My New Favorite Meal

Many religions and people, for several different reasons, take up fasting. It is the way a person restricts their diet as a sacrifice or meditation. I recently went through one and I was able to experience a very intriguing aftermath. I had eaten only bread and water for two days and felt incredibly refreshed! I had about 6 slices of bread and drank 3-4 bottles of water a day and felt fine and rarely felt any pangs of hunger (surprisingly). The sole purpose of food was for survival. Yet, once the fast had ended and I had my first bite of an oatmeal cookie that also had chocolate chip pieces in it, I immediately wanted another one and also felt the pangs of hunger hit me continuously through out the day.

A few of my classmates have mentioned to me how they are always hungry at school. I'm not too clear why, but the fact that I felt the urge to eat more and more after taking my first bite of this Chips Ahoy cookie that had more than 10 ingredients in its label, led me to acknowledge the importance of understanding what hunger truly means. The fasting was a psychological experiment. The less choices I had, the less I ate. Food no longer was exciting or a source of entertainment; it was solely for energy and survival. Yet, once there were more choices, more tastes, more flavors, and ingredients, hunger become more than a necessity. It became an addiction to the stimulation from the food.

Wendell Berry stated, "...eating is an agricultural act.", a cycle of energy, and source of life. The transformation of humanity from members of this cycle into its dictating consumer shifts the purpose of food. People in developed communities such as ours, eat for fun. Our bodies have somehow adapted to all the different choices we have and now survives and dependence on the variety of flavors, textures and servings we experience per day.

Have you tried to fast before? It's a pretty interesting experiment :)

Do you appreciate all the choices you have, or would you rather have it plain and simple and why?

Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment

My BAD Eating Habits..

So here I am expanding my knowledge on the food I eat day in and day out. I've read articles on pesticides, on animal cruelty, on chemicals that cause diseases; all these facts that come with the food we eat and yet I most likely will look past all the faulty reasons to eat healthier and continue my bad eating habits. I sat down on the computer for hours at a time researching all kinds of information that I figured would make me have a better out look on the food I eat, and to be honest I do want to take part in how my food is made, but I still struggle to turn down In n Out, or refusing to eat my microwave burritos my grandpas buys me. The thing is I love food, like everyone else. Fast food industries know exactly what do to make us yearn for the food they provide, they have scientist to make our food just as addicting as crack, but still knowing this doesn't stop me or a lot of people from eating it. My bad habits...

From Which Angle?

When I say angle I don’t mean what angle from the triangle, I mean we aren’t in math so if you thought this ummm yeah ill remind you again we’re in ERW guys.  When I say from which angle I mean, from where do we start writing our research paper? How do we start?  Do we tell a story regarding our topic or do we address the problem right off the bat.  The other day when we did a quick right and were asked to start talking about our topic, preferably our first paragraph, right away my table started asking the inevitable question, “How do we start a research paper?”  Unable to think of a quick response I just shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.  So now I was stuck.  I didn’t know how I was going to start off that’s acceptable.  I began writing that day however.  I started with a story and was about to follow up with the details and the dilemma, that is before the bell rang.  But that’s how I somewhat always start my papers.  I love telling stories that later connect with my topic, but I’ve been told at times it’s unnecessary and honestly I feel like this time it’s one of them.  So if you guys are feeling this way too, high five!!!!  You aren’t alone.  What we need to do is just ask our teachers, family members, and friends for some advice.  But the ultimate thing to do is of course DRAFTS DRAFTS DRAFTS!

           

The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Food Companies

Yeah, that's right.

Click here.

Reality Blows

In America's modern, fast, and greedy lifestyle, it is almost unrealistic to believe that we can get rid of fast food or even make it completely healthy. This is very unfortunate in my opinion; however, this is the truth. Fast food has become a staple in American families because it is price efficient and convenient. For some families, this is the best way they can afford to feed their families. It would be very easy for fast food companies to change their produce and ingredients to more healthy organic items, but it is not at all cost efficient. They'd have to spend more money on their resources which means higher prices for their products and maybe even laying off employees. Why would a company want to lose out on millions of dollars to look out for the health of their consumers? Even though more information is being provided to consumers of the unhealthy ingredients many are not changing their habits. If consumers are already aware of what they are purchasing and still purchase it, then why change? All in all, no matter how much we pressure this industry to change they will not be able to change and continue to meet the needs of their consumers. Whats your take on this? Do you believe there is a cost efficient solution? Or, do you agree that "there's no going back"?

Pesticides: Harmful or Naw

Okay so I now that I have a topic and it is set in stone, I did my fair share of research for the bibliography and wow. I always knew that our foods were processed and had a lot of crazy chemicals and other things added that I can't even pronounce but what I found was actually kind of scary. To start off, pesticides, yes pesticides, can lead to various types of cancers and doubles the risks of ADHD in children! Do you guys know how much we are exposed to pesticides? Not only in our foods but in other things like water, the air we breathe, all throughout our environments and communities. Heck, it's on our pets! Although, the percentage of foods with pesticides is generally low compared to other countries, it's still a problem that is in my opinion, very underrated. Even though the U.S. places limitations on the amount and use of the pesticides in our foods, there are still some that break the law and have more in them than they should. And get this, only one third of pesticides used are actually detected by the U.S. I guess no one is really 100% on what anyone is eating now a days. My advise to everyone is to practice digestion awareness. I really mean it even if I end up eating some Hot Cheetos later. Beware.

Annotated Bibliography

          When Ms. Fletcher told us that we were going to do a research project I automatically thought oh great this is going to be super hard.  When we were coming up with a research topic I could not decide what I wanted to research. It took me two days to finally decide on what I was going to make my topic. Then we come back to class the next day and Ms. Fletcher says that she wants us to do an annotated bibliography on our 5 articles or resources that we were going to use when we construct our research project and she wanted it by Thursday by midnight.  When she handed us the paper saying what she wanted us to explain the articles and how many words our paragraphs had to be I thought oh great I'm going to be up all night trying to get this done.
          It turns out that doing an annotated bibliography is not that hard.  As long as you have a topic that interest you and you read the articles thoroughly it is easy to write concise descriptive and evaluated paragraphs.  As I looked at my bibliography once it was finished I liked that I could just read the short paragraphs that I wrote and decide which cite is best to go to for what it was I wanted to know at the moment.  It is convenient and prevents me from having to go to each cite and look for the information or answer to what I needed.

Every Lunch Left Behind

I don't know if it's just me, but when I see a huge group of people, I get curious. I wonder, "Huh, what are they all waiting in line for?"
Here's just a little background information of myself: Although I have been a Mayfair Monsoon for six years now, I rarely ever paid attention to the MPB during snack or lunch break. I didn't even know the MPB was our cafeteria (hence, multipurpose building lol). To this day, I still have only stepped foot in the cafeteria roughly about five times.
However, I came to the realization that the long line of students were waiting to get their snack or lunch. Before we even started this food politics unit, I knew school lunches weren't healthy. My only knowledge was that they were all preserved meals that were just microwaved or something then served to the students. That always disgusted me. (The sad truth is that I actually used to enjoy school lunches in elementary school.) But now I know that school lunches are totally malnutrutious, made from high fatty meats and cheeses and comparable to fast food meals. It just leads me to question: WHY THE HECK DO PEOPLE STILL EAT THIS CRAP?
I have the answer to my own question. They eat it because it's all that is available and maybe all that they can eat. The only semi-healthy option is like... a salad that comes with soggy vegetables (I assume) and a truckload of cheese with a cup of ranch.
The solution isn't easy, though. We can't expect the whole nation to provide truly healthful, organic meals to the billions of students. Even if the government hypothetically provided enough money, the new and improved meals wouldn't guarantee a more healthy student population. Kids are super picky and sometimes prefer to eat fatty foods. Maybe serving nutritious meals would lead students to starving themselves. Also, it could lead to more of the "black market" smuggling among students that sell contaband (the good stuff) and so the children wouldn't even need the organic meals then the government would've wasted billions of dollars on the efforts. It's a tough problem to solve.

Research topic too hard?

Some the other day when we were asked to share our research topic I wasn’t prepared.  I actually didn’t pick a topic until that moment when Ms. Fletcher called on me to share.  I chose a topic I thought I would want to write about but when I started doing my research I found it somewhat difficult to find articles that made enough sense to make a favorably argument.  I was getting frustrated and I finally decide maybe the best thing to do was to pick another topic, so I began my search.  I started asking my brother because I recalled he had to do something like this.  He told me the best thing to do was to keep my original idea but change it up a bit.  So my advice to those who are having difficulty would be the same my brother gave to me, change it up a bit.  Keep your concept but change your wording.  If you still are facing difficulty then maybe it will be best to find other less difficult topic.  Ask your siblings or another people for some suggestions.  Some of them might have the one you’re truly interested in.

Insects as food?

So i ate a grasshopper this past week. Check out my Instagram profile ( @thomas_nish ) if you want to see me do it. Surprisingly, it tasted fine. I would actually prefer to eat a bag of grasshoppers than a bag of chips. It was crispy, flavorful and downright edible. And yet, there still lingers within pretty much all of us a mental block. We just can't bring ourselves to think of eating these creatures. We've been conditioned (however unintentional) into thinking that bugs are repulsive on the dinner table. But if we are to believe our readings, human population and affluency cannot continue to both grow if we continue in our present dietary habits. To get a sufficient amount of protein in the future from animals, we need to start looking beyond the 4 main sources of protein in the US: beef, poultry, pork and fish.
I know it probably won't become mainstream for a while, but we as a society need to start branching out if we are to maintain a stable earth system. And this may include eating good ole Jiminy Cricket.

Here's an Idea: Thoughts for food

      How far must we fear to become elucidated? With our growing knowledge of these issues on food happening in our own local home, we are becoming afraid of our surroundings. What i mean is that we are everyday learning more and more of what is wrong with our food and what we intake, it literally scares us and worries us. We learn what is wrong with the processed, fast food and what is even wrong with the fresh local foods. When i realized i was feed up with this fear and our decreasing heath as a nation i thought maybe Ron Finley is right. Finley inspired me that if we build it will rise. (ha ha) I mean that if we create a better eating environment, then our health will get better. His thought was to make all empty, abandon parking lots or open land into farming land. Small gardens all over California. And why not? He is right. If we have kids volunteer they will eat what they have created. and if we have enough effort we will change everything.All i think of this idea is positive things. Sure it will take work and effort, qualities our nation lacks as a whole but with our focus we can truly benefit. Starting now we can begin to grow enough to support our growing population which is said to be in the near 10 billion by 2050. If we are having issues feeding our people now, it will not get easier as the days continue. So here's a though world: lets grow everything, ourselves and our food.

Issues on School Lunches

    (3/18/ 14 quick write)
        It saddens me to know that when a child is given lunch money to have a well balanced meal to help get through the day, and that money is is either used for a unhealthy "healthy" warmed up mush at school or is used for unhealthy snacks that don't really fill one up. It seems that the only way a child receives a healthy fresh meal is to bring from home and this option is not always at hand. Most families don't have enough time or money to make meals like this daily. So with theses limited options, children are being forced to eat unhealthy or starve. We need to change one way or another or unhealthy rates will not fall.

       Due to the fact that get free lunch, I am required by my parents to eat at school or starve. The meals on campus are never in my favor but i have learned to look past taste. Will in the past years i have not had much issue with the food once i stopped thinking about it but if in order for a student to have to ignore the heath issues in school lunches to have full stomach, then there is something wrong and i needs to be changed. Recently i have had a hard time eating at school. Due to my sacrifice of meat because of lent, I given up meat. But what must i eat if all meals are meat based? I have many vegetarian friends and i wonder what do they do? most do bring food from home but many have just fruits and juice. But this isn't enough to fulfill me all day. I have had salad for the last few weeks and i feel terrible. My health is not where it should be.
I used to be proud of having been on the list of students with free lunch. To have a meal before home unlike many other kids. But once looking into what is in these free "meals", I feel more of a guinea pig to "If it doesn't kill them then its okay". So what must we do to end this whole issue?

Thought? Opinion?

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.

The 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: