Improve School Lunches

Many of us get free lunch and the problem is that we don't care how unhealthy the food is. The fact that pizza is one of the food choices everyday just shows how messed up school lunch programs are. I mean don't get me wrong, I love pizza but honestly I never realize that they serve pizza almost everyday until I read  "No Lunch Left Behind" by Alice Waters and Katrina Heron.  What interest me the most is when they mentioned that most people don't recognize that very little of the $9 billion goes to the food they eat, most of it goes to utilities and custodial services. This is where the issue comes in because our health is important but if we put in all the money to our food then our school would not be what it is today. The floor would probably be full of trash all the time and restrooms would be much more worse than it already is. Heron and Waters also stated that the ingredients found on school lunches are the same as the ingredients on fast foods. If this is the case then what is the point of the whole program? I'm really disappointed with this school program because they fail to meet the basic nutritional standards. I mean I love fast food and I think they're the best but these program needs to start putting more money on healthy food. I think that if they choose salads and other low calorie food as their everyday food choices, a lot of students would actually be forced to eat them because they can't just go on a day without eating. I know a lot of people who come to school without eating breakfast before they leave their house. If schools started feeding students healthy food, many students would have no choice but to eat those healthy food. Starting from scratch and producing locally grown food is the best way to improve school lunches because if we just added more money to these programs and leave it like that nothing is going to change. There has to be some restriction on where the money will be spent. Eating healthy food can be expensive but if you think about it, the outcome would all be positive: long term savings, healthy and dietary habits, food safety, and environmental and energy conservation. So, who needs to take part in changing school lunch programs? According to Waters and Heron, the Agriculture Department has to create a separate program for delivering food and also to provide for healthy meal planning. The Department of Education needs to do most of the job because not only will they have to educate the students on healthy food, they will also have to educate them on  how the food will affect their health. Heron and Waters concluded that everyone deserves to eat an organic food and that the government should contribute more on this instead of the increasing epidemiology of obesity. So, what do you think needs to happen in order to improve school lunch programs?

McDonald's Pink Slime?

    So, since we're on the topic of food politics, have you guys heard about the pink slime contained in McDonald's hamburgers? I know its kind of an old topic, but I'm still surprised by it. Personally, I LOVE McDonald's, but when I saw this it didn't really affect me as much as it should have. I just swept it off and chose to ignore the fact that there was something unknown going into the processed meat I was eating, but at the time, I truly didn't care. Did it affect any of you or make an impact on whether you ate McDonald's or not?
    Now that I think of it, even if I did make a choice to stop eating it because of that, I still would have bought McDonald's a couple of times, not only because I like the McChicken Sandwiches, but because when my family is on the rush, McDonald's is the go to place while on the road. I know its not the healthiest choice, but when its fast and cheap, there's no going wrong with it, other than your health. But I never really paid too much attention to the politics behind food until we started studying this unit.
    Anyways, I recently looked into the whole Pink Slime theory and actually discovered a lot of things about it that I didn't know before. According to ABC News, the pink slime is actually boneless lean beef trimming, which is pretty much all the meat left over after all the good cuts are taken to be sold as beef. The reason it looks like pink slime is because it is treated with ammonium hydroxide to get rid of bacteria in the meat. Ammonium hydroxide may sound familiar, because it was also mentioned in Food Inc. It is what is used on crops, such as corn, to get rid of bacteria like E. Coli. So, although it may be disgusting and questionable, this "pink slime" has been used in their burgers and haven't caused any issues yet. But, McDonald's has publicly said that they will stop producing the boneless lean beef trimmings in their food, coincidentally right after the rumor of the "pink slime" in the food was brought to the public eye on the show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.
     No matter what the reasoning behind McDonald's stopping the use of pink slime was, it has been removed as an ingredient and is no longer produced in their meats. But what do you think about this whole issue? How is it that a huge corporation such as McDonald's could go so long without anyone every discovering what this ingredient in our food was? The fast food industry has a lot of power in this economy, yet we don't' look into it as much as I think we should.

Unhealthy School Lunches

Processed foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt have become a great component of  school lunches in schools across America. Experts say these unhealthy school lunches are a contributing factor to the childhood obesity epidemic. A movement is  to bring change to school lunch programs across the country. What’s wrong with school lunches is what is wrong with all the food we’re eating. It’s not just in the schools one of the biggest deficits is the lack of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. While its still a big problem unhealthy  school lunches and childhood obesity situations are getting attention and there are some positive change happening.

Undeniably Us

Look at us – always at rush, always late. We spend more time at work, but we do not have time to prepare our food. Guess what we do? We go to fast food because it is cheap and fast service, but most of us do not know what’s in it. We care more about the taste and looks, but we do not care where the food comes from, or how the food is made. This is undeniably us. We just eat whatever food is available even we know that they are unhealthy. In the article “The Pleasure of Eating”, Wendell Berry stated that eating is an agricultural act, but most of the people do not think that they are the participants of this act. They view themselves as a customer or consumer, in which they not care how the food is made, where the food came from, or how food is prepared. I somewhat agree with Wendell Berry because if you ask me how the food is made, my answer would be “I don’t know”, and if you give me money to buy something to eat, I would just probably buy the cheapest food in store, or I will just buy microwavable food or fast foods, so that I do not have to prepare it. Berry also stated that eating is a pleasure, therefore, we must know how is the food is made. He suggested that we should grow our own food and take our time to prepare it. This is a very hard thing to do, especially for busy people because it takes a lot of time and effort to do it just to have healthier, more enjoyable and more pleasurable food.

research topic

While attempting to decide what my research topic was going to be, I had a difficult time understanding what had to be done. I came up with a topic but I am not sure its worthy enough or if I can find enough information to successfully complete this assignment. I have many questions and I feel sort of stressed out regarding this. Hopefully I am not the one struggling. If anybody can give me some insight I would appreciate it greatly.

Stalk Your Food

Wendell Berry states that in order to have pleasure in eating we must have an “extensive pleasure” in which we have knowledge about our food. I have noticed recently, people in urban areas have been taking precaution with their food habits. I do not know if it is due to the growing obesity rates in the world or its just a fad that has struck the population, but there has been an awareness in making conscious decisions when it comes to food choices. I think the rise for this health kick is due to the Internet, which is the hub for everything and anything. I am always on the Internet and I realized there has been so many articles and blog post that empower people to live a healthier lifestyle. People would share their advice on what types of food to buy and talk about being aware of how the food is produced, raised, and whether it contains chemicals or pesticides, which is why I come to the assumption that there has been an increase of people shopping at farmer’s markets and health food stores such as Wholefoods. There has been a growth of people deciding to become their own farmers and harvesting their own fresh produce, and the Internet as well comes in handy for you can find tips on gardening and cultivating the land.  I do agree that in order to have pleasure in eating we must know the origin of our food and know how our food is being produced. If people have knowledge about the food they eat, finding out how it was made and how long it took to be created or produced, people will appreciate the food they are consuming and eating won’t just be a simple task we need to do on a daily.  So the next time you buy something in the grocery store read about it first, learn the identity of the fruit or vegetable or meat, and find out whether its worth spending money on and consuming. 

The struggle to eat healthy and stay "well"thy

For me, the article that stood out the most is “Attacking the Obesity Epidemic by First Figuring Out Its Cause" by Jane E. Brody. The article talked about the reasons why obesity epidemic happened in the first place. Brody stated that vending machines, food courts, and countless television food commercials did not exist when she was growing up. What struck me the most was when she talked about how feet used to serve as a main means of transportation and people had to walk 2-3 blocks just to buy chips or soda. Today, all you have to do is tell your parents and they will drive you to get food and in a matter of minutes your cravings would be satisfied. Brody declared that women played a role in the high percentage of obesity because when they entered work force, food markets started mass producing foods with “palate appeal” just to make food more readily accessible for everyone. Because the stay-at-home mom status is now gone and many women today are too busy trying to make ends meet, they don’t have time to cook and take care of their children. Most of the time, my parents would get home late at night and they have no choice but to eat at a fast food restaurant. We all love eating out and satisfying our cravings but what we don’t realize is the effect of the food in our health; we only focus on satisfying our cravings and not on maintaining a healthy diet. In addition, I think that stress eating is also one of the causes of obesity in many teenagers. In my case, I would sit and munch on a party size chips while I do my homework because it helps to keep me going and finish all my homework. I’m sure that if I keep doing this I would end up being obese but sometimes I just can’t help it. To reduce our calorie intake, Dr. Gortmaker, a sociologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, suggest putting 10% tax on unhealthy foods, placing more apparent labels on packaged foods, and reducing advertisements of junk foods and beverages. Brody concluded that just like smoking, it will take a lot of time and effort to reduce the percentage of obesity. So, who do you think is to blame for the epidemiology of obesity? Do you think Dr. Gortmaker’s solution is a good idea?