The Cove

We saw a documentary that analyzes and questions dolphin-hunting practices in Japan in class. The content of this documentary was people went to Japan to film dolphin hunting. Hunting scenes were real shock. Water changed red when people killed dolphins on the boat. The waster was not ruddy. It was real red that I can see the line between regular water and bloody water. They looks they do not have sense of guilty. How can people kill animals like that? Dolphins are very smart animal. So, there are many place where has a dolphin shows. I think dolphin show is not good idea too. And also they eat them. I never heard about it before. I just knew that some people eat whale meats. I am sure dolphins know and can feel everything and they are suffering from people. We have to take care of them and stop bothering weak animals.

GMO food

GMOs food is genetically modified organism food. GMOs are living organisms whose genetic material has been artificially manipulated in a laboratory through genetic engineering. This relatively new science creates unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria and viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods. Nowadays, we can see many kinds of GMOs in markets and many people enjoy them. Moreover, they did not have enough information about them. For consumers, it can be difficult to stay up-to-date on food ingredients that are at-risk of being genetically modified, as the list of at-risk agricultural ingredients is frequently changing. After reading some articles about GMOs, I think original foods are better than GMOs. So, I want to share 10 reasons to avoid GMOs for you.

There are reasons why we have to avoid GMOs

1. GMOs are unhealthy

2. GMOs contaminate –forever

3. GMOs increase herbicide use

4. Genetic engineering creates dangerous side effects

5. Government oversight is dangerously lax

6. The biotech industry uses “tobacco science” to claim product safety

7. Independent research and reporting is attached and suppressed

8. GMOs harm the environment

9. GMOs do not increase yields, and work against feeding a hungry world

10. By avoiding GMOs, you contribute to the coming tipping point of consumer rejection, forcing them out of our food supply

The Fraud and Death Administration Doesn’t Care

The vanishing of the bees

 

The bee industry is very layered and broad One and every 3 bites of food is because of honey beesBees bring the success of flowers from fertilization and are disappearing in staggering numbers.

 

The first beekeeper to report this was David Hackenburg In October 2006 he discovered massive honeybee losses creating a huge stir and raising a red flag. His bees in Ruskin Florida had gone missing when three weeks before they were perfect bee hives a shocking statement and what does that say about the industrial giant that is housed in Ruskin Florida and all of central Florida. When the bees are dying something is wrong with the environment, which will eventually affect all of us. For centuries honey was seen as magical and seen as medicinal in ancient times they were seen as omens and thought to be some kind of message or blessing. In 2007 they created a task force to investigate this epidemic they called it colony collapse disorder This problem has never been to this degree more then 3000 bees can disappear in just one afternoon this eventually will effect the 15 billion dollars of food the bees help to pollinate in the us alone. When tests where done to the bees multiple pathogens have been affecting them Yet none were seen to be the reason for the disappearance. Many conspiracies are surrounding these issues from Russian satellites to cellphone towers. Still no answers. but with all commercial aspects there is always a huge group of holistic beekeepers that take opposite approaches by having smaller hives and not as much travel the commercial aspects of beekeeping is very questionable as many of the bees are fed with commercial sugars during travel. There are many beekeepers which have began to holistic practices and avoid the exploitation of their bees.

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Fed Up

I recently just watched the documentary film, Fed Up. I knew of  the obesity issue in the united states for a while now, but I’m still disturbed by how the large companies in the food industry are able to manipulate and control people. I was one of the few students in my high school that supported what Michelle Obama was trying to accomplish with the food in the school systems. I myself have grown up very fortunate. My parents never fed me processed junk when I was a kid, my parents would always cook amazing meals and take me to various restaurants, where I was able to develop a more refined palate at a young age. I consider myself a foodie, I love to cook and try new foods. I lived in Europe for most of my life and not until I moved to Virginia did I realize how different the food was. I never heard of Chick-Fil-A , but the first time I tried it I thought it was gross. I thought the pizza places like papa Johns, Pizza Hut, and Dominos are repulsive. I also didn’t understand why kids loved to eat gummies, fruit roll ups, gushers, and ect. When living in England they did have similar items, but the taste was twenty times better in my opinion. I went from amazing school lunches to lunches where I had to question what I was actually eating. There were no real healthy options, everyday students would get a choice of burgers, pizza, fries, and chicken sandwiches. I never understood why the school wouldn’t provide more homemade meals. The schools version of homemade is a pile of tortilla chips topped with a scoop of mystery meat. Not to mention the drink option was milk, which I thought was strange. The milk always tasted gross to me and I know that the chocolate milk is a huge issue, because of all the sugar but I honestly drank it only because the chocolate flavor masked the weird cardboard carton taste. It was very upsetting to find out that even the first lady Michelle Obama didn’t have enough power to control these companies. What she was doing was their worst nightmare so of course they would get involved and manipulate her program from targeting nutrition and turn it into targeting children to become more physically active. I think the person who deserves more acknowledgement in trying to help the schools food system is chef Jamie Oliver. I have been watching him cook since I was a little girl and I a hundred percent support what changes he is trying to make. I remember he had a television series all about this issue and how he wanted to change not only the schools foods, but fast food chains to offer more healthy and fresh options. But of course once again the food industry feared him then put an end to what he was trying to do. Some schools wouldn’t allow him to be anywhere near their schools. They cancelled the television series and not much has happened since. I can only hope the one day society can make these necessary changes to help the future of the generations to come. I hope that one day someone can speak out against these large companies to make these significant changes. It’s wrong what the food industry is doing and when I have children of my own one day I will not stand by and let met children be manipulated or tempted into eating false advertised and sugar/sodium overloaded foods and beverages.

Local Vs. Imported Food in Tanzania

I want to just say, i eat so much different and much more and healthier in Tanzania, there is such a limited amount of food available and much harder to get. There are a lot of international differences with local vs. imported food as well as seasonal foods and GMO’s. I wanted to focus on Tanzania because our situation is unique. We do not have genetically modified foods readily available in Tanzania, in addition we do not get our fruits and vegetables in the supermarkets, most super markets barely have any vegetables for sale as it is not a popular seller. We do not go to grocery stores often unless they are local supermarkets because most of the time it costs too much money to get items that are considered everyday items in the USA.  This is just one example of something that is so normal in the USA that is virtually impossible to get in Tanzania, and because of the Port Tax on imported goods and the fact that they have to bribe the port officials in order to get the imported food out of the port on time before it sours, this is the other issue, most of the time once the food has cleared the port it is near expiry date and you spend all this money for something to go bad in 2 days that should last a month at least. The other thing is that in Tanzania we have so much smaller supermarkets because they don’t have products to fill them. Our biggest supermarket in Dar-es-salaam is probably the size of a Walgreens, and they still dont have anywhere near as much products  in them. These supermarkets are a relatively new thing as the first supermarket that opened up in Dar-es-Salaam in 2008 and was the downstairs of a house. This is just the culture in Tanzania, we go to local butchers to get our meat, we go to markets like this one below for our fruit and vegetables and spices.

 In addition we do not have anywhere near the amount of fast food as what is available in Europe and the USA. We have a total of 3fast food restaurants in Dar-es-salaam and they were both opened in the last 10 years, in addition these chains only have one or two in the entire East African Province. They also do not make as much buissness as here. They get traffic from people that work in the area and have lunch breaks or foreigners who crave the fast food.

How my diet changed in the US

What we eat is very important and in an idealistic world I would control my diet and rely on fast last minute meals less. Growing up in Budapest, getting fresh food was part of daily routine. We have huge farmers markets every day, in all the districts of the city because there are thousands of farmers very close to the city so it’s easy for them to come up every day. The best part tho was the bread, our culture relies on it so there are bakeries pretty much on every street, and that usually open around 5-6am. This way by breakfast we would have warm fresh bread which is probably what I miss the most. When growing up you don’t think about how well you’re parents are feeding you, and you only realize moving away from home. Specially when it’s busy I eat fast food often, and although I do make an effort to cook with fresh ingredients, it’s just very difficult to get the kind of fresh gm free food that I had back home. It’s simply because a place like Target, Wallmart but even Wholefoods or Trader Joes are huge corporations and they have to have the same items on the shelf of each store. Sure, it might be locally produced and organic, but even an all green organic farm won’t compare to a family that has maybe 50 chickens or an acre of land, and sell the what they produce and hand-pick there at these markets. All that said, the quality of the food might be better but the quality of the life of the farmers is definitely worse then here, because you just can’t make huge profits on a small amount.

DIET GOALS

Ideally I would want to be fruitarian (not sure how healthy that is) and try to stay away from all meats and fish but here and there I’m a sucker for a nice filet… But after watching the cove and other documentaries I now feel very guilty. While I’m in Sarasota I don’t eat meat I eat mainly fruits, granola bars, bagels, yogurt and oddly because I used to despise them multiple verities of beans. I don’t like to cook large meals for myself because well I’m lazy when I’m by myself but when I’m with my boyfriend on the weekend he is meat and potatoes guy and a stickler for always having meat. Many people are convinced that meat is the only source of protein I’ve gotten him to be much better and have drastically dropped the amount of red meat. When eating meat I try to only do chicken or fish I used to never really eat veggies either but now I love them because I dowse all my vegies in soy sauce and Sautee them so I eat sodium veggies all the time now. I try to get fancy here and there I’ve tried lettuce wraps and making pizza crust with cauliflower and personal pizzas with tomatoes this satisfies my stomach and taste buds. I prefer to eat light and fresh when I eat right like this I feel energized after I eat. But when I eat heavy foods like meats and breads and cheese I feel immediately tired and like I’m about to have a food baby. Hopefully over the summer I will have more time to go to the farmers market and by more locally sourced foods and learn more about healthy eating.

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A Vegetarian Diet

For the longest time I’ve been a vegetarian, and the reasons for me being one have changed over the course of my life; but the simple fact remains that I just don’t like the taste of it. When I was little, it seemed like I would dish out all of the meat my parents would buy from the local grocery store (especially hotdogs). In fact, when I was four years old, my family and I went on a trip to Skytop, PA (a lodge in the Poconos), I ordered 4 hotdogs and ate them all, and it is now a classic story in our household. Shortly after that I became a vegetarian. I really do not know how exactly I transitioned from practically a carnivore to herbivore. No one in my family remembers either. This aside, ever since then I have stuck to my diet.

In class last week I remember someone discussing a family member who was a vegetarian but did not obtain the essential proteins and vitamins in their diet (only carbs). Unfortunately, this sounds a lot like me. Most of my diet consists of carbs. It didn’t use to be this way. Around middle school to early high school my mom would be constantly hovering over my head about receiving the proper minerals in my diet. The most trouble I had for the longest period of time was getting protein into my daily diet. So; she bought me these little shakes called protein drinks. They weren’t too gross (as most healthy blended drinks are) and I couldn’t really tell the difference between when I was drinking them and when I wasn’t; but it pleased me that I satisfied my mom.

Nowadays my diet has just gotten worse; and to be honest I don’t care enough to change it. I don’t think about it as being too important (even though I probably should) One last thing I wanted to mention was a reason that came up recently that makes me never want to eat meat, and that’s the slaughter of animals. I added this on to a solidified reason (just not enjoying the taste), but it’s notable. I am definitely against animal cruelty, and have recently seen videos/documentaries of slaughterhouses. It may not directly correspond to my diet; but I feel like the more vegetarians there are, the more likely the demand of animal slaughter will plummet. So in that sense I do feel like I am making a difference, even if it is almost too small to see.

Food and Local

We were talking about eat Local during last weeks class. I know it is helping your own local by eating locally. because local food can save transportation money by selling their food in their local area. And we also can get fresh food in cheaper place. Sometimes I go to the farmers market to get some fresh local vegetable to use them for cook. And compare to those big grocery markets like Walmart, they are cheaper and have a better condition. Most of them are so fresh, So I feel getting healthy by just grocery shopping in local farmer’s market.

When I was in Korea, my parents prefer getting local food to cook them. And I was living next to the sea, so we always could get good and fresh sea food. At that time I felt healthier because I eat local and I eat the food that made with mom’s effort to keep their family healthy. After I moved into U.S. I was busy and also lazy, so I didn’t cook much even though I have a kitchen in my house. And I go get food from big grocery or fast food restaurant to fulfill my hunger. That caused me get a fat and made me unhealthier.

These days I’m trying eat local fresh food, I hope that I don’t get lazy again, and I will keep try to eat local fresh food as long as possible.

Where do we buy our food?

Most of us are used to go grocery shopping in big Super Markets such as Target, Walmart, Publix…. Is it because it is more convenient? because we find everything we need there? Or because we are used to them? Most of this Super Markets import their food and sell it throughout the United States and to other countries. It is hard to find something that has grown local in them (because they are big chains). If we want to find local food we would need to go to a Farmers Market or small local stores.

Many people say that the best fruit is found only in local stores and that Walmart or Target doesn’t have the best products. I disagree with this statement. It is true that local stores can have fresh and very delicious fruit, but so can big supermarkets. It is important to go and buy our food where we know that they are following food regulations as well.

Choosing where to buy our food is hard, I agree that we need to support local farmers, but I think it is okay to buy products from big chains of super markets.

-Maria