Health & Illness & Feasting

Thanksgiving this year was the same as always, at my grandaunts house, with the same relatives, most who I don't see unless it's thanksgiving. The reason it was I’m not fond of thanksgiving is because I’m never thrilled to see relatives I haven't seen in a while, because I hate acting like I missed people I barely know that I call family, but when eating, laughing and talking to relatives, you enjoy being around your relatives until you go home. In a way family bonds on holidays such as thanksgiving is good, because it reconnects you to your family which affects your connection with them For example when the earthquake in Haiti killed 4 of my relatives, I wasn't too distraught, because I barely knew them. I'm not sure how I can connect "anti-body" and "body-centered" to thanksgiving, because those more connect to socializing with other people.

Food was a great aspect to my thanksgiving, because everyone brought a dish that they made, the benefit about doing that is that people would talk about what someone made, such as giving compliments, feed backs, etc. What I noticed is that every dish made, reflected on the family member, when I saw the veggie lasagna I knew my great grandaunt made that, because she's a vegetarian. Which brings back the food unit, and how it plays a role on social practices.

The whole night was all talking, everyone who was 13 and up had conversations, the only people who watched TV were the young ones, who watched cartoon network upstairs, but the only time they're allowed to do whatever is after dinner. Which is a bit funny when I look back on how much nothing changed, it's almost a tradition, children are bored when adults are talking, and once they can leave they go straight upstairs and play hide and go seek, watch TV, and make a lot of noise, like I used to do.

First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

When i hear Illness i think of sickness from disease, or old age. Adding "old age" may seem morbid, but everyone as they get older are getting ill, it's not like someone who's 80 can run better than they did when they were 20. Dying is when someone has absolutely no home of staying alive much longer, it's basically saying that someone is dead while they're alive. Many times most would say illness and dying are the same, because when you're ill you're dying. The problem with that mind set is that being ill can be having something simple as the cold, which can cause someone to die, but we use ill to negatively. From personal experience i so far haven't had a relative who's died or is ill, besides my great grand aunt who has arthritis and has been saying she's going to die for the past 10 years. Sometimes when one is ill they tend to care more about life, but they can choose to live their lives a few different ways, they either or cherish every moment they're around, or they dwell on how great their lives was than and feel completely miserable with the situation they're in.

Final Food Project 2 - Outline

Thesis: Dominant social practices have successfully taken over wiping out original social practices and have become modern atrocities.

Supporting Claim: Our food industry has been linked to many of our countries health problems, which is affecting the price of healthcare, which also affects the countries economy.

Evidence: In the past 30 years the country has had a significant growth in obesity, and that number is still on the rise. This food industry is responsible for most of this rise.

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars is spent treating obesity, and type 2 diabetes, and other weight disorder illnesses. Every person with healthcare that is being treated for theses diseases cost about a million dollars, 30% of the United States population is obese is on the rise. If more Americans keep getting sick from over eating, than the United States will lose even more money because of bad eating habits, due to bad commercialized food.

Final Food Project 1

I’ve always had a good diet, because my mother normally makes something that would be considered “healthy”. The only times I eat junk food is when I’m hanging out with friends, but I normally try to get something that’s more “healthy” like fries. There are days where I crave junk foods, such as ice cream. While on this diet I ate nothing except for fruits, vegetables and grains, which wasn’t hard to do because I eat those things regularly, only difference is I couldn’t eat things that I craved. While on this diet I did have the urge to eat something I gave up, but I asked myself questions when I did. “Why do people crave things that aren’t good for them?” “Do past food experiences cause these urges?

The hard part about this diet was at school, the problem about is that around SOF there aren’t a lot of good options of places to eat, I’d normally would go to a deli near by and get a turkey sandwich, but because I gave up fish and poultry I couldn’t buy deli sandwiches. What I ended up doing was bringing things from home fruits, pita bread, hummus, and carrots, which wasn’t too bad but normally those things are snacks I eat at home. At home when my mom made dinner it was the same thing only difference no fish or poultry so I still enjoyed eating rice with vegetables. The second hardest part was late at night on the weekend, because when my friends bought sandwiches I ended up getting a granola bar which didn’t “hit the spot” while my friends got sandwiches. I was a bit jealous of the, and because they knew I was on a diet it was fun for them to watch me eat my little granola bar while they savored they’re sandwiches.

So how come we like things that is bad for us? Now a days we blame the cooperation’s that make these bad foods for being so addictive, because most things such as ice cream, aren’t made with simple ingredients like cream, milk, sugar but instead “high fructose corn syrup, gum sugar, etc. But that’s not the real cause of why people get addicted to food, and might become overweight, but because food is an essential factor to survival it’s not just the food that’s addictive it’s our natural instincts that causes us to eat things we need to survive. The problem with it is that today because people can eat on a regular basis that natural addiction to food causes people to over eat.
The reason people may also tend to crave foods that aren’t best for us is the fact that human beings are omnivores. Like Michael Pollan stated in his book “Omnivores Dilemma”, human being able to eat virtually anything have developed food preferences. The way people gain preferences is because of experience, if someone eats something new and likes it than that builds up their food preferences. When someone eats something that is considered good or bad, it’s because of his or her preferences.

Before this diet I’ve always been annoyed with the fact that’s easier to find something to eat that after you’re done eating you regret, such as fast food. In the movie Food Inc. at the end it said people should try to vouch for local markets, but does give a clear way how. I personally think that It’ll be a long time when food dishes can taste good and be made the regular long way, especially when people demand a lot, fast.

Food, Inc. Response

1. Please summarize the main ideas of the film in a single paragraph succinct precis.

In Food, Inc. the director uses both authors of Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollen and Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser to tackle the main issues about how food in the united states is given to consumers, and not being told from what and how they're made and processed. The movie was pretty on point with the book Omnivore’s Dilemma, but missed a few key elements, there were some parts of the book that weren’t supposed to be seen as happy and nice, but instead nightmarish and scary, but in the movie it was happy. For example when the movie was on the topic of organic foods.

2. What does the movie offer that the book didn't? What does the book offer that the movie didn't?

The movie gave viewers a more positive feeling about the secrets of our food, while in Omnivores Dilemma, it was hard to want to eat something, even though Pollen repeats many times in the book that he's not trying to change peoples eating habits, but it's somewhat hard not to do.

3. What insights or questions or thoughts remain with you after watching this movie? What feelings dominate your response? What thoughts?

The movie left me with very few questions, but did leave me thinking about a few things for instance, why didn't the movie change some of the authors views, and didn't go by what the book fully said, why didn't the authors cover that when they spoke in the movie?

ODYR Reading Response Chapter 13, 14, 15, 16

Chapter 13 was about the difference of grass, and it’s effects on the environment. The differences of grass is that not all grass is the same, and how to a cow that can be important, because the same way human beings are omnivores and have a taste of variety cows are herbivores and have a taste in variety of grass, which is why having a field and variety of grass is important to growing healthy cows. The effects grass has on the environment is that it cleans the air, the same way trees remove carbon dioxide, but better. Which I found interesting because I didn’t know something as simple as grass can be so significant to cleaning up the environment. Chapter 14 showed the amount of labor a farm like Polyface has to put in to maintain a healthy sustainable farm, from early in the morning to late at night the farm family starts work from feeding, cleaning and maintain the land, unlike regular farms almost everything is done by human being cept for the part when they use a tractor. Which I found significant because like the saying you are what you eat, it’s almost as your food as what you put in it, so the amount of work and dedication you put into your food is what you’ll get when you eat it, it’s a cycle. Chapter 15 explained how Polyface slaughters the animals, but compared to regular slaughterhouses that slaughter thousands of animals a day, Polyface’s slaughter house is not that bad. When a farm like Polyface slaughters it’s chickens it uses it’s leftover body parts to mix with old woodchips to make fertilizer for it’s crops, and grass, to make natural nitrogen for it’s plants, which is much better than using bomb chemicals for nitrogen. Chapter 16 explained the difference of regular market food, organic food, and local farm market food travel. Regular food is travelled hundreds of miles into supermarkets ready to be bought and sold, and goes through huge processes to be packed and delivered to the consumer, and the same thing for organic food only difference is that it’s sold in a nicer market, and has a little logo and a story about the dedication the company puts to bringing its customers organic food, and locally grown farm food is shipped a couple of miles to a city, or local area, and is sold in a farmers market that takes place every few days or so, and is shipped by the actual farmers, and if that local farm is pretty well known with dedicated customers, the customers would travel to the farm and pick up their provisions. Chapter 16, also explained how in other places in the world such as in Europe that the food has regulations to say how, when and where it was grown.

Question/Response

How come in the United States our food isn’t regulated to give information as to how our food is cultivated and where it’s from?

The difference of the United States and Europe is that in Europe their food is taken cared of a little better than here, by better more sanitary. And if the united states kept on cultivating the it’s food the way it normally still does than having information on how it’s grown and where it’s grown wouldn’t be that appealing.

Freakonomics Response

2. How do the Freakonomics authors address the "correlation versus causation" issue? Do they pretend correlation IS causation? Do they prove that some correlation is causation, and if so, how? Or do they explicitly acknowledge the lack of proof of causation?

The authors of Freakonomics addressed correlation as it causes causation, because in the movie they we’re showing how something’s actions can affect the future and have a connection for example the crime rates in the 90’s, one of the authors believed that row v. wade in the 70’s had a lot to do with crime going down. And in a way they did pretent that correlation was causation because, they were trying to explain how they both rely on each other. Because with every action connects has a connection to the outcome.

3. What sources of evidence do the Freakonomics authors most rely on? Why is this innovative?

Most people when they try to show evidence of things they use statistics to prove their point, but in Freakonomics they used history and it's connection to the present. For example they sued examples on how majority of people are given an image of things in life, and if that image is showed doing something that we’re not used to seeing than it’s hard to believe it’s true. Like the example of sumo wrestling in japan, when cheating was suspected many Japanese did not believe the accusations made because sumo wrestling is seen as an honorable sport, and that was later connected to how here in the United States Americans find it hard when well known successful people or leaders do dishonest things.

I think Freakonomics does a good job at showing the “hidden-in-plain-sight”, but it didn’t do a good job at showing what exactly it was explaining, or the different arguments someone was saying. Like if someone’s name affects their lives, or what we should do to make society better. It just left us thinking that people are becoming more honest and that we’re getting better.