravi and Dana yesterday of several groups, including mine.
First of all, Karen talked about the difference of being inductive and deductive when it comes to researching. To be honest, I was a little inductive when I first started to do my research. I had the tendency to phrase my research terms to be something that will result in articles that are supportive of my hypothesis. However, as I do more and more research, I realized that if everything was supportive of my hypothesis, then what the point of me doing a research since I already have the answer? Now, I tried to focus on the reliability of the source rather than how supportive it is to my research.
Karen also talked about keep on doing our research. The list of sources in the final paper needs to be significantly longer than the one in our long proposal. Our group in particular needs to increase our literature review.
During our research, we also need to strategize the way we read scholarly journal. First, we need to read the abstract. After the abstract, the next section that we can look at is the introduction. The last but not the least would be the conclusion. This is the section that you would want to read as throughoutly as possible. That should help you with the scholarly journals that are 35 pages...

We finally were able to nail down our list of food additives. In the end, the three finalists are :
1. Aspartame
2. Partially Hydrogenated Oil
3. Carmine
So for the next few week, we will work on further researching focusing solely on these three additives. We are determined to find out about how they were made, the ingredients included in these additives, the health effects and the alternatives. We will also focus on the article that we are planning to write for the Thunderword. Our deadline for this article is Saturday, November 24. We are planning to submit the article on the 26, which is the Thunderword deadline. Since there are three additives and three members in the group, each of us decided to take one, do research around this additive, then do several slides for the final presentation's powerpoint. Then each would write a paragraph about the additive. Once we are all done, we will put all the paragraphs together to make our final Thunderword article. My additive is carmine and I know this is a really interesting one so I can wait to work on this one.

Group Assessment...

Karen has been asking us to do group assessments on different members of our project group. I think this is a good idea because it gives me the opportunity to really sit down and spend some time to evaluate each person on different catergories, ranging from communication to work completion, etc... This is the best project group that I've been in so far. We work well together. There is yet to be any conflict and I hope this will continue to the end of the quarter. We each do our assigned work and help one another whenever we can. We are all reliable to each other, professional and responsible for our action as well as the group as a whole. Both Sarah and Rachel are great at communicating about the work progress. They always made sure that the rest of the group know how everything is going, where we are and where we need to be. Rachel is very open and willing to cooperate with others' idea and feedback. Sarah is very trustworthy and professional as she set up appointments for interviews and talking to the editor-in-chief of the Thunderword. I'm very happy with the group I'm in. As far as I know, nobody is planning to fire anybody, nobody is crying or freaking out. We are on task and looking forward to the final presentation so we can show everyone what we have been working on.

This week we worked on the long proposal. It was a group efforts so we decided to split up the piece into three different parts. Sarah got the abstract of the project, the statement of purpose, and the statement of qualification. I got the cover page and the literature review. Rachel took the research method description and the work cited page. When every one is done with their part, they all e-mailed me so I can put them all together since I'm the submitter for the long proposal. On Friday, we did the peer review and there was some feedback on the footnote. I asked Karen for clarification so that worked out well. There were also a few feedbacks on grammar and wording. Sarah, Rachel and I are planning to meet at my house on Saturday to try to "perfectize" the long proposal. I think it would be fun so I'm really looking forward to that.

For the Cradle to Cradle presentation, Karen asked us to take note on the strength and weakness of each group's presentation. Since I will get a chance to discuss other groups' presentation tomorrow, I want to use this blog to talk about my group's presentation.

Let's talk about our strength first. Overall, I think our group did fairly decent. For the most part, I felt we managed to get our point across. We were able to relate "Cradle to Cradle" to our project, chapter to chapter. I also thought our powerpoint looked professional. I was quiet nervous upthere so I don't remember how my speech went. However, I remember Sarah's speech was very clear, focus and well-spoken. Rachael's speech was also clear and well-said. We spent quiet an amount of time on this project, preparing for it as much as we can. There is always room for improvement but I think we each did the best we can!!!

Since there is room for improvement, let's examine the aspects that we need to work on. First of all, I felt that I could have been more relax. There was lots of tongue-tight moments during my speech. I wished I didn't say the "shelf-life" vs. "life shelf"...For some reason, I was very nervous during this particular presentation. It's probably the fact that this is a big part of my grade in the class. I don't know but I hope I can be more comfortable with the materials at the final presentation. Also, there was some miscommunication in our group on what chapters we were supposed to talk about. There were some changes that have to be made about 10 minutes before class. I didn't feel comfortable with that but I'm sure that won't happen again.

I think I'm in a great group and we work well with each other so far. Next step is to work on the long proposal and start composing the article for Thunderword. We'll also start our interviewing process as soon as we make an appointment with one of the anatomy instructors at Highline. We don't know how soon we will be able to do the interview but we'll try to do it as soon as we can.

Food Additives and Hyperactivity...

In my previous post, I talked about the relation of food additives to hyperactivity. One study said there is no strong evidence to support that. Five different newspaper articles said that studies have shown the effects food additive has on children, causing them to be hyperactive. I was a bit confused and not sure of which side to take. I'm leaning a bit toward the newspaper articles since they support my hypothesis. However, I don't want to induct when it comes to making conclusion either. I need to deduct, like Karen taught us to earlier this quarter. So when my cousins came over earlier today, I let them have all the left-over Halloween candies, which according to my research, have sodium benzoate as a preservatives. And I started to observe. Two of my cousins were really going for the candies. In the first hour, nothing much happened. But about two hours afterward, they started to talk alot as we hang out in my room. Then, they started jumping on the bed somehow and chasing each other around the backyard followed soon after. In addition, there was lots of pushing and "i'm not touching you" kind of stuff during lunch. Interesting, isn't it? I'm still open to different findings and research that relate to food additives and hyperactivity. However, personally, I think I know what side I am on now!

This week, we worked on annotated bibliography. For this assignment, we needed to find seven different sources. Personally, I found 2 additional sources and added them to my five original ones that I used for source analysis. However, I still had some difficulties as I tried to find the primary sources. One of the sources I saw while searching was definitely a primary source on food additive. It's a safety evaluation on food additives at the 36th meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO. Except for one obstacle. It is more 600 pages. I didn't want to include sources that I can't read completely or throughout. Fortunately, I found another sources that is just like our chemistry lab report. This source is about an experiment that was done on kids, ages 3 and 8/9, to see how food additives effect their behavior. This source is also very long compared to my other sources but still is readable. It is also very interesting and the finding of the experiment contradicts my other sources. While searching for sources in the Google database, I found about 5 different newspaper articles that have same topic. All of them are about the affect that food additives have on children's behavior, causing them to be hyperactive. My mind is not very made up right now since the newspaper articles are from reliable news sources like the New York Times, The Herald Tribune, the Seattle Times, and Boston Globe. On the other hand, the experiment was done by the school of psychology of University of Southampton and Imperial College’s Department of Paediatrics. I'm glad there is finally something that is contradicting to most of my research findings, letting me to think more about the topic rather than just making up my mind immediately.