1. Where do you get your water? From a municipal source, a well or is it purchased?

Is your
municipal water supply fluoridated? Discuss your thoughts on fluoridating a town’s/city’s
water supply.

I get most of my water from the tap, which comes from a municipal source. Specifically,
this water comes from the Catskill/Delaware watershed, about 125 miles north of NYC.
This municipal water supply is fluoridated for dental health and chlorinated for
disinfection. Although many people are opposed to fluoridating a town’s/city’s water
supply, I believe that this is beneficial and crucial for good dental health. Many peer-
reviewed studies have explored and disproven the adverse effects of fluoride in municipal
water supplies. The fluoridation of municipal water has been proven to prevent tooth
decay and other dental diseases.

2. Find and summarize a current article from the lay press (the newspaper, a news/health
magazine, the internet, etc.) that discusses nutrition. How would you respond if someone
asked your opinion about this article? Please provide a reference for the article.

Article: Foods High in Vitamin A May Help Ward off Skin Cancer

This article states that diets high in vitamin A were linked to a lower risk for squamous
cell carcinoma, referencing a study published in JAMA Dermatology. Squamous cell
carcinoma is a slow-growing cancer of the skin that is usually found on sun-exposed areas.
It is easy to treat if detected early but can become metastatic in rare cases. The study
used health and diet data from 123,570 men and women participating in two long-term
studies. They found 3,978 cases of squamous cell cancer over more than 26 years of
follow-up. The study found that compared with the one-fifth of people with the lowest
vitamin A intake, those in the highest one-fifth had a 17 percent reduced risk for
squamous cell cancer. Eunyoung Cho, the senior author of this publication, did not know
whether vitamin supplements would have the same effect as vitamin A from food. Foods
rich in vitamin A include eggs, cod liver oil, fortified milk and breakfast cereals, kale,
spinach, and orange and yellow fruits and vegetables like cantaloupe and sweet potatoes.

If someone asked my opinion about this article, I would say that I am curious about this
study and further research what other new benefits of vitamin A have been recently
discovered, along with other newly discovered health benefits of diets high in other
vitamins. With my current knowledge in nutrition, I have no reason to doubt the merits
of this article since I understand that there is no harm in consuming more vitamin A as
long as I do not exceed the RDA for vitamin A. If I were to exceed the RDA, I would be at
risk for hypervitaminosis A.

Bakalar, Nicholas. “Foods High in Vitamin A May Help Ward Off Skin Cancer.” The New York
Times, The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/well/eat/foods-
high-in-vitamin-a-may-help-ward-off-skin-
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