Q: How does the project relate to concepts from my previous classes?

A: Despite the petition from CSPI and many medical studies proving the health effects of carmine, the food industry continues to use carmine. One of the main reasons for this decision is the money. It costs less to use carmine for the coloring purpose compared to using fruit. Carmine coloring also has a longer shelf life and doesn’t fade away as fast as real fruit. By using carmine, the industry makes more profit and that’s the reason why they will continue to use it for as long as they can. It reminded me of a concept that I’ve learn from sociology, political science and history last year. Money is almost always the motive behind our actions. From the government to the people, one of the main goals was always to make more money. The food industry is just another example of this concept.

I love my group. This is one of the best groups that I got to work in so far. Everybody is working well with one another. I know each of us also has been working very hard this quarter on this project so we all deserve credits for the work that we each has done. Personally, I think all we need to work on this quarter is the communication. Sometimes, we have the tendency to forget things, especially when there are five millions things going on beside the project. There are things that we were supposed to say but we forgot to. Things go wrong at one times or the other. Someone got sick, someone freaked out over college application, and someone just felt overwhelmed by everything sometimes, you know, unavoidable stuff. However, I believe that we are more than just group members, we are friends. And once we got over the bump on the road, we will be on the same page again and everything will be just fine.

The final product of our project finally came out! Our Thunderword article was published on the lastest issue of the newspaper, which came out last Thursday. I was really excited when I saw it under the opinion section. However, when I took a closer look at the article, there were some mix feeling I had for this piece. First of all, the title was messed up grammatically. There was a missing letter. You know what, that's not even the point here. That wasn't our title!!! Sarah showed me the original title that she sent them in her e-mail and it was not the same one. If the paper's editor was going to change our title, that person could at least do it right. Just a letter "R" is not going to take up that much ink!
For the rest of the article, I know there was also some editing, mainly to make it shorter since there is a limited space for our article. I don't know about the rest of my group's sections, but my part of the article looked good overall. However, there was a little change that I wasn't very happy with. The first sentence of the carmine part was like this in the paper. "Carmine is the additive that makes yogurts, such as Yoplait and Dannon, that delicious, creamy-looking, pink color" I was not happy with the word "makes" in that sentence because it makes the sentence sounds weird to me. It was supposed to be "gives". But other than that, I'm quiet happy with my part of the article.

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.