I eat, You eat, We all eat

Hey readers! This week I have a special treat for you. My partner in crime, worst enemy, best friend, and twin is here to make a guest appearance. She is a historian to the nth degree, so if you're interested in her blog go to histrophile.blogspot.com! Rock on, and peace out. Here's Baby Trink!

I really like steak. I love the taste, the texture, the smell. There's absolutely no meal I love more than a juicy filet mignon. Prom is coming up in a few weeks, and we have to choose which meal we would like: the oh-so feminine and vegetarian vegetable pasta or the manly and carnivorous bloody steak. For a while, I was feeling very self-conscious about ordering the steak, because I knew that all of the other girls at my table would order the vegetable pasta. How would I look in my long, flowing prom dress chowing down on a huge slab of meat? In fact, I even considered getting... the PASTA! Eventually I decided, like usual, to go with my stomach and not my mind, and I told my date to order me the steak. Yet, this conundrum I recently encountered has brought up an area for discussion: how people judge others based on what they are eating.

There's an interesting dynamic when it comes to watching other people eat and observing their habits. Everyone judges everyone (for the most part). If you're normal weight and you see an overweight person walking out of McDonald's with two bags stuffed with a greasy large-sized fry, a 10 piece chicken nugget meal, a Big Mac, and a Shamrock Shake, you wonder (even though most people tell themselves they don't) why they continue to eat unhealthily if they are so overweight already. If you're normal-sized or overweight and you see a very thin, model-sized person munching on a handful of carrots, water, and some celery sticks you wonder to yourself (even if you're trying to fight it) why they think they need to limit themselves like that when they're already so slim.

And we've all heard why we do this. Often, we see the person we're judging as having the ideal body-type and don't understand why they continue to strive for further perfection. Other times, we are so insecure that when we see someone with a body we fear to have we have to beat them down to make ourselves feel better (check out this website run by Tyra Banks to see discussions on this idea). Still other times, we are so sizist that we see our lifestyle as superior to all others (for an interesting post relating to this topic on judging people based on their shopping carts at the grocery store, click here).

But, a question I always (okay not always, but sometimes) ask when I catch myself making judgments on people based on their weight or what they're eating is this: do I truly think I am better than this person just because I am thinner or eating healthier than them? To be honest, the answer is often yes (although I then quickly correct my thinking). I'm in no way proud of my prejudice, but in many ways it is intrinsic to our culture. We are bom into a society that shows ultra-skinny models on runways and ripped women on television. Even I, a soon-to-be college-athlete, will never achieve these ideal figures no matter how hard I work out and how strict my diet is.

So, to me, a more important question than do we judge people based on what they eat is this: where do our judgments about people based on food and weight come from?

< Histrophile >

oh, and... peace out, and rock on.

Food Production: Part 1

I have recently decided to attend a college next year in the heart of America's farmland, or in other words, the Midwest. Many deem the region boring, as just a place filled with cornfield after cornfield. However, I see the region as an extremely interesting place, where food begins as humble plants before it is transformed into cereals and sugars and breads. This got me thinking about our food production: how it's planted, how it's grown, and how it's harvested.

Modern food production is much different than it was in the early farming days. We now can mass produce all products and make them available to almost anyone who wants the products, and there are many issues with this type of production. In this post, however, I will just focus on the issue of the changes in food production methods.

When one thinks of a Midwestern farm, they think of a quintessential farm life: a red barn, a windmill, some cows mingling around. This may have been the image of past farmers, I'm not sure, but it certainly is not the image of farmers today. Today, most modern farmers work to produce cash crops for mass distribution, while before this shift, farmers grew just enough for themselves and to make a profit locally. And this shift has sparked many other shifts, including technological advances, environmental degradation, and urbanization.

In short, changes in food production in farms has fueled much more, greater change, change that we, as Americans, could not imagine life without.

Keep reading for the next post further investigating food production.

Peace out, and rock on.

Baby Bunnies and Vegetarians

My dog, Patty, ate four baby bunnies last week. The last two were so young they didn't even have hair, and she swallowed them whole. It was disgusting. My initial reaction was, "The poor mama bunny!" and "Patty is a killer." But, when you think about it, my dog was only fulfilling her innate need for nourishment. Food, for animals (like Patty), isn't about taste or presentation or cultural merit -- it's about a biological instinct to refuel themselves.

So maybe Patty isn't a psycho, maybe she's actually normal. In fact, maybe Patty is more normal than me -- than humans. People eat food from animals (like baby bunnies, for example) all the time, but we find it repulsive when dogs massacre bunny families before our eyes? Now, that's just a bit hypocritical, don't you think? I mean, the human race systematically slaughters millions of cattle herds every year for consumption, but we can't watch our dogs eat newborn bunnies? There is obvious validity to the "out of sight, out of mind" argument. But, for me, it only takes one thought about what I'm truly shoving into my mouth while I'm enjoying a nice piece of steak for my appetite to suddenly disappear.

I used to not understand why people would want to become vegetarians. Meat is so tasty! There's nothing like a greasy cheeseburger on a hot summer night, there really isn't... But what if I had to actually go out to the field and sink my teeth into the living cow (like Patty and the baby bunnies) to get the same nourishment? Would I love that cheeseburger the same? Would there even be cheese?

Peace out, and rock on.