Monday, June 8, 2009

final essay

The topic for LDH2BM students is - "What makes life meaningful?". If that is too hard, feel free to tweak that topic - perhaps to - "What makes my life feel meaningfuler?" You should connect to specific areas we've investigated - including dominant and marginal corporate messages, your own thoughts, the elderly, animals, physicality, health, food, and the fundamental energy basis of our society. Please include some quotes from your own or others' earlier work that expresses strongly what you believe or what you don't (any longer) believe. Feel free to include an explicit quote like, "This is the way I'm (mostly) thinking about this topic now - but my understanding is evolving!"

Some starter suggestions and questions:
You should share your own orientation to living a meaningful life. Contextualize your point of view in terms of the dominant perspective, other individuals' perspectives, and your own evolving understanding. Is meaning possible given death, infinity, and the Universe? What's your stance on happiness (the dominant easy answer for a meaningful life) - what is it, how important is it, what causes it? What about the other dominant answers - family, success, self-improvement? How about the "marginal" answers - authenticity, creativity, physicality, or deep understanding? What is the significance of the social - should we strive to be "above" our desire for acceptance and affirmation or should we accept our desire and channel it (how?)? What is the significance of our animality - of our physicality and desire for touch and sensation? Feel free to include a disclaimer like, "This is the way I'm (mostly) thinking about this topic now - but my understanding is evolving!"

Friday, June 5, 2009

Final Food Assignment Including More Resources

Food has been and always will play a big role in our lives. We need it to survive and keep what we call "healthy". We have never taken time to actually realize where our food is coming from, whose hands it been on and how the animals we eat are killed. I feel like even if we were to know the history of our food, we as Americans will continue to eat it becuase its just "a way of life".

In the video, "Cows with Guns" by Dana Lyons, its supposed to be making a joke on how cows are mistreated and abused of consistently. They cannot fight for themselves, therefore we as humans take this as an advantage and do what we want, as long as we get our food. Making fun of the industrial food culture gives out a message to all the people to try to change their way of life, their way of living and especially their way of eating. We need to take some time to think twice before eating the food we tend to eat. In the lines, "they to grow, grow to die. Die to be at the hamburger fry Cows well done" shows a lot of what kind of people we are. We are all selfish people. Farmers feed the cows to get them real fat and plump so that when to cutting them up, we have lots of meat to eat. This is so wrong for them, and as we find out this information we continue to eat these poor animals.

As the song continues, the story changes. This time the song is saying on what if the cows take revenge and take over us by killing all humans and giving them the same treatment the cows got. Its a little redundant to see farm animals gathering together and forming a group to fight for themselves but then again this song makes a great point about abusing the rights that animals have. To treat animal in a hurtful way becuase they are "lower" than you is a very low thing to do. We shouldn't just think of cows as something we devour but more as living creatures that also have feelings and rights. This song is funny but at the same time serious because the message the writer is sending out is very strong.

I really do think we as Americans should think twice about how we live our lives and the food we are putting into our bodies. Just having an idea of where our food comes from shows that we care about what we are feeding our bodies. People who are over eating and not even realizing what their bodies are feeding on are selfish and stupid. I just think we should have some heart and think twice about our actions towards the animals we eat. For example. McDonalds food is filled with oil and ingredients that are very harmful to our bodies.

In the video "VROOM" you can see how harmful the trucker is, he is basically killing the plants and vegetables by spraying a whole bunch of pesticides and liquids on the. Industrial food industries are putting different chemicals in our food but we don't bother to take a look at what is happening around us.

In conclusion, I feel tha they way we look at food isnt the best way that will benefit the way we will our lives. We need to think before we make the actions we make. Even the thought of knowing where your food comes and what hands its been in is a first step to being more aware about the things around you.

Food # 8 - Industrial Food

Virtually all the food you eat is industrially produced - fossil-fueled machines transform the planet into a factory-like production system - once sacred rituals of harvest and joyous eating now reduced to their crudest essentials ("all that was sacred is profaned").

You've now been exposed that insight in several forms - especially in considering your own foodways and the dominant foodways around you. Many people especially object to the industrialization of non-human animals as food sources - and perhaps that's right. But the same model of producing food applies to cherry tomatos, potatos, and sunflower seeds. Your whole life you've been hearing from advocates of industrial food - what do some of the intelligent critics of this system emphasize?

Please write a 2-3 paragraph response that addresses 2 or more of the pieces from the following websites. Be sure to connect your analysis of the media-piece with your evolving understanding of your own foodways and this culture's dominant foodways. If you don't want to be limited to the websites below please find some of your own and suggest them as comments to this post.

Meatrix -
Industrial Food Isn't Cheap -
Pollan vs Colbert -
On Obama's Agricultural Policy -
Animal Cruelty -

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Food Assignment # 7

Chicken Parmesan
cook time: 37minutes

ingredients

* 4 slices whole-wheat bread (1-ounce each)
* 1 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
* 4 teaspoons paprika
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
* 2 egg whites
* 1/2 cup skim milk
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 4 (6 ounce) skinless boneless chicken breast halves, pounded to 1/2-inch thickness
* Olive oil cooking spray
* 1 jar good-quality marinara sauce (about 3 1/2 cups)
* 3/4 cup (3 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
* 2 tablespoons (1/2-ounce) shredded Parmesan

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the bread in the bowl of a food processor and process until fine crumbs are formed, about 25 to 30 seconds. Put the crumbs on a baking sheet and bake for 12 minutes, until golden. (You will wind up with about 1 1/3 cups toasted crumbs.)

In a medium bowl, toss the crumbs with oregano, garlic powder, paprika, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites and milk together. In a third bowl stir together the flour, and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Dip each piece of chicken, 1 piece at a time, in flour, shaking off excess, then egg, then bread crumbs, shaking off excess.

Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees. Place breaded breasts in a glass baking dish and spray on each side with cooking spray, about 5 seconds total per side. Bake breasts until cooked though and crumbs are browned, about 15 minutes. Top with marinara sauce, mozzarella and parmesan and return to oven for an additional 10 minutes, until cheese is bubbling.

* Per Serving

(Serving size, 1 piece chicken with sauce and cheese)

Calories 410; Total Fat 11 g; (Sat Fat 4.5 g, Mono Fat 2.7 g, Poly Fat 1.2 g) ; Protein 50 g; Carb 31 g; Fiber 2 g; Cholesterol 110 mg; Sodium 1200 mg

Excellent source of: Protein, Vitamin A, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Phosphorus, Selenium

Good source of: Thiamin, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Iodine, Magnesium, Manganese, Potassium, Zinc

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Food # 6 - Response to Pollan 1

While looking at Pollan's points, I would have to say I agree with him 100 percent. To know that Americans are relying on nutritionists to correct their diets is a little weird. Personally, I have my own gym trainer and I have changed my diet completely, as everyone else in the world, appearance has been a big priority in my life. I say its good to keep healthy but people tend to take it to another level and go crazy about their appearance, aside form eating "healthy" or not eating at all they go to experts to make them feel like they are doing everything wrong. From eating bad foods to living life wrong. We should be able to make our own decisions on what to eat but by also eating smart. For example, stacking up on fast food on a daily basis is just wrong not only for your body but mainly for your mental and physical health.

Being healthy is not the only problem in this world, its the food we are eating that is the problem. We need to think more about our bodies instead of going to the corner store and buying food that already made. We do not value food like others do. We don't really think twice, whatever is more convenient and easy to get; is our route out. We need to make the right choices for ourselves and not worry about what others might think or even what others are doing to keep looking good.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Food # 5 Grocery Store and Habitual Food

Please write a post about how your family uses grocery stores and the variety of vegetables, fruits, roots, grains, and nuts that you eat in a typical week.

You should include your insights about how grocery stores "push" particular types of products, how you learned (or didn't) to eat a variety of foods, and information about your favorite meals and habitual diet pattern.

May Day

"May Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment.
As Europe became Christianized the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again." (Wikipedia)