Warning!!! Do not eat while looking at this post.
It may cause you to throw away whatever you are snacking on.
So on Wednesday we went to Professor Kate Johnson's farm to milk some goats and collect chicken eggs. Now my father was raised on a farm that my family still owns and visiting my grandmother in good 'ole Mobile, Alabama was both great and horrible at the same time. There were cows, chickens, turkeys, cats, and a few horses roaming around and with lots of animals comes lots of bugs (one of my biggest fears but that's an entirely different story). I guess I just never had an appreciation for things that are grown and raised on a farm because I had been socialized by TV, friends, siblings, society, etc. that we are supposed to buy everything that we need. Even if we do wanna make something, like a simple cake, we still have to go out and get the supplies and ingredients for it.
Anyways I use to think that getting any food from the farm was one of the nastiest things that anyone could do. I liked picking it up from the grocery store because I thought that this had to be clean and healthy and there couldn't be any risks from eating or drinking anything because it was being sold to people, but boy was I wrong. Ever since this class started I have been looking at the food that I get and I just start thinking Ummmm... and where did this come from or What is in this? Some foods go through a lot more when they are taken to be sold at a store compared to when you go out back and grab an egg from a chicken coop. Being at the farm and almost seeing where my food came from beginning to end gave me this realization that I don't know what I am eating and what it has been through. And I think that most people don't want to know that answer to this because it will cause them to no longer want to eat it. This is how felt when I saw a Facebook post a month or two ago about the many uses of my addiction, Coke.
We have adapted so much to our lives that we expect food to be ready quick and in a hurry without very much effort. I can say that is one thing that deters my from cooking all the time. It just takes too much time to go get the food and then prepare it and cook it where I can go 2 minutes down the street to McDonald's and it is ready in minutes. We now even have shows on the Food Network Channel that are trying to get It becomes hard sometimes to think of what is incorporated in American culture, but food fast and ready can definitely be considered. We have this lifestyle and it has become such a part of our culture that we don't even think about changing it because it doesn't seem wrong to us.
Now with this fast eating, as I mentioned earlier, we often do not know what is in the food that we are shoving down our throats. So, this is a video that I found the other day when I do my random exploring on YouTube. It made me rethink a lot of the food that I eat, especially since I had about half of the foods they are talking about within the last week. All in all it has only been a week in this class and I am already rethinking my eating habits. It is god to just be more conscious of the food that we are eating and read labels and research some of the companies that we are buying from because who know, that burger you had last night could have actually been only 25% real beef and 75% waste.
I think I might throw up!
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly why I have given up (red) meat for the past four, almost five, months.
You are right, Sherill. We have no idea where in God's name the food we consume on a daily basis comes from unless of course you are getting fresh eggs from the chicken coop and fresh milk from the goats. Although this course has brought great realization about the process of consumption, the actuality of it all still results in me driving through McDonald's to get "pink slimy" chicken nuggets for dinner. As a college student it would be really nice to not have to resort to those options, but the funding isn't quite right to eat out of a garden at every meal.
When I get older and have a family, I would love to live on a farm--maybe not as far back of the road as Kate's where I would have to invest in a muddin' truck and a gun to not be afraid of my shadow. I would love to raise all kinds of animals and eat from a fresh source every day; however, I feel like the funds to live such a life would still be unlikely. And like we said in class yesterday when we were naming the benefits of industrialization, there may only be five, but those five outweigh all 20 costs. The main one for me, like Sherill mentioned above, would be the love of the lifestyle that I currently have. I love living life on-the-go and being able to bounce around from place to place. I am young and there is no better time to live life to the fullest--or so I have been told. Kind of seems like I am saying I do not get a shit about my body and what I consume, but that is not exactly the case, it is just that the fact that eating "bad foods" is inevitable. We cannot escape our society and the bad things that come along with it regardless of how much farm land we own, how many pigs and cows we raise, how many goats we milk or how many fresh eggs we collect daily. At the end of the day, there is something that our society, our supermarket, our gas station, etc. offers that we just cannot get from a farm--and that is a sad reality.
I have a tough stomach in general so this didn't gross me out too much. I was actually eating a tuna sandwich! Which doesn't look too different from that pink slime... but I know what's in it! Well, not everything that is in it.
ReplyDeleteThat video was very insightful. I hate a lot of the foods that were listed, so I'm in the clear for now... somewhat. I can't believe that maraschino cherries are bleached and then dyed red! I also thought that those cherries were shady. I also think they are one of the most disgusting tasting things on the face of the planet.
That video really makes one think about what they put in their bodies and to inspect the food that they are eating, a comment you made in the blog, too. People should definitely inquire more about food. And people should especially do it if they are putting that food in their bodies.
I feel like, being in college, we don't have much control of what we eat. With the CC dining hall and the UG, I have absolutely no clue what I am eating. I have to put my full and complete trust into what they are serving us. If something says spinach with onions, I have to trust that it is spinach and onions. We don't see how they prepare the food or where they buy the food from. We pay for a meal plan through the school, so if we don't eat there thousands of dollars end up falling through and we end up wasting our own money. If we decide to eat out, there are not many places we can go to for a healthy meal. McDonald's is less than a mile away, Subway is probably much better, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Rally's, etc. There a lot of fast food joints. Even if we decided to cook for ourselves, that is a ton of money and time that we have to take out of our daily lives. Being students, this is not very practical, at least for me it would be nearly impossible with my studies and all of the other things that I do outside of school like clubs and my sorority.
The only thing that I can really do now is make the smartest choices that I can with the food that I am provided and dream of the future. I can learn now from my classes and be able to plan out my life in the future where I can get a job, live where I want, eat what I want, etc. I think it would be much easier to implement the whole living-on-a-farm thing down the line rather than right now, still being in college. College and classes like this one are really helping me in-vision the life that I feel like will be right for me and that will benefit society as much as possible. And even then, that probably won't mean that I will only live on a farm away from society and Wal-Mart and only eat what I make. I cannot depend on only myself. I think growing as much of the food that I will consume is the best that I will be able to do. I cannot sustain only on what I grow. I enjoy coffee, tropical fruits, and many other things that I would not be able to grow myself or even grow it in this area at all. Limiting the things purchased in places like Wal-Mart is a start and may be the only thing that I will be able to do. Limit. Not wipe-out. If I will have the job that I want, I will not be able to have that job and be fully independent on my sustenance. Balance is what is needed. And that will be the most difficult thing to find.
This simply reflects our Americanized way of life in which all of us have just become ever more lazy.
ReplyDeleteIts really sad that now no one is willing to use the ingredients in our kitchen and instead say that there is not food.
It is just crazy!!!!!
But hail America!!!! Because we still believe that we are the best. (A Sad Lie)