Blog #3

The meal I decided to prepare for myself was breakfast, which consisted of a bowl of cereal, an apple, and a glass of orange juice. I purchased my cereal, which was Cheerios, the milk, and the orange juice from the local convenience store by my dorm, Carson’s. I got the plastic, disposable bowl, glass, and spoon from a store, Pick N’ Save, near my hometown. To prepare the meal I gathered the bowl, spoon, and glass and set them on my dresser. Then I went to the refrigerator and got a half-gallon of milk, jug of orange juice, and an apple. I retrieved my cereal from a bin under my bed. I poured the cereal in the bowl, followed by the milk, then poured the orange juice in the glass and set the apple in a napkin. I ate and drank everything and disposed of the utensils in the garbage.

Actually I almost completely agree with Michael Pollan’s thoughts when it comes to how American’s eat. I have been raised in a world where we take twenty minutes to eat a meal, tops. We eat in between soccer and basketball practice and rarely sit down as a family to eat together. We eat at our convenience. Since meals are often eaten on the go, they aren’t always prepared in the healthiest way (a.k.a. fast food). Last spring when I traveled to England, every time I ate dinner at a restaurant it would take at least two hours. I felt like it was taking the staff ages to get me my food, but everyone else around me was completely calm, like it was normal for service at a restaurant to take this long. It is normal for Europeans and people of other nations to take two hours to eat a meal, which makes me wonder how they have time for anything else in their lives. However David E. Williams of CNN News disagrees with Pollan and myself. He thinks people are eating at home just as much as they were a decade ago and that isn’t that big of a problem with our dietary issues.

My opinion still hasn’t changed by the meal I prepared for myself. I will be the first to admit that I don’t the healthiest food and that I don’t eat it at a slow, manageable pace, but I feel that is what our world is coming to. A busier and busier society so there is less time to just relax, sit, and eat. I hope in the next coming years, Americans will realize that we need to slow down and actually eat and savor our food instead of inhaling it. 

Blog #2

One food that I have eaten in its real form is pasta noodles. Now I mostly eat processed noodles that come in a box at the grocery store. The real pasta noodles were darker, more of a golden color, as opposed to the chalky color they have if someone would purchase them at the grocery store. The smell is hard to tell because all of the noodles I have eaten (real or fake) have been heavily covered in sauces, so that overpowered the noodle smell. The real pasta noodles had a more rich taste, as opposed to the bland taste of “box” noodles.

            The real food does have some nutrients in it, such as, protein, carbohydrate fiber and, fat. The “fake” pasta has nowhere near the amount of nutrients as the “real” pasta though. It merely has carbohydrates and possibly a little fiber. Obviously the real version of a food is going to be a lot more nutritious for you than the “fake” version. Dr. Leslie Van Romer explains this in her article “Real Food or Fake Food”. I agree with her completely that processed foods have lost most of their valuable nutrients and that they aren’t necessarily unhealthy for you, they are just not as healthy as the real version.

I switched to the “fake” version for my grandmother’s convenience. It was too time consuming for her to make homemade noodles like that all the time. I believe I was around six or seven when she stopped making them.

I will probably not eat the real version of this food, routinely, in the future, unless my grandma starts making them again. I really don’t know the process and I know it takes a lot of time and I am just not willing to commit that to making pasta, so I think I will just stick with the old “box noodles”.