Lecture 1: Introduction

Announcements

Saturday, September 7th, 2013

Cayuga Lake

$1

David A. Levitsky
Steven H. Weiss Presidential Fellow
Professor of Nutrition and Psychology 112 Savage Hall Office: 5-3263 Home: 272-5122 dal4@cornell.edu

Course Coordinator and Instructor

Mary Beth Tierney

Ph.D. Dietician
206 Savage Hall mbt4@cornell.edu

Undergraduate TAs
Grace Lauren Altamura Hannah M Beer Zoe Rebecca Begun Andrea Laura Bejarano Frankie Chan Anca Dogaroiu David John Foy Jonathan Stephen Galati Josef Kushner Joo Won Lee Katerina Lembrikova Michelle T Leonetti Rebecca Liu Christine Mathew Joyce Mathew Zoe Nicole Memel Paige Jaclyn Mintz Emily Christine Murphy Molly Olivia Nolan Sheryl Elizabeth Quock Aimee R Takamura Irene Tsai Alice Wang Emma Hoehn Waugh gla26@cornell.edu hmb78@cornell.edu zrb22@cornell.edu alb299@cornell.edu fc94@cornell.edu ad682@cornell.edu djf98@cornell.edu jsg276@cornell.edu jk859@cornell.edu jl2485@cornell.edu kl456@cornell.edu mtl57@cornell.edu rl525@cornell.edu cm493@cornell.edu jm2256@cornell.edu znm3@cornell.edu pjm267@cornell.edu ecm223@cornell.edu mon4@cornell.edu seq4@cornell.edu art67@cornell. edu it83@cornell.edu aw388@cornell.edu ehw47@cornell.edu

70s Club Undergraduate TAs

Grace Altamura Molly Nolan Sheryl Quock

gla26@cornell.edu mon4@cornell.edu seq4@cornell.edu

NS1150 Graduate TAs

Eunice Awuah eba28@cornell.edu Hey Jun Park hp342@cornell.edu Stephanie Lee Martin slm345@cornell.edu Sarah Pedersen sp729@cornell.edu Zhen Xue zx42@cornell.edu Ruoyu Zhang rz253@cornell.edu

What its all about?

1. Health Will answer the second most important question:

How can I live the healthiest life possible?

Most Important Question:

Why should I live at all?

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition

What should I eat?

fats nutraceuticals

How little should I eat?

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition Stomach

GI Disorders

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition

Weight Control

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition

Heart Disease

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition

Cancer

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition B. Physical Activity

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition B. Physical Activity

Food Supplement

What is all about?

1. Health A. Nutrition B. Physical Activity 2. Thinking about Health

What is all about?

1.Health A. Nutrition B. Physical Activity 2.Thinking about Health
Beauty and Wisdom of the Body

GRADES =
Midterm 1 (25%) Midterm 2 (25%) Final Exam (25%) Term Paper (20%) Food Record (5%)

Review

Exam
Rebuttal

Paper

1. Pick any controversy in health

Paper

1. Pick any controversy in health 2. Find four peer-reviewed journal articles - ideally, two on one side, two on the other 3. Discuss strengths of each study 4. Discuss the weaknesses of each study 5. Arrive at a Conclusion

Paper

Papers will be Peer-Graded

Extra Goodies

Cooking with Dave Daves Dietary Delusions

(1% added to grade)

Extra Credit for Participating in a study (1% added to grade) Coffee with Dave
Savage Hall Lobby 2:30 3:00

My Passion for Nutrition

My Passion for Nutrition

I love Nutrition I know it is not a tradition For a professor to confess his passion For a subject, for a discipline, for an area, for a course As broad and complete and diverse and as practical as Nutrition But, I have to tell you, I love Nutrition.

Nutrition is about science Science is thinking in public. Public thinking means that to convince you What I say is not good enough What I claim as truth is not good enough What I believe to be true is not good enough But I must show you, and that is not good enough You can only believe what I say is true When my observations are repeated by others with no connection or financial interests or personal attachments to me. .

Then you may take my findings as true But always with skepticism. A skepticism that insists that there just might be another interpretation, Another way of thinking about the facts, about the data, about the study, about the truth. There are no secrets in science.

Nutrition is about food, Food is about giving About giving food to small hungry mouths whose only sin was Being caught between warring political parties More concerned about dominating Than feeling the suffering of the innocent.

Nutrition is providing food to people Who cannot feed themselves Because the burden of poverty and discrimination Forces them to live in poor housing, Send their children to poor schools, Suffer illness because of poor diets, And are too poor to seek medical care, Always living with the uncertainty of their next meal.

Food is a collection of molecules That form coalitions that seduce me to take Them into my vulnerable inner sanctuary Where my body will disassemble, reassemble, rearrange, and convert those molecules Into substances so vital to my existence that if I dont receive my regular supply, I will descend into pain, distortion, dysfunction, and maybe die.

Nutrition is about systems. Systems that make love to each other, As in the sweet kiss of glucose upon my waiting beta cells Arousing it from its sleep into an eruption of insulin molecules Each searching my body for that unique receptor waiting to bind their bodies together. Coupled, they produce a flow of sustenance into my hungry cells, providing them with the fuel That will sustain them and nourish them and heal them, And enable them to continue their struggle against entropy and death.

Nutrition is about knowledge. Knowledge is about predicting. Predicting the future on the basis of information. Knowledge is more powerful that the mythical crystal ball For unlike the myth, I can change my future Not with certainty, but with sufficient confidence to Believe that I am not a leaf being blown by the winds of fate But rather the captain of my own ship Steering my passage through the uncertain sea of life.

Nutrition is about pleasure The pleasure of tasting flavors Produced by melodic combinations Of foods and spices and sundry cooking methods Into a such a glorious symphonic dish where a mere whiff of its fragrance Make me close my eyes and bring a smile to my lips Taking me far away from the reality of daily existence. That is why I love Nutrition.

K L FOR NUTRITION IS O V W E L E D G E

Thats all folks