Disgusting school food.

They sell lunch at school? I honestly don't even remember the last time I actually entered my pin and gotten food and eaten at school. I usually just eat little snacks and wait until i get out of school. I rarely eat food at school, I just eat cereal at home and bring water for the day and wait till i get home and make sandwiches. Honestly the food at school just looks and tastes disgusting. I feel that inmates in prison have better food than students in school. The most grotesque meal to me at school would honestly be the pizza. I know a lot of students eat it but just how it is presented makes it looks so gross. It looks burnt, greasy and just plain disgusting. I don't get why soda and other foods were removed from school when it would probably be healthier than the food served right now. Because of the looks of the food being served; it doesn't seem like the school is doing a good job of serving healthy food. I've gotten so use to not eating at school because it looks so disgusting and that makes me wonder how healthy it is to eat; schools need new, better and just plain healthier food.

Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment

Taxing Is the Solution

All over the U.S you see people with severe health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and many other things. These health problems are a result of the bad and unhealthy eating habits that Americans have. Every day you can find someone eating something that junky, filled with sugar, and made from processed ingredients. A solution to this problem would be to eat a healthier diet, but that is easier said than done. Because of the low price, convincing advertisements, and the wonderful taste of the unhealthy foods it is hard for the people to change their diets. So how do we get the people to change their eating habits if it is so hard to do?

According to the article that Mark Bittman wrote, the best solution that would people to eat healthier food is taxing the unhealthy foods and subsidizing healthy foods. As support that this method would work, Bittman uses an example of how taxing tobacco eventually lead to a decrease in the number of users. So if taxing worked for tobacco it should also work for healthy foods. Bittman also points out how taxing the unhealthy foods will benefit the farmers as well because they will get to sell more of their products. Also, the money earned would be able to go towards the community and other beneficial things.

Although the idea of taxing unhealthy foods will take time, I do believe it will work. I think taxing it would make the people think twice about the junk foods that they eat. They will notice that unhealthy foods aren’t as important as they make it seem. I don’t think the people will automatically start drifting toward the healthier foods because they are so used to their normal ways but, if the taxing solution has time to settle in overtime the unhealthy habits will change.

Do you think taxing unhealthy foods is a good solution to the bad eating habits?

The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Food Companies

Yeah, that's right.

Click here.

eating insects

I actually have eaten a worm before..granted it was because i saw the lion king when i was little and i thought it would be cool to eat like Timone and Pumba but my first thought was this doesn't really taste all that good, or that bad. eating insects is just like eating regular food if it broadcasts to you, you'll feel more likely that if the person on the Idiot box is doing it you could too... within some means.

It's just a thought of mind.

"I triple dog dare you to eat a worm!" Imagine eating an insect. Think of the texture and the sour taste of an insect. Most people wouldn't be able to do it. People would either start to throw up or just from the beginning reject to eat an insect. Would you be able to do it? I think anyone could, it all just depends on your mindset. For example, if you tell someone to eat a carne asada taco they would gladly accept. But what about a taco of cow tongue? Or of cow intestine? Now people would probably say no but me personally being mexican I love cow tongue. I eat it all the time. I just think that you have to be around people who accept that eating insects is fine and probably good for you. In one of the ted talks the speaker said that eventually insects will be considered fine to eat and people won't be disgusted by it. I totally agree with what he says because it all just depends on what people find normal, so if it seems normal people will feel that they have permission to do it without being looked at differently. Their is also that factor that is humans are running out of what to eat so just later in the future it will start to happen, you'll see insects on restaurant menus across the world and I am one hundred percent positive that their is already places in this world where insects are being eaten so you know what they say "you never know until you try it."

Schools Should Provide Healthier Food

Out of most of the places in the world school is the most common place that talks about how important your health is. To support this claim they provide health classes that inform students about the healthy things they should eat. According to this “concern” that schools have about the health of students, most would assume that students are provided with a healthy meal every day. Sadly, that’s not the case. The meals we receive are far from healthy and hardly appetizing.

In the article, “No Lunch Left Behind,” Waters and Heron describe how the lunch program cost is billions of dollars, but only a small amount of this money goes towards the food. Most of the money is used for custodial services to heat the cafeteria. As a result of the small amount contributed to the food, the school is forced to buy cheap and unhealthy products that are frozen, processed, and high in fat. These products are thought of as healthier than fast food, but it is actually as unhealthy as fast food is. These foods hardly reach the nutritional standards.

After learning about how unhealthy the school food is, I am very disappointed. I do not understand how a school can promote good health, but not provide it. I believe that the schools can and should work harder to change menus that they have. I also think that they should use most of the money for food and less for the heating of the cafeteria. If schools are going telling students how important their health is and how they should start making healthy decisions, then it would be helpful if they provide healthy foods and it would be easier for the students to make an attempt to make healthy choices.

What do you think?

Convenient vs. Necessity

Most of the food topics that we discuss all revolve around the fact that majority of  local consumers are unaware of what's really going on. In Wendell Berry's "The Pleasure of Eating," Berry suggests that we buy what we want, but only within the limits of what we can get. This really caught my attention because it's so true. Lately I've been eating Chick-Fil-A about three day out of the week because it's on my way home, it's fulfilling, affordable and convenient. From what I know Chick-Fil-A uses real meat and is a better choice compared to other fast food places like McDonald's or Burger King. If I ever found out that Chick-Fil-A was processed I would throw a fit. I honestly would rather not know and continue to enjoy my chicken sandwich and large fries.

            I've always enjoyed eating, but whose responsibility is it to make sure that we eat healthy on a daily basis? In my opinion the fast food industries make it quite difficult to choose a healthy meal. We've become so immune to what we're actually eating on a daily basis that we fail to realize the importance of a healthy diet.  I would definitely choose a fruit salad over Chick-Fil-A any day but I never really have the time to go search for one at the grocery store. Do you think it's our own responsibility to eat healthy or do you think our surrounding food vendors could make it a bit easier on us by offering more healthy and affordable choices?

"we accept the food we think we deserve..."

While reading Wendell Berry's "The Pleasures of Eating" it made me reevaluate all the bad things I eat, and how I can change my eating behavior. I myself would rather go to McDonalds and spend 3 dollars on a few cheeseburgers instead of going to a place like Chipotle and getting a salad that isn't going to fill me up for 8 dollars. People would rather save a few pennies and get food that doesn't have any real benefits to the bod, instead of spending more and essentially providing your body with the right nutrients it needs. We buy what have been persuaded to want, instead of what we really need just because of the price. Even the "cheap" food isn't what it's worth. We pay what we are charged, instead of standing up against it and trying to fight for the right price. Today in the modern world, a lot of women don't have time to slave in the kitchen for 3 hours to prepare dinner, but does that justify them serving already pre-cooked/pre-packaged food? No. Serving ready stuff is not a healthy substitute. Instead of cooking a whole chicken and hand carving it themselves for the family at a dinner table, they'd rather buy pre-processed boneless chicken breast. In America especially we always forgot to ask questions that need to be answered. The pleausre of eating shouldn't be to just satisfy your taste buds and fill your stomach up; it's about nourishing your body, while keeping the environment and certain ecosystems in mind. Do you plan on changing the way you eat, to not only better yourself, but also the world?

Cornstalks everywhere (but nothing else. Not even a bee)

Check out this review of the book A World in One Cubic Foot by Robert Krulwich of Radiolab!  This is cool because it communicates so well, but it's awful, tragic, devastating information.  It worries me.

Politics of Food

This is a wide open topic with multiple fascinating avenues to explore.  Don't get stuck.  Find a research question you are genuinely interested in, and follow your research in a direction that matters.  It makes the work fly by; it's interesting and real when the writer really wants to know something.

Here are some websites you can explore:

Michael Pollan has his own web page
Here's the Atkins Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley
The Food Inc. documentary has a website
The Edible Schoolyard -- wouldn't it be cool to plant a garden here at Mayfair?  What would it take?
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity

The fourth talk here (all about ecosystems) is about our dwindling bee populations.  Galvanizing.
Ron Finley inspires me:  a TEDTalk about guerrilla gardening
Jamie Oliver's TEDTalk called "Teach Every Child About Food"
Another TEDTalk:  "My (subversive) garden plot"

I planted last year in hay bales that I purchased up the street at Bellflower Feed.  You could put one of these bales almost anywhere, even beside a driveway.  I'm going to try this again this year -- it was easy, cheap and fun -- my idea of a good time.  Last year, I planted four; this year, I'm gonna double that.  (Twice the fun.)

Early:

Later:

Let's eat what we NEED, not want.

In Berry’s article, “The Pleasures of Eating,” he discusses various elements about eating that we may not be aware of.  In paragraph twelve, for example, he explains the seven steps to a new way of eating. Throughout his essay, he provides many reasons as to why eating healthy comes with discipline, responsibility, and commitment. Residing in a metropolitan area surrounded by fast food restaurants, it is easy to throw commitment and discipline out the window in the name of convenience. Eating with discipline means to know when enough is enough. Further, dedicating our bodies to eating healthy requires commitment, especially with so many options to tempt us.

The step I was most interested in is step five. Step five is to learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. We volunteer our money and health when we choose to eat In-N-Out, Taco Bell, etc. Do we truly know what is added to the food that is not food? No. Together we should be making our food system, which is very vital to survival, more responsive to our needs and to our overall health. Step five must be integrated into our personal lives at home and practiced. To stop unhealthy meals from appearing when we ask "What's for dinner?", we need to carefully consider what's for dinner.