Review Of Daniel Shaw's 'Shedding That Which Is Not Us'

In the book Shedding That Which Is Not Us, Professor Daniel Shaw explores the current relationship between food and health within working class communities. He goes on to explain the “food segregation” that has plague poor communities and how this had led to a rise of diseases as such. Also he offers solutions on how the body can heal itself if provided the proper nutrition. Professor Shaw debunks myths and the rhetoric that act as a deterrent for individuals to change their food choices. He provides the readers with an inside view of what a person can be if they were to revolve their nutrition around “Life Foods.” Professor Shaw explores the concept of nutritional segregation and how it has affected working class citizens. According to …show more content…
Unequal access to nutritious food and quality care has plagued these communities since the inception of the United States. The depiction of people on welfare and the selection of quality food goes hand in hand. The oppression of minorities extends to the food they eat as well. These neighborhoods are flooded with cheap, fast, and poorly processed foods. From an economic standpoint, this makes sense. A person who is in poverty cannot afford to go travel to a Whole Foods and pay the prices they have to receive better quality of food. Instead they are relegated to entering the nearby bodega or McDonalds to buy cheap alternatives usually loaded with high amounts of sugar fat, and sodium. This is a recipe for disaster. One should expect for people who consume these items on a daily basis to suffer adverse consequences. For many people of color, this is the only choice to feed themselves. Major food corporations are profiting off of this dilemma and are pumping their products with new chemicals to make them even cheaper to make. According to Professor Shaw, “40,000 new chemicals were introduced into the food” we consume in the last year (49). These foreign chemicals fester in our bodies and our environment, some of which we can’t even break down. Like any drug, these chemicals can become addictive. Companies are spending billions of dollars to employ scientists who can replicate tastes that lead to addiction. These scientist develop new death foods that cause our brains to secrete euphoric chemicals. After a while, we become addicted to these foods. We then find ourselves consuming food not to heal ourselves or to fuel our bodies, but to have that feeling of euphoria again. In this moment we have become slaves to our food. As a minority, I resonate with this situation because I too have grown up