Final Assignment on Tuesdays with More

Tuesdays With Morrie
By: Mitch Albom
Publisher: Random House
Year published: 1997

Overall precis of the book: If the author had a minute to sum up his book to someone in the elevator, he would start by bring up what he said in the afterward: the book was by no means supposed to have such a turn out as it did. It's a story that one should hope to prove interesting because it acts as a gateway between the living and death, just as Morrie reffered to himself as. It is also the regrets of a man and his way of trying to learn how to cope with them. Most importantly, the book is important because it was created to pay off the large medical bills.

Precis 2/3 of Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays With Morrie
By: Mitch Albom
Publisher: Random House
Year published: 1997

Precis: Every now and again stop and evaluate your life for 'sleep-walk' living. Evaluate what really means the most to you, what really makes you happy and strive to live without regretful actions.

Quote One: "There is no experience like having children.... If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children." (p.93)
I found this to an odd thing for Morrie to say to Mitch not because of the content of quote, but because of the answer himself. Mitch had asked Morrie about starting a family, having kids and what that was like and that's the response he gets. It is by no means a concrete or definitive answer. Mitch is indirectly asking for advice and every time prior to this, Morrie has always given an actual answer. 'Do this, forget this, don't hurt yourself.'

Quote Two:

Quote Three:

Precis 1/3 of Tuesdays with Morrie (re-edited)

Tuesdays With Morrie
By: Mitch Albom
Publisher: Random House
Year published: 1997


Precis: Until we are dying or completely dependent on another, we never really learn how to life (read: learn what's actually important in life, of things we will wind up regretting not doing more of.)

Quote one: "We need to learn how to die before we can learn to live."

Early on in the lessons with Mitch, Morrie describes people as living as if they were sleep-walking. They don't even know what they're doing.

Quote two: "Learn to love or die."

I think this is Morrie building off his idea that people live often like they're only sleep walking - not really living at all. We're so swept up in better careers and getting as much excess as possible that we do wind up getting completely absorbed in it. When we do that, we start to push away people we were close to and start losing them. As humans, we need and crave social interactions. I read in a book once about a man who was released from a jungle prison saying that Satre (in 'No Exit') got it all wrong - hell isn't other people. The harshest punishments in societies without actually executing someone include isolation or extreme isolation of some sort. Just as we can be living and preforming the tasks that Morrie sees as useless and insignificant, we can be living and emotionally dying. If we can't love or accept another person, we won't receive those feelings in return or even at all. We will be shunned and to an extent, it will crush us.

Quote three:  "I'm looking forward to being a baby once again."

 In this scene Morrie is talking to Mitch about how he fears  'the day someone has to wipe my ass... the ultimate sign of dependency'. Mitch asks him how that makes him feel and Morie tells him he's going to try and learn how to enjoy it. At first, it seemed like a really strange thing for me to imagine someone saying. I know when I'm really sick, I often don't like people helping me or coming near me because I don't like them to see me in such a weakened, needy state. I know if I was in Morrie's position, I would be absolutely mortified and wouldn't even be able to talk about it. The fact that he can doesn't come across as bravery to me but already as an acceptance of death being around the corner. Morrie knew what would be would be, he couldn't stop it and if he was going to have being fussing and caring for him, he might as well be optimistic about it. They wouldn't be helping him to die but helping him to live out his last days with some more comfort.

Tuesdays with Morrie Reflection

After reading my assigned book, Tuesdays with Morrie, I can’t say that I gained any insights about illness, death or dying as subjects. I did gain multiple insights to some of the characters, mostly Mitch and Morrie, but that right there could be part of the problem. They aren’t characters. All the people mentioned are real people who lived actual lives. The book was written about those Tuesdays spent discussing the ‘most important’ parts of life and most interesting points that Mitch wanted to learn more of. It was, as Mitch says in the afterward, written to pay Morrie’s medical bills. It was much more about Morrie than illness, death or dying even if Morrie fell victim to those. Without the specifics of these topics, I felt that the book didn’t help propel my learnings from this unit.

 I’m not trying to ‘knock’ or ‘diss’ the book and the people mentioned in it. I can acknowledge that the book was written in a certain stylistic manner so that if I hadn’t been told it was non-fiction ahead of time, I would have thought it to be a fictional story until reading Mitch’s afterward. Yes, I did learn a little about the illness (ALS) that Morrie had but I don’t think that was beneficial to our current unit.

I can say, however, that Morrie’s case was most certainly an unusual one.  Had it been a fictional story, I would have said that it was too unrealistic of a read – no one could be so bright and optimistic about dying. (Not about getting better but about actually dying; Morrie’s point about looking forward to becoming a baby once again.) As a general rule, no one is like that. Everyone regrets doing some things and not doing others as Morrie did and some people will try and give their loved ones lessons like the ones Morrie gave Mitch about caring only about ‘what really matters most’ but actually living like that isn’t realistic in this world. You need money to survive. You need a job that pays well and doesn’t put such a stress on your body that you wind up hurting yourself. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, as people often say. You need to be better than someone else to get what you want. You need to be willing to step on people to get a high pay, cut throat job. Is it right? No, but that’s just the way things are.

Writing Groups

As of 11:30pm, EST none of my group mates have posted a response to yesterday's prompt. As a result, there aren't any blogs for me to comment on.

HW 21 - first speaker

When we were told the mother of one of our classmates was coming in to speak on her husband's death I expected a tear filled speech about how her husband's death affected her life, her son's life and a constant reminder of something along the lines of "Live every day to your fullest, for it may be your last." I was sorely mistaken. When Ms. Beth came and spoke, the first thing I noticed and couldn't help but continue to notice was that she didn't cry once while mentioning her husband, either of the two sons he had left behind, or how his battle against advanced kidney cancer changed him from the 'Hollywood handsome' man she kept referring to him as to a skeleton that looked like someone had stretched a thin layer of skin over it, with eyes bulging out of their sockets and a hanging tongue. The image she created was grotesque - just as she promised it would be nothing like how Hollywood portrays death - and the complete opposite of trying to sugarcoat something for a younger audience. Just as she spoke of not wanting the doctors and nurses to see her late husband as his disease rather than a human, if not the man he was,  I had the feeling that she was doing something similar to us. She knew our ballpark ages, knew that we were still high school students and quite easily children in the eyes of our education system yet she didn't treat us like children. As Ms. Beth spoke, she gave off this air of equality, something that told me she would use the same tone and word choice when speaking to someone twice our age. In hindsight, I can't help but wonder if the old quote "Death is the great equalizer," can apply to those still healthy and living as well as those dying or dead.


Some insights shared by Ms. Beth:

• That there actually is a difference in the way that some hospital workers will see the patients as (the illness vs the person; ie a thing vs a person)
• How to make them see the person by use of family photos, passing out paintings and artwork.
• Not so much as a direct insight but I noticed that she never was referred to Erik as "my late husband"
• I'm not sure how to articulate it but she spoke about how within the month or so, give or take, how her husband would ask for a bowl of water to put his hand in while he slept. She gave some of her possible personal theories such as the body trying to return back to the womb where it started or to the ocean where life itself started or a still present connection with the water and his last art collection 'Uncharted Waters'. I... I don't even know exactly what to say about this particular quote, for lack of a better word, of hers but I find it terribly fascinating and thought provoking. Do other people do similiar things when they're in the last stages of dying? Wish to return to something be it a mother-like symbol, themselves at their best or simply something that makes them feel better?

Thanksgiving Break HW (edited)

Most of my observations about 'pro-body' vs 'anti-body' behaviors I saw took place around Thanksgiving break took place on the actual day. My mother and I started prepping the turkey sometime after or around one in the afternoon. Something I noticed, which wasn't strange at all to me, I just hadn't consciously thought about it before, was that none of us wore gloves while making food. While we (mom, my grandmother, myself and little brother) all washed are hands before starting to cook and between every stage, we still had no problems or worries with getting our hands dirty. Mom used her hands to cover the turkey with olive oil, garlic, minced vegetables and a light coating of teriyaki sauce for flavor and helping to brown the turkey. I used my hands to break up the croutons, mix in the vegetables and egg for the stuffing. While cooking there was no sense of the body being this 'dirty', disturbing thing that was not meant to come into contact with everything.

Something that I'm not sure if it's worth noting or not was that we used an electronic blender of sorts instead of a knife to cut and mince the vegetables. I suppose that could count as increasing the detachment between our bodies and the way we actually participate in life.

As for during the actual dinner there wasn't much forced uncomfortable behaviors like sitting upright in the chair like at school. The chairs in my grandparents dining room have larger seats than the plastic and metal ones at school and worn fabric and threaded cushions. My little brother sat at what would be the head of the table - if there were some actual significance to the seating arrangements in my family. My grandparents sat across from me, mom beside me and dad to my right. Before dinner, my brother and I set the small table, setting the turkey and stuffing towards the left of the table, mashed potatoes, yams with marshmallows and corn to the right. Everything was placed according to wear there was space for it after the plates, utensils, napkins and glasses had been set.

Everyone finished the meal at different times and left the table when they finished, cleaning up after themselves.

Illness && Death - Initial Thoughts

 “Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that. ”
-  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Swiss psychiatrist

 

 According to the Nation Center for Disease Control, 2,423,712 people in the United States died in 2007. 616,067 deaths were attributed to heart disease, 562,875 lives lost the battle against cancer and infants had a morality rate of 6.75 deaths per 1,000 live births. At a glance, these numbers can seem devastating and depressing. At another glance and taken out of context, these statistics become completely worthless. Death happens, the world goes on. Life happens, the world goes on. So it goes.  In this unit, I find that the amount of questions I have far outweigh what insight I can already bring to the table. To start with, the largest question I have is why do so many people treat and see death as this near taboo and terrible thing that Ms. Kubler-Ross describes?  

Initially, for me, a death is a most depressing thing indeed when I come to realize that whomever the deceased will no longer be physically here for me. However, I was always raised and believe that death isn't something that should be mourn. Instead, the life of the deceased should be celebrated. When my great-grandfather die, I clearly remember the family getting together for a feast, BBQ and when my parents, brother and I got home, fireworks as all. He was almost a hundred. That brings me to the next question - why do people get more devastated over the death of an infant than say, an older child, a teenager, or an adult? For one, I understand the idea of "They never got to live their life." Then are they really missing anything? Is it that different from them having been in their mother's womb? I'm not so sure.

As for illness, I kind of equate that with getting older. Even with numerous things 'wrong' with me, I don't really have much to think or say on this. Jumping topics, Mexican comedian George Lopez has a joke where he talks about promising to take care of his grandmother's bills for the rest of his life after his grandfather leaves. In it, he talks about how "our culture doesn't do that, referring to leaving the elderly in 'old folks homes'. "We keep them in the house." I agree with him. Especially in the cases of grandparents and parents, isn't a little audacious to do otherwise when they put so much time into caring for you while you were growing up?

Some questions 

Some prompts you could use to get yourself started:

1. Your experience with the topics.

2. The way you've been taught to see illness & dying.

3. Social norms around illness & dying in our culture.

4. Your family's approach to these aspects of life.

5. Possibly unusual perspectives you have about being sick and/or dying.

Aim for exploration. List questions. Open your eyes up. You shouldn't be writing an argumentative paper (probably), instead try to get your own thoughts and insights and perceptions flowing. If you find yourself writing vague cliches (happens to all of us) finish the sentence and then write about why you think your thoughts circle around vague cliches on these topics.

Assignment 11

Okay, I changed my mind and went with the activism route.

See the video here.

Final Food Project Part Two - mini exhibition outline

 

Overall thesis: Many of the dominant social practices in our society - practices that define a "normal" life - related to food, on further investigation turn out to involve nightmares and industrial atrocities. 

Claim #1: These industries and companies controlling our food, are only concerned with making money instead of the well beings and health of the consumers and farmers that rely on it.

• Patented laws
• "Monsanto prohibits farmers from saving seed from varieties that have been genetically engineered (GE) to kill bugs and resist ill-effects from the herbicide glyphosate (sold under the brand name Roundup)." (Leahy) [article can be found here]
• Farmers who save seeds will be arrested and sued.
• "Monsanto's business plan for GE crops depends on suing farmers," said Joe Mendelson, legal director for CFS. (Leahy) [article can be found here]
• "Kem Ralph of Covington, Tennessee is believed to be the first farmer to have gone to jail for saving and replanting Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy seed in 1998. Ralph spent four months behind bars and must also pay the company 1.8 million dollars in penalties.In total, U.S. courts have awarded Monsanto more than 15 million dollars, according to a new report by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety (CFS) called "Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers" (Leahy) [article can be found here]
• Have created an absolute monopoly on the corn growing business
• "Four companies now process 80 percent of the beef consumed in the United States; Monsanto has unprecedented control of the corn and soybean market. Their Roundup Ready corn is now planted on nearly 80 percent of the farmland acreage in the U.S., and Monsanto’s soybeans, with their Roundup Ready gene, is in 93 percent of U.S. soybean seeds." (Spence) [article can be found here]
• Kevin's Law getting turned down in court.
•  "To protect public health by clarifying the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe performance standards for the reduction of pathogens in meat, meat products, poultry, and poultry products processed by establishments receiving inspection services and to enforce the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) System requirements, sanitation requirements, and the performance standards." (Eshoo)   [article can be found here]
• Workers with a high amount of influence and power in Monsanto, a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, moving on to become politicians and gain government positions where they are put in charge of monitoring their previous employer.
• " 'Agricultural biotechnology will find a supporter occupying the White House next year, regardless of which candidate win the election in November.' " (Monsanto Inhouse Newsletter, 2000) [article can be found here]

Claim #2: These industries and companies controlling our food want to keep us ill informed, if not completely uninformed, about the corruption and danger in their industry.

• Not wanting to label if food was made from genetically altered or cloned produce
• "As the Food & Drug Administration weighed whether to allow food from cloned animals into the country's food supply, more than 30,000 public comments flooded in, with the overwhelming majority opposed to the move." (Gogoi) [article can be found here]
• High, unreported, death and injury rates in the slaughterhouses
• "At the IBP beef plant in Dakota City, Nebraska, for example, the company kept two sets of injury logs: one of them recording every injury and illness at the slaughterhouse, the other providing OSHA inspectors and researchers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During a three month period in 1985, the first log recorded 1,800 injuries and illnesses at the plant. The OSHA log recorded only 160 - a discrepancy of more than 1,000 percent." (Schlosser; "Fast Food Nation")
• Laws about someone not being allowed to raise a "panic" (read: awareness of the corruption and nonsense way
• High violence rates in the fast food industry (hold ups, murders, employees going postal etc)
•  "The same demographic groups widely employed at fast food restaurants - the young and the poor - are also responsible for much of the nation's violent crime. According to industry studies, about two-thirds of robberies at fast food restaurants involve current or former employees."(Schlosser; "Fast Food Nation")
• "He always brings an illegal handgun to work, and a couple of his employees carry handguns, too. He's not afraid of what might happen if an armed robber walks in the door one night. 'Ain't nothing that he could do to me,' Jose Said, matter-of-factly, "that I couldn't do to him." (Schlosser; "Fast Food Nation")

Citations

Eshoo, Anna. The United States of America. H.R.3160 - Kevin's Law. Open Congress, 2005. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.opencongress.org/bill/109-h3160/show>.

Gogoi, Pallavi. "States Move to Label Cloned Food." Bloomberg.com. BusinessWeek.com. , 04 MAR 2008. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2008/db2008033_119633.htm>.

Leahy, Stephen. "Monsanto ”Seed Police” Scrutinize Farmers." Common Dreams. Inter Press Service, 2004. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0115-04.htm>.

Spence, Cooper. "Justice to Probe Monsanto Monopoly." Friends Eat. WP Greet Box WordPress, 17 MAR 2010. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://blog.friendseat.com/monsanto-seed-monopoly/>. 


Unknown, . "Monsanto's Government Ties." Red Ice Radio. Red Ice Creations, 2000. Web. 26 Oct 2010. <http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/monsanto.html>.

Final Food Project Part One

 Academic (research a particular aspect of what we've learned, double check key claims from Pollan & Schlosser, research related material)


The big companies in the food industry only care about making money - not about the consumers or farmers.

• Patent Laws
• Not wanting to label if food was made from genetically altered or cloned produce
• High violence rates in the fast food industry (hold ups, murders, employees going postal etc)
• High, unreported, death and injury rates in the slaughterhouses
• Suing/arresting farmers who clean and save seeds
• Laws about someone not being allowed to raise a "panic" (read: awareness of the corruption and nonsense way
• Kevin's law getting turned down

Then write about what you did and learned in 4-5 paragraphs. Explore especially what you did, how it is connected to what we've been working on, what you learned from doing it (including what would help you do it more effectively next time), and why it matters (to you and/or others).

Due Sunday, Oct. 31 at noon.

Food Inc

Summary:

·         Everything you buy at the supermarket is one vote for that company and it’s values/traditions. Organic vs not. Locally grown vs imported.

·         The farmers are forced to kneel to the companies that do genetic engineering to seeds because of patent laws.

·         These huge companies like Monsanto have the government officials who are supposed to be regulating them in their pocket because the officials used to be on their payroll.

·         Consumers do have the power to change the system. The industry needs profit – it will change or be forced to change to meet demands.

·         These companies don’t genuinely care about the consumer or the consumer’s well beings – they just want their profit and will go to any extreme to get it.

·         The system will collapse. The industry is too reliant on petroleum, a constantly depleting resource, to perform its functions.

Movie offered that the book didn’t

·         FFN offered more what happened behind the closed doors of the slaughterhouses and shows the corruption of the companies at a different kind of surface value. Food Inc showed that there is also corruption weighing heavily in the farms. Though the farmers don’t want to use patent seeds, the best advice one farmer could offer another was to just, “Roll over. Don’t fight them, just do what they say.”

·         FFN also showed that not every person in the fast food industry was a bad guy. (Little Cesears) Food Inc didn’t quite give that portrayal at all.

HW# 10

I was interviewing at a college yesterday and was sent home early by the nurse today. As of now, if I can't get my hands on the movie, I'll ask my classmates and friends about it to get a sense of the movie and then formulate my own ideas to discuss here.

Revisit on HW #8: Growing Food

In class, we were told to bring in an empty (and clean) jar. When we did, we were given seeds for bean sprouts and told that we were going to be growing our own food. Every day at the start of class, we left to water the seeds and then slowly drain the water from them. The seeds were given no dirt to grow in so if someone forgot to change the water daily, the already bad smell that the seeds gained as they grew increased. Though I did change the water daily, my seeds were slow to show any signs of growth and did kept a funky smell about them. When it came time for the class to actually eat their sprouts, I did not.

It wasn't because of the nauseating smell from them or because there was white fuzz growing on them that resembled mold - too much water, perhaps? - but I was advised not to by the school nurse and my family considering my several health issues. From what I gathered from my classmates, the sprouts didn't taste particularly good.

As for actually growing my own food to eat, it didn't feel sacred at all. I didn't mind doing the project so I can't say that I felt forced to do it. I've just never been really into gardening of any kind. Maybe without the projected being prompted by my teacher, I might have felt some sort of accomplishment in successfully having grown my own food. Additionally, if I had grown more sprouts or a wider variety of plants, I'm sure I also might have actually felt something other than indifference towards growing food.

HW #9: Freakonomics

As per the email that was sent out the week prior to the field trip to see the movie, I was touring a college on Tuesday and was unable to see the movie. I'm going to ask Copeland if I can borrow his copy of the book next week, after my interview at Hampshire.

Revisit on HW #3: Fast Food vs Green Market

I wasn't in class on the day that the grade went out to walk around the marketplace near school and then visit McDonald's to make comparisons. I had left school earlier that day because I got an eye migraine and was having a hard time seeing. As I am pre-disposed to diabetes, I'm supposed to come home whenever I get one since the eye doctor lives just upstairs.

Food Diary - apologies for the odd spacing

Wednesday September 29th, 2010
Breakfast: 3/4 of a strawberry & nut "Kind" bar
Lunch: Grilled chicken, broccoli, one slice of avocado topped with tiny tomato & onion bites, several balls of fresh mozzarella cheese & one small carton of milk from the school cafeteria.
Snack: 1/4 of a strawberry & nut "Kind" bar before walking home from school.
Dinner: A grilled pork chop + sauce, rice, beans; sides of sour cream, and pico de gallo.

Thursday September 30th, 2010

Breakfast: nothing

Lunch: 1 iced coffee with extra milk and some sugar from Dunkin Donuts with their turkey, cheese and bacon flatbread.

Snack: Nothing.

Dinner: Half a vegetarian burrito from Qdoba (cilantro rice, beans, tomatoes, onions,  tortilla, & guacamole), a side of sour cream and side of their tortilla (Sopa Azteca) soup (grilled chicken, spices, broth, onions, cheese, sour cream).

Calorie Count

Wednesday September 29th, 2010

Breakfast & Snack: 112.55

Lunch: (no measurement available for grilled chicken), 35 + 160 + 34 + 300 = 529

Dinner: 250 + 150 + 76 + 181 + 18 =  675

TOTAL: >1, 316. 55 calories

Thursday September 30th, 2010

Breakfast & Snack: 0

Lunch: 90 + 410 = 500

Dinner: 375 + 160 + 50 + 170 = 755

TOTAL: 1, 255 calories

On the more "sensual" side of the food....

Wednesday September 29th, 2010

Breakfast & Snack: Eaten "on the run" while on the way to school (breakfast) and on the way back from school (snack). Nothing was rushed, the bar was leisurely eaten while I walked.

Lunch: Somewhat rushed. I got my food late and only had twenty minutes to eat while throwing a birthday celebration for one of my best friends (and annoying the rest of the cafeteria by singing a hybrid of the Pokemon theme song and Happy Birthday loud and off key). The chicken and broccoli were grilled and steamed respectively, with the latter tasting somewhat bland and watered-down. The avocado was absolutely delicious and yes, it did spread over the mozzarella cheese balls (adding to their taste.) 

Dinner: The pork chop was well done, with a little sauce and tasted absolutely delicious. I was a little disappointed because the bone in it was a larger than usual (about the size of a quarter of my palm) but I ate the whole thing anyway. I ate at a casual pace, watching TV with my family (House for this evening). The pico was beginning to turn, a little too sour for my tastes so I didn't have much.

Thursday September 30th, 2010

Breakfast & Snack: Nothing to eat, nothing to report.

Lunch: I was on my way to get ready for a scholarship interview so I suppose I was rushing a little. I asked for the iced coffee to be light but they barely put any milk in it, oh well. It wasn't exactly to my tastes and I don't like my coffee to actually taste like coffee so I can't quite say I enjoyed it all that much. To me, it was bitter but I was running late and overall don't find it worth it to hassle anyone over food not being prepared to test. There isn't really anything to say about the flatbread sandwich - I wasn't paying attention to the taste.

Dinner: Yum <3. The soup was my favorite, as usual. Spicy but not spicy enough to overshadow the taste of the chicken or vegetables. 

Overall...
I usually don't get a certain feeling while eating any particular food, instead, emotions that I get during a meal come from the when and where that the meal takes place during. My friends and I are trying to fit all of us on a bench in the park, leaning to either side of the 6th or 7th floor front staircase, or huddling around a cafeteria table because someone had to stay in for lunch, the only thing I can think to describe the feeling is that a feel me. 

Family Foodways

"Don't waste food. There are starving children in Africa who would love to have as much food as you do." This is something that both myself and my parents have grown up hearing. While I have been raised Native American, many of the beliefs related to food I've grown up with have little to do with traditional food for us like the Three Sisters (Corn, Beans & Squash) and instead relate much more towards the various health problems in my family. Additionally, both of my grandparents grew up dirt poor and because of such, my grandmother acts like wasting food is the utmost crime against the world and my grandfather will graciously eat whatever food you put before him, regardless of how bad of a choice it would be for him because of his health problems. To better look at how I view food, I have to look at what my parents think of it because for several years of my life, my thoughts were the direct product of their food related thoughts merging together.

My father, to start with, put it simply, said, "My mother's food sucks. Her cooking sucks. I don't have anything to say." While that might seem mostly useless, I can speak of his mother's opinions to some extent. Whenever I visit her, I almost always wind up pulling rotting food from her refrigerator and kitchen counters because like my mother's mother (Baba), she doesn't believe in wasting food at all. She will gladly eat a rotten orange or buy orange juice about to expire because like my mother's parents, she grew up in rather poor circumstances. While she also stressed constantly never to waste food, most of my views are a result of how my mother's side of the family views food. Baba believes that one should never waste food, however, she's willing to compromise the health states of the family to follow that believe. Growing up, my mom recalls that her mother would make enormous quantities of food that would be served day after day after day. Growing up, my mother was predisposed to Crohn's disease (which she now has) and for her, repeating eating was an awful thing to do. My mom also has had Acid Reflux since a very young age and for that condition, there are also certain acid based foods (like tomato sauce) that should be avoided. Baba refused to believe food could get you sick and didn't change her cooking habits. My grandfather has Type 2 Diabetes and high blood pressure. As such, foods high in sugar and sodium should be avoided. When he was diagnosed my grandmother once again refused to change her cooking habits.

Over the years, the multiple conditions or diseases that my mother and grandfather were trying to avoid all together and prevent from increasing from their pre-disposed states, or keep under control, nearly all fell on them or worsened. My grandmother's solution? Stop cooking all together. (She's resumed cooking now and still doesn't seem to comprehend basic nutritional information, no matter who tries to explain it to her. So for the record, in case you weren't informed, adding water to a very high sodium meal does not get rid of the salt in the meal - it only dilutes the salt's concentration in the dish.) With my family's medical history being a clearly connected to the foods that they ate, not only has "healthy eating" been promoted to me as I've grown up (grilled meats instead of fried, fruits instead of chicharrones) but knowing how to curve a diet in favor of an individual's health has been stressed even further.

From the experiences of my grandfather, I have learned many tricks of how to keep well (ie, not passed out from a sugar crash) with my insulin resistance. I know that an apple or peach is preferable to a pineapple that is not only high in sugar but the sugar and carbohydrates in it will be broken down a lot faster because they are "simple" sugars. Eating pineapple would result in a blood sugar spike and then crash for me. I have to second guess even the foods that are generically considered healthy by most of the population.

Note: No official inventory of my fridge is available at the moment as I'm feeling under the weather and don't want to risk contaminating the family's supply of food. However, off the top of my head I'm certain of the following items being in it:

• Milk
• Lactaid Milk
• Apple Juice
• Eggs
• Cheese
• Butter
• Ranch Dressing
• Vinegar
• Lite Italian dressing
• Cold Cuts (Ham, Turkey, Salami)
• Cilantro
• Advocados
• Peppers
• Chipotle Ranch Dressing

Food - Initial Thoughts

When thinking on food, I realize that I’m likely to be biased for several reason varying from health and of course my own personal opinion. To start with, I’m pre-disposed to diabetes because of insulin resistance which means that my body has a hard time processing and making use of the sugar that I eat as it can’t make use of the insulin my body produces. To fend off and put off my chances for fully developing diabetes I really have to watch what I eat. As a general rule of thumb, candy and carbs from things that are not vegetables are horrible for me; two pieces of bread without any protein will start to knock me out within twenty minutes of eating it. Pasta is very rarely an option for me. In theory, I could have all of these things in moderation but more often than not, if you give me a serving of, let’s say, chicken low mien, I’m not going to want to eat only the few bites I’m allowed to. So I’ve chosen to rid my diet of things I know are bad for my insulin resistance, lest I give into the temptation of how delicious they are and choose to splurge.

Another thing that affects my views on food is my heritage. I was born and raised Native American and as such, I’ve certainly eaten things that most people would avoid eating. (For the record, Bambi and Thumper are entirely delicious.) Likewise, typical or delicacies foods from other cultures such as insects or the brains of certain animals are capable of making me turn the other way.  Between my health and my heritage, I place different food related priorities in front of others. To start with, because of my health, I do my best to have a balanced meal so that I’m not ingesting too much of one particular food and make sure to have lots of protein (which has been suggested by my endocrinologist) and before bed or at dinner, eating food that’s sugar will enter my blood stream at a much slower rate than junk food would. For example, eating a helping of rice at dinner or some nuts before bed instead of splurging on desert or having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

 As of now, I prioritize food that is healthy for a diabetic – low in sugar, hopefully high in protein, salads, vegetables, steamed, boiled or grilled food instead of fried food etc. Self control must be used because my brain oft times wants to prioritize iced tea, juices (which will put me to sleep just like certain carbs will), chips and perhaps things like pie. My sweet tooth is a terrible master at time and likes to try and trick me into thinking “satisfying” food for the moment > not needing to be on medication of the rest of my life.  However, I have been making many improvements for the past few months and hope to continue to do so.

As for initial thoughts, I’m not exactly sure I have any. I think I have more ‘concerns’ in the sense that I don’t want this unit to turn into a health related “fast foods are awful for your body” unit because we’ve all heard that. We’re all capable, functioning young adults and we should be able to take responsibility for what we do to our bodies  in addition to making sure we care for them and learn moderation.  (In short, all the things that have been preached to us since middle school.) I would much rather learn about things like how food may be used in rituals or traditions aside from my own. For instance, I was watching the discovery channel and one tribe in African secludes the bride-to-be with her mother and grandmother were they continuously feed the young woman foods aimed to make her gain weight so she is nice and plump by the time the family is ready to find a suitor for her. (In attempts to show that the family is a good one and can take care of themselves in addition to spoil themselves.)