ltello's blog

Synthesis is an important tool that can be used to support an argument.  Some disagree with this idea, as seen in a personal interview conducted with Spiderman, in which he states “…I just don’t see the point in synthesis.  Really it’s a big waste of time.”  Hello Kitty, in her book Essay Writing 101, opposes Spiderman’s viewpoints when she states “[synthesis] really brings together an argument” (66).  Alf, in his article “Eat More Cats” concurs with Hello Kitty.  Alf declares “[synthesis] shows that you care about your argument enough to find sources to defend counterargument, or elaborate on your position” (90-97).  Frida Khalo extrapolates on this idea in her article “Visual Artists Love Synthesis” when she states “[s]ynthesis makes sense to me.  After all, we’re arguing our own position here – not just reporting other people’s views” (18-25).  Overall, synthesis can be used to further support an author’s claims in an argument, and generally strengthens an essay.

Works Cited

Alf. “Eat More Cats.” Cat Fancy Apr. 2007: 90-97. Print.

Khalo, Frida. “Visual Artists Love Synthesis.” Time 8 July 2006: 18-25. Lexis Nexis. Web.

4 Jan. 2007.

Kitty, Hello. Essay Writing 101. Ft. Wayne: Harcourt, 2007. Print.

Personal interview. 4 May 2001.

So far the readings for class have enlightened me on a lot of topics regarding food in our society.  The more I learn about the local food movement, the more important this movement becomes to me.  I’ve always had plans to live a more “green” lifestyle following college (because let’s face it, changing your lifestyle while attending college is nearly impossible since you really don’t have the freedom you would have otherwise).  Eating locally produced foods fits into my future goals since I value consuming local products to support area businesses and living a more Earth friendly, sustainable life. 

Macias, Pollen, Rozin and Shea all somewhat tackle the hidden costs of industrial food on our society, ranging from environment costs (due to pesticides and habitat destruction) to health issues (like obesity) and economic issues (the mere cost to transport goods in fossil fuel usage).  I am curious about CSAs and farmers markets and the “organic” foods available in supermarkets.  I especially want to learn more about organic foods, and I’m leaning towards focusing my research paper on this topic.  But for my own future reference, I would like to learn more about the cost and benefits of a CSA membership, buying from a farmers market and growing my own food, when possible. 

One idea that really struck me while reading these articles was the idea that socioeconomic status, education level and race can predetermine who will be most likely to participate in the local food movement.  I saw this previously in my own family but I had never stopped to think about it.  I just assumed my parents did not share my values and world views, I never considered why they might feel this way. 

For some background, my parents are divorced and neither of my parents have an education past the high school level.  My mother is a single mom and she works three jobs to afford our home and to support herself.  Neither of my parents seem to care very much about the local food movement, despite our town having a prominent farmers market weekly in the summer.  The first time I talked my mom into visiting the farmers market (and actually purchasing produce) was this last summer.  My grandma (who lives with my mother) received coupons allowing senior citizens to purchase local produce from farmer’s market for free, up to a certain amount.  Using these coupons, we visited the different produce stalls and bought some corn and a unique vegetable, Kohlrabi, since we’d never heard of it before and wanted to try something new.  My mom really enjoyed visiting the farmers market and we had a lot of fun talking to the farmers about the produce they were selling.  This visit made me realize that my mom wasn’t completely apathetic to eating locally produced foods; she mainly couldn’t afford to do so without the coupons my grandmother had received. 

Macias’ article further made me question this phenomenon.  If eating locally is so important (and I truly think it is), shouldn’t everyone be able to do so?  It doesn’t seem fair that only certain portions of the population should be able to afford this local produce and the benefits that come from eating locally.  I plan on focusing on this topic in my upcoming essay.  I would like to pose a solution to this problem.  Currently, I think more education is necessary to encourage local food consumption, and I also think that more government incentives (to the elderly,  those living in the inner city, and those who have a lower socioeconomic status) are needed to allow the members of our society who would otherwise not be able to, to participate in this movement.  I am interested in pursuing this topic because I believe that everyone should have equal access to a happy and healthy lifestyle.  My viewpoint may be a bit liberal or naïve, but I think change can be enacted to at least try to achieve this goal.

I enjoyed reading both “Explore with a Localvore” by Shannon Shea and “Working Toward a Just, Equitable, and Local Food System: The Social Impact of Community-Based Agriculture” by Thomas Macias.  Both articles were interesting and helped shed light on some possible ideas for my upcoming research paper. 

Shea’s “Explore with a Localvore” is an interesting read and it reminds me a lot of Pollan’s article “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch” in terms of tone, source credibility and writing style.  Neither article includes adequate source information for specific quotes nor statistics (although Shea’s article does include a small section entitled Connect to Nature, listing some of her sources). 

Content wise, Shea’s article reminds me of both Rozin’s article “The Meaning of Food in Our Lives: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Eating and Well-Being” and Sims’ article “Food, Place, and Authenticity: Local Food and The Sustainable Tourism Experience by Rebecca Sims.” In “Explore with a Localvore” Shea discusses in layman’s terms the background information and important definitions associated with eating locally, along with reasons why to eat locally and ways to do so.  Shea’s article focuses on similar ideas covered in Sims’ article, as Sims argues that a local, sustainable food movement could be used to bring in tourism to an area.  This argument is seen when Sims states in her online article that “’local’ food and drink products can improve the economic…sustainability of both tourism and the rural host community through…sustainable agricultural practices [and] supporting local businesses.”  While Shea focuses on the reasons to eat locally on a personal level, Sims’ article focuses more on the benefits of eating locally on a larger community level. 

Shea’s article also has ties to Rozin’s article.  Rozin argues in his article that Americans should change their lifestyle and be more like the French, who have a higher appreciation for the quality of their food and who travel less by car and walk more often.  Shea’s online article supports these claims when she states “most local eaters say that their prime motivation for eating locally is the foods’ freshness, superior taste, and higher quality.”

I also enjoyed reading “Working Toward a Just, Equitable, and Local Food System: The Social Impact of Community-Based Agriculture” by Thomas Macias.  I am struggling with finding the similarities that this article shares with the other articles that we’ve discussed and read for class, however.  Macias focuses on the effects of socioeconomic status and race on who can and cannot easily participate in the local foods movement.  Macias discusses “food miles” and the hidden cost of food in his article.  In Macias’ online article he states “growing uncertainties about the costs…of fossil fuel inputs in industrial agriculture have placed the local food movement on firmer ground.”  Shea also discusses the hidden cost of food in her article in more simplified terms.  Shea explains “food miles measure how far the fruit or vegetable has traveled from where it was grown to where a consumer purchases it.”  Shea further backs this claim by stating that “transportation results in hidden costs to society, concealed by the prices of industrial agriculture.”  In essence, both articles explain the hidden costs industrial agriculture has on society, and that consuming local food can reduce these costs. 

Works Cited

Macias, Thomas. “Working Toward a Just, Equitable, and Local Food System: The

     Social Impact of Community-Based Agriculture.” Social Science Quarterly 89.5

     (2008): 1086-101. EBSCOhost. Web. 8 Feb. 2010.

Pollan, Michael. “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.” The New York Times. 29

     July 2009. Web. 9 Feb. 2010.

Rozin, Paul. “The Meaning of Food in Our Lives: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on 

     Eating and Well-Being.” Journal of   Nutrition Education & Behavior  37 (2005).

     EBSCOhost. Web. 19 Jan. 2010. http://www.ebscohost.com.

Shea, Shannon Brescher. “Explore with a Localvore.” New York State

     Conservationist June 2008: 2-6. EBSCOhost. Web. 7 Feb. 2010.

Sims, Rebecca. “Food, place and authenticity: local food and the sustainable

     tourism experience.” Journal  of  Sustainable Tourism 17.3 (2009): 321-36.

     EBSCOhost. Web. 9 Feb. 2010.

I really enjoyed the presentation on locally available food that our class visited last Wednesday.  I’ve seen a few minutes of Food, Inc. and I had heard about the huge corporations that own patents on nearly every type of hybrid seed used today.  It’s a scary idea to think how our food industry has become so vastly commercialized; it can be such a daunting concept that you might think there’s nothing to be done to make our food local again. 

This isn’t true.  It is possible to buy groceries at a farmers market or through a CSA, like the one run by John and Diane Riehm in northwest Ohio.  After reading a newspaper article last summer in the Toledo City Paper and after viewing Wednesday’s presentation, I’m pretty sure that I would like to participate in a CSA program after graduating college and settling down.  There are many benefits, such as knowing your farmer firsthand while supporting a local business, along with the added nutrients that come from eating foods with fewer pesticides and that are vine ripened. 

Some issues were brought up in the presentation that I’m considering studying for our research paper we’ll be writing later in this course.  I’d like to study Cuba’s agricultural practices, as it was mentioned that they may have a system that is entirely organic, which I find really interesting.  I’d also like to do further study on the corporations in the US and in general that have so much control over the food industry and the government.  I’d also consider doing research on CSA’s in general, and possibly on Issue 2, which was recently passed in the state of Ohio (and I basically know nothing about it, other than that it is controversial).  Overall, I learned a lot from the presentation and I have quite a few ideas on topics that I can study for my future research paper, which is great!

In my first essay, I chose to critique Michael Pollan’s article “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.”  I argue in my essay that Pollan’s article should not be included in the academic journal Smart Food.  My main points for my argument are that Pollan’s essay was poorly organized and lacked cohesion, that the article lacked academic evidence and sources, and finally that the article lacked a counterargument. 

There are many revisions that I plan on making to my essay, on top of what revisions are requested from my teacher in my rough draft.  I plan on adding more concrete evidence and quotes from Pollan’s article to back up my claims.  I struggled to do so in my first draft because many of the points I sought to make were difficult to find specific quotes for.  I would also like to check my verb tense in my essay.  I usually struggle with keeping verb tense the same throughout anything I write, since I don’t prewrite very often. 

Mainly when I prewrite I just make a blue print of the main points I plan on discussing in an argument, and when I actually write it, my writing comes out more like my thoughts pouring onto the page.  Since this can come out a bit scatterbrained at times, I usually make many revisions on my papers.  I think that if I made a more detailed outline for future papers, that I would struggle less with verb tense and that my final drafts would be more thorough and well written. 

Writing is important to my future, so I do need to continuously hone my craft.  I’m majoring in Integrated Social Studies education right now, and I plan on either teaching fifth grade or high school social studies after I graduate.  I will need to write letters home to my students and their parents, and if I assign a research report or essay in my classes, I will need to accurately analyze the arguments and ideas presented in my students’ work.  All in all, writing is an important skill to have in life, and I understand that I need to constantly work on becoming a better writer.

I really enjoyed having Lucy Long speak to our class, especially since we had just read her article “Green Bean Casserole and Midwestern Identity: A Regional Foodways Aesthetic and Ethos.”  I agree with many of the topics Lucy brought up in her conversation with us. 

I had never really considered how different foods speak for the region or culture that they come from, but I see this now after having Lucy visit.  She explained how one’s culture and social standing impacts a person’s tastes and the types of food eaten.  For example, Lucy explained how lobster was once only eaten by poor fishermen, since it looks so bug-like and was unappealing to the middle and upper classes.  Today, this has changed, as lobster is now seen as a delicacy and is rarely eaten by the poor since it costs so much.  Also, to many people foods like caviar, escargot and sushi are seen as inedible, simply because that person was raised in a culture or a social class which had little contact with these foods. 

Another topic Lucy discussed with our class was how certain foods can relate to memories and have special meanings for different people.  Lucy gave us the example of how her son had a bad experience with lobster as a child, and has been a vegetarian ever since.  Eating certain foods can also trigger specific memories, like when I eat salt water taffy I remember visiting Boston and Cape Cod when I was younger. 

Overall, I really enjoyed having Lucy Long visit and the green bean casserole that we ate in celebration of her article was delicious.  I’ve always had green bean casserole at Thanksgiving, and my family usually just makes it from the can, but I liked the organic, healthier version much more.  I might just make it next year for Turkey Day!

“Green Bean Casserole and Midwestern Identity: A Regional Foodways

Aesthetic and Ethos”

By Lucy Long

            Long’s article focuses on the common Midwestern dish, green bean casserole, and what this dish implicates about Midwestern foodways and society.  Foodways are the fundamental values of a culture, depicted through the foods consumed in a society.  Green bean casserole, Long argues, exemplifies many of the fundamental values found in Midwestern culture.  Green bean casserole exemplifies the Midwestern traits of conservatism and practicality by demonstrating the Midwestern acceptance of commercialization, technology and convenience (as it is a dish traditionally comprised almost entirely of canned, commercialized ingredients).  This dish is also a simple, hearty meal, which is dependable and can be transported, which lends itself to many uses (thus reiterating the idea of practicality).  Also, casseroles historically gained popularity through their versatility and ability to stretch food items, which also demonstrates the Midwestern ideals of conservatism and practicality.  Green bean casserole also demonstrates a regional concept of family values and hospitality.  The dish connects strangers and bridges social gaps by creating a bond stemming from memories and traditions shared in the region.  Overall, green bean casserole is a popular dish in the Midwest, and it portrays many characteristics of this region.

“The Meaning of Food in Our Lives:

A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Eating and Well-Being”

By Dr. Paul Rozin

            Rozin’s article focuses on the way in which humans currently interact with food in society and the implications of this interaction, along with ways to alleviate problems arising from the interaction with food.  Humans used to expend more energy gathering food, which kept obesity in check, but advances in technology such as surplus and commercialization of food, have changed the way food is interacted with by humans.  Today food is easily and readily available for humans, which has stopped the archaic system that balanced energy intake and output from functioning.  Society must adapt to this change, as more humans suffer from obesity and long term health disorders stemming from poor diet, lack of knowledge and education on nutrition, and little exercise.  The French are more adept to deal with these obstacles as their culture focuses more on the quality of food eaten and is based on a lifestyle of seeking little pleasures daily.  Americans, who focus more on quantity and the consequences of eating, should try to be more like the French, and have a greater appreciation for food, eat smaller portions, and travel more by walking than by car, in order to live longer and maintain healthier lifestyles.

Works Cited

Long, Lucy. “Green Bean Casserole and Midwestern Identity: A Regional

      Foodways Aesthetic and Ethos.” Midwestern Folklore Spring (2007):

      29-44. Blackboard Site for GSW 1120H. Amanda McGuire Rzicznek. Web.

      19 Jan. 2010. <http://elearning.bgsu.edu>.

Rozin, Paul. “The Meaning of Food in Our Lives: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

      on Eating and Well-Being.” Journal of Nutrition Education & Behavior  37

      (2005). EBSCOhost. Web. 19 Jan. 2010. <http://www.ebscohost.com>.

Assignment: read two articles, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the couch” by Michael Pollan and “Food, Place and Authenticity: Local food and the Sustainable Tourism Experience” by Rebecca Sims, then write a blog depicting my reaction to these articles.  I would like to begin by stating that the ideas represented by each of these articles were really fascinating to me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean each article captivated me equally.

Pollan’s article described how American culture has degenerated from the lack of home cooking.  Pollan argues that Americans spend more time watching people cook on television (i.e. Top Chef or Food Network) than they spend actually cooking in the kitchen.  Pollan then explains how this change in our culture has had negative impacts on our society; one example is by increasing the obesity rate in America.  I found this article to be intriguing, enjoyable and highly thought provoking.  The basic concepts presented in the article weren’t entirely new to me, but the idea that Americans spend so much time watching food on television and so little time preparing it was a bit shocking.  I enjoy cooking shows, and I’m an avid fan of Top Chef on Bravo.  Pollan puts it simply when he states “the implicit message of today’s prime-time cooking shows is, Don’t try this at home.”  This idea had never explicitly occurred to me, but I totally agree.  Watching a show like Top Chef leaves one feeling a sense of awe, something like “I’ve never even heard of that ingredient!” or “How can they think of a dish and cook it so quickly?”  Overall, Pollan presents his ideas in a conversational and enjoyable format that leaves the reader hungry for more. 

Sims’ article, on the other hand, was less enticing to read.  The article concerned tourism and local food, mainly that tourists are attracted to eating “authentic” meals when on holiday, and that this appeal can be harnessed to bolster local businesses and food movements.  I am a somewhat sluggish reader on a good day, and Sims’ article was like trudging through thick mud.  I enjoyed the ideas presented in her study, but I just had one heck of a time getting through to the end.  I much prefer the conversational tone Pollan uses in his article, but Sims’ approach is more academic and has its own merits. 

Also, Sims’ article seemed less decisive than Pollan’s.  It seemed as if Sims seemed to repeat herself throughout the article, and randomly came to a conclusion, without providing much concrete evidence.  I agree with her key points, but I feel the ideas could have been explained further, whereas with Pollan’s article I felt the ideas were well expressed and thoroughly presented.

I have several expectations for this course.  First, I expect to be pushed to excel.  In the previous semester I had to take GSW 1110.  I did not feel pressure to excel or to improve my writing in 1110, in fact I felt like the class was a burden and a waste of time.  I do not expect to have the same relationship with this course.  For GSW 1120H I expect to be pushed to fine-tune my ideas in my writings and to form my own unique writing style and voice. 

I also anticipate further developing writing skills such as research and revision.  I understand that I need to work on my writing skills, and I want to focus on keeping the verb tense consistent and not using passive voice in my writing, as I tend to struggle with these concepts.  I also hope to ensure that my writing for this course is both academic and interesting, which can be difficult to accomplish.  I expect my instructor to give me detailed and helpful feedback on all of my writings for the course, while providing aid if I start to struggle with an essay or a concept. 

What I look most forward to about this course is focusing on the theme: food!  I love to eat, but I am not very educated on what foods are good or bad, or what goes into the process of making many of the foods I daily enjoy.  I hope that through this course I will learn how politics and our society influence what we eat and what foods are available for consumption.  Also I would like to explore why humans enjoy eating so much, and how “favorite” tastes are derived.  That is, why do certain cultures prefer certain tastes, and how do cultural dishes come about?  Another concept I’ve always wondered about is what makes food “regional”.  I understand that different plants and animals are available in different regions, but what determines how the food is prepared, or how it is seasoned?  Food is very cultural, and I have a great interest in cultures, as I considered studying anthropology before deciding to major in education (high school social studies).  On a different note, I would like to explore the concept of eating foods produced locally, and whether or not this lifestyle is applicable to all levels of society (based on socioeconomic status, which may prevent certain members of society from consuming local foods if these goods are too costly or difficult to acquire).  I would also like to examine the concept of eating seasonally, based on what foods are available at certain times of the year.  Finally, I expect to be more educated on what preservatives and chemicals go into commonly eaten foods, and how these additives affect our bodies.