You may have come across some of these images bellow:

Looks familiar? I know I’ve been using this images in classes for my students, without knowing that James was their creator. Such cool infographics are available on his website: https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/

Also, check out James’s most recent book: Fighting Chemophobia
Available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Chemophobia-marketers-capitalise-chemicals/dp/1987582586

While some parts of the world are concerned with eating, because of food insecurity, the “worried and well-fed” are increasingly obsessed with so-called “clean eating” with an obsessed and unfounded fear of artificial foods, food additives and the inability to accept that in some contexts its ok to exceptionally have foods that are less healthy.   

On the sports setting, we are passing on the image that athletes should be eating only real food (whatever that means), with an excessive focus on food quality rather than quantity, scrutinizing food insuring that always always comes from the healthiest sources with labels like: no hormones, organic, no glyphosate, gluten free, dairy free, unrefined, non-processed, no artificial flavourings, preservatives, additives or carcinogenic packaging. At first glance, such concern for consuming the healthiest foods possible seems like a respectable display of health consciousness. For some, eating healthy can become an obsession, resulting in endless list of food concerns such as environmental impact, local food sourcing, animal rights, combining, time of meals, excessive researching, cataloguing, weighting and measuring foods and excessive meal planning. These factors are actually part of a “non-oficial” eating disorder called orthorexia.

James Kennedy is a Chemistry teacher who tries to fight Chemophobia (its actually the tittle of his book) while trying to teach chemistry in a accessible, dynamic way, putting things into perspective. Natural things may not actually be safer than the artifical ones and everything around us (even natural foods) are actually composed of chemicals. Dosage is a fundamental concept to take from this enlightening episode. 

On this episode:
1. “It is in the human nature to fear chemicals”

2. The clean eating obsession & the “Realfooding” phenomenon

3. The forgotten advantages of food additives that we tend to forget

4. Introducing, orthorexia. The silent growing eating disorder

5. The E-Number madness!!!

6. Understanding dosage

7. Is sugar as additive as cocaine?!

8. Vegetables want to kill you!

9. Taking health advice from social media

10. How to smartly use social media and internet to obtain health related information?

If you wish to keep up with James Kennedy:

Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgjIYPRmQZqjByCOgOaV0_w

Website
https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/

Twitter
https://twitter.com/JamesKennedyEDU