Ok this weekend has been really crazy. I am in the National Guard and I have to do one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. And of course my weekend fall on the week of school that I have so much to do. And of course at drill it was a big deal a lot of higher up people came and were hanging around. In the NG I am a cook and my unit has decided that they are going to do a big cooking competition. The cooking competition is not a regular competition I have to cook on something know as the Mobile kitchen trailer (MKT). You might be thinking that sounds cool. But I hate to burst your bubble it’s not. So while me and another soldier was cooking for fifty people we had people watching every move we made. It was so STRESSFULL and really annoying. But we got it done and feed everybody. The best accomplishment was that everyone said the food was really good and we did an awesome job. The competition is in July and this and all the drills until July are just practice runs. Hopefully we win because this is like the academy awards for culinary arts in the NG. So that was my weekend which meant no homework at all. So today and the rest of the week is cram time.
I have just finished the outline of our project. I have no idea if it is good enough but I have worked really hard on it to get it where it is. I found out that there is a lot of people who are for high protein diets and a lot who are against. So it’s really hard not to get bias information from these sites. A couple that I thought were really helpful was the WebMd site and the Live strong site. I felt like they were the most honest as well. I feel like the project is never really going to come to an end but the semester is so somehow we have to make it end. There is so much good information about this topic. I hope that it comes together at the end.
Before I begin my last assigned blog post of the semester I have to admit I am overwhelmed. All of the things that are due can make a person crazy.
Ok now to talk about my collaborative project with Lindsay Jones. I have to say it has been going very well. We have decided that we are running out of time so we need to do some of the project by ourselves and then add the project together at a later time. Because the semester is ending so quickly it is very hard to have the dialogical approach we started with. We have somewhat of a mix. We have split up the work and are currently working on this project separately.
I’m pretty sure the shortness of time left in the semester would be a big struggle. I feel like there is not enough time left. But somehow I hope it all comes together at the end. I feel the collaboration we have will help us get this done without a problem. The good thing is we agree on pretty much everything which is easier on us and makes the project a lot smoother. For the interview part of the project one struggle was trying to find an interviewer. We did have the dietician that works at Rowan. But because of our schedules not working together, because she only works on Wednesday, we decided that she was not the right fit for us.
A win I feel like we had was the interview. Even though finding someone was a little bumpy in the beginning. Once we found Stephanie Lasch everything was up hill from there. She was a very good person to interview. She was very helpful and passionate about the subject. She helped us out so much and said if we still need her we could always call her to get extra information. This was a very nice thing. Although we have not used her any further we may have to call her to ask her some simple questions.
I feel like this project will come together soon. I am just waiting for that to happen!
For our oral history interview, Lindsay and I decided to use sound cloud. You can record from your phone, IPad, or computer. I downloaded it on all three devices and tried it out before we conducted the interview. Sound cloud is a very easy program to use. It is very user friendly.
We got to our interviewee’s house. We talk to Stephanie Lasch and explain our project to her. She was very excited about our topic because this was something she is very patient about. The interview started and everything was going well. Stephanie is a fast talker and we saw that we were running short on questions so we decided to add dummy questions in to slow her down. She was really a cool person to interview. She knew how long our interview had to be so she would keep looking at the time and made sure she gave extra examples or interesting facts to fill up some of the time. Stephanie was a very useful resource and said if we need any help later on this topic to not hesitate to call her.
Something that happened after the interview that was not funny at the time but is now funny that we have it saved in every place possible. After the interview was complete sound cloud has two options upload now or save for later. I pushed upload now and forgot I was not connected to the internet. My face got really hot and I was so nervous that we were going to have to do the whole interview again. I would have hated to waste anymore of Stephanie’s time. And just when we thought we had to do the whole thing again because I thought it was lost forever, it popped up. Thank God. I was so glad that we did not have to do the interview again, because I felt it was so good the first time.
After that little glitch everything else went smooth. It was a very easy process to upload it to weebly. Lindsay and I did the prologue and afterlogue in class. It’s an easier task to write when you can bounce ideas and sentences off of each other to make sure they sound good. I’m very thankful that we found Stephanie Lasch and that she helped us out.
After Lindsay and I brainstormed possible topics we decided we wanted to do a topic that was not bias. What are the effects of having a high protein diet? And our target was going to be adult men and women. We email Professor
Sabatino Mangini to see if our topic was ok. He informed us that it may be a little too broad and focus of a specific age group. We are still thinking of an age to narrow it to be we are going to limit it to the effect of a high protein diet on women who are active.
We were also asked to define what a high protein diet is. I found a good slide show explaining a high protein diet.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-high-protein-diet. We have decided to examine the negative and positive effects the diet can have. I also found a video about Protein diets which can help with our project.
We have not done the interview yet, it is scheduled for Thursday. We have so far had a dialogic collaboration for this project. We have done everything together, we have also been emailing each other back and forth to update on the project. We will update the blog post when the interview is done to discuss what we have found and how the interview went.
Lindsay Jones and I have decided to research the affect of commercials on consumers. Here are some commercials that I have found for the project. Its really funny how commercials portray fast food. Its not really anything about the food. Its the people or things they cart
The article we had to read by Schncider
Good, Clean, Fair: The Rhetoric of the Slow Food Movement. The Slow Food Movement mentioned in the title is a movement that protests fast food restaurants. We were asked to read the article and pull three quotes that we had found to be interesting.
“The patenting of GMOs by large agribusiness firms likewise threatened the livelihood of farmers, who would then be compelled to buy seeds and crops at high prices from a small number of suppliers” (Schncider 387).
- This is the same thing that is mentioned in the movie Food Inc. An example of a company who is doing this to farmers is none as Monsanto. This company patented the soybeans were roundup ready. Monsanto’s even has privet investigators to make sure no one is saving seeds and using them over again. They are a money making company out against the farmers. If the farmers refuse they sue them for everything they have till they just have to give up. I think this is wrong the farmers don’t really have their own business anymore. It’s run by these big companies who have the patens to the seeds. And there is really nothing the farmers can do anymore. They have to conform or they are pretty much screwed.
This is a video about GMO's and Monsanto.
“Put simply, good food is tasty and diverse and is produced in such a way as to maximize its flavor and connections to a geographic and cultural region (97). Clean food is sustainable, and helps to preserve rather than destroy the environment (114). Fair food is produced in socially sustainable ways, with an emphasis on social justice and fair wages (135).” (Schncider 390)
I really like how they put this in to perspective from the title and I really think food should be prepared like this. This would be great if we could live like this because it could really save us and the environment. Just think if we had clean food. There would be no pesticides and no hormones added to our food. I think that in the long run this could really help our environment. I know it would be more expensive but I’d rather pay the price now then later. Fair food is directly related to the people who and animals that are miss treated by the companies trying to save money. If we start treating the people and animals correctly I think that the food could be a lot healthier. With this Slow Food movement we could have healthy food and help save the environment.
This is what clean food means.
“The acceleration at the table is mirrored on the farm. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides, intensive feeding, antibiotic digestive enhancers, growth hormones, rigorous breeding, genetic modification—every scientific trick known to man has been deployed to cut costs, boost yields and make livestock and crops grow more quickly. The small landowner gives way to the factory farm, which churns out food that is fast, cheap, abundant and standardized. (55).” (Schncider 394)
All the things they do to food to get it to your table faster are really interesting when you look at these terms. Growth hormones, rigorous breeding, genetic modification, who decided it was ok to do this and then sell it at the supermarket. Like I have said before I would rather pay more for meat that I knew was not genetically modified. I think we have to much demand but really how do you slow down the United States from eating meat. I don’t think its right that they have these cows at feed lots sitting in their waste up to their stomachs that is really disgusting. The small farm owner has to give in to the factory demands or they can not earn a living. That really makes me sick, all the factory owners care about is money.
No one has any idea about genetic modification.
I class we were assigned a collaboratie research project. This project is a spin off of the movie Food Inc. The assignement is a Collaborative research project that explores a complicated issue related to America’s production and consumption of food. Lindsay Jones and I have come up with possible research questions and also interview questions.
Research questions:
1. How does fast food corporations' advertising appeal to society through their marketing?
2. What do labels mean?
3. Should GMO’s be labeled?
4. How much better is home grown vegetables to store bought groceries?
5. Is fast food healthy for kids?
Possible Interview Questions?
1. What influenced you to go in to this profession?
2. What do labels mean?
3. What types of labels should consumers look out for?
4. How has caloric information helped or hurt fast food restaurant?
5. Do you have a time when you were influenced by the nutritional information?
6. What would you say is the most nutritious fast food restaurant?
7. What makes the quality of their food so unhealthy?
8. If fast food is your only option what is the healthiest thing to eat on the menu?
9. What are some things you should cut out to make your diet healthier?
10. How can a parent get a kid to eat healthier?
Lindsay and I have already found a register dietician to interview. We have a research question but we are ready for it to change if the interview turns in a different direction.
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