My first reaction when I was introduced to this topic was “Does that mean I have to change?” I figured that out of everything I learned that I just might. All the eating habits that are frowned upon by all of these documentaries or articles leaves me thinking that I might be doing something wrong.
The first video that I had watched about the food culture was Super Size Me, the documentary that showed how bad McDonalds is and how cheap and unhealthy food it held. The man did an experiment by eating McDonalds for every meal for thirty days. His health results were poor and at one time very dangerous for his heart. He even found out more information on McDonalds and the obesity rate it caused.
That documentary was what we were to watch in both science and culinary arts. Even for this unit in cyber English, we had already found out some of the flaws in eating properly.
This unit started out with a video on a TED talk about children and families struggling to eat healthy. The man who was on the video showed how expensive healthy food is and how cheap unhealthy food is. He proved his point, showing a family that couldn’t even buy a pound of grapes but could buy 5 things on a dollar menu at a fast food restaurant. To me this looked like a serious problem, and the man said so too. He even pointed out that because of America’s bad eating habits, that other countries like England were doing the same too. I kind of felt guilty.
After we had watched the TED talk, we watched Food inc. which illustrated how food corporations and slaughter houses worked. It terrified me to think how cruel and secretive some companies can be. The abuse of animals, flavor disguising chemicals, and even diseases like E. coli were results in this documentary. My question was “How could America let this happen?”
Video after video I watched how our nation was developing in a scary and unhealthy way. It made me want to help in some way and I found out I could. With a little bit of effort and determination I could grow gardens, feed future children healthy food, and put a statement on the healthy life that could be and should be ours.
