Final essay # 2

Aaron Carter
ENG 151
Mudd
March 17th, 2011
Foooooooooooood.

It’s a big part of our culture, it’s essential to our lives, it’s continuously pitched to us every day in different ways trying to pull us in, and it’s tasty. It’s food. Food for me has never really been an “issue”. I have always been under the impression that it was something simple that people didn’t mess with: a “straightforward” business. People get hungry, so people buy and eat food from the grocery store and that’s all there is too it. Today food is way simpler than it ever has been before. There are stores to buy anything you need at, fast food drive through everywhere, and if you really don’t want to go to the store, or even get in your car to go to fast food, then there is delivery. Overtime my relationship with food has changed, my understanding of why I need different foods, and why I don’t need others has greatly changed as well as my understanding of the big picture of what’s going on with food.

When I was a kid food was what I was all about. That and playing around outside and just being a crazy and energetic kid. Anytime I ever got money, it was straight to the gas station to buy some junk food. As a kid that’s all food was about, was finding whatever tasted the best (often the sweetest as well). There was no concern about what I was actually consuming, or even the awareness that what I ate mattered. I would over-indulge on junk food and anything sweet I could get my hands on. This kind of handling of food continued until I was probably about fourteen or fifteen. Then I started to calm down on my never ending desire to eat tasty sweets. I started to understand that what I ate was actually important to how I felt in the morning (and the rest of the day), my moods, my skin, and just my health in general. This came from the health classes I had to take in seventh and eighth grade. But as a high school student food was always about ease. I was lazy; I didn’t want to cook anything. I was always eating fast food with the money from my job, and when I was at home if my parents didn’t cook a meal then I was probably eating something out of the microwave. It tasted better and was way easier. Then I came to college.

When I got to college I was still that lazy eater. I would eat microwave food over cooking a meal and be happy about it. When the quarter started it was great. I had the ability to eat some cooked food at dining halls and if that didn’t appeal to me than I could just microwave whatever I wanted that I had bought at the market. It was sweet; I was eating pizza all the time, mac n cheese, nuggets and all that good stuff. But then about half way through the quarter it just really started to get old, and I really started missing having the ability to cook my own food on a stove or oven rather than eat whatever “quick food” the market sold. This really brought me an appreciation for quality food, and this quarter I stopped eating as terribly as I did with my first quarter of grocery freedom. Then came the food week of our class this quarter. That brought me to where I stand with food today.

Today food is now something I am really disappointed with. The fact that quantity of money really rules over the quality of the food that we are feeding ourselves. After food week I have started making smarter choices with what I buy, and after I move from having to buy all my stuff from a university ran market I think I will be eating organic and buying from farmers markets. Food now to me is still what fuels me, it’s still tasty but now there is a bitter resent in the back of my mind for all of these big food companies (especially meat) that are sacrificing quality and health to make that extra dollar. In the big picture of everything I think that we are all being duped into buying not very good quality goods, and when we do buy quality goods we are overpriced. I personally am going to start paying attention to what companies I buy my food from, and what kinds of foods I’m eating. I’ve never made healthy choices before buy I have started to and I will continue to. From now and on, I am going to but my mouth and money where my mouth is, and that is quality food’s from smaller more needy places. Sorry Wal-Mart/Kroger/Meijer, but in my mind big business is an old trick that I’ve picked up on. I don’t like it, and I’m not going to pay for it.