'Not From Concentrate'

Reading Journal Entry

• The article I read was Freshly Squeezed: The Truth About Orange Juice in Boxes by Alissa Hamilton
• The article was about the process of making boxes of orange juice that are labeled 'Not from Concentrate'
• I was never much of an orange juice fan, mainly because of the after taste it gives off. After reading this article, I know why. The manufacturers who produce boxed orange juices are completely stripping whole oranges of anything that could potentially make them go bad in less than a year. And all while doing this, they're taking away the flavor of the oranges all together. So in order to get a flavor and scent that consumers approve of, they hire flavor and fragrance companies to create something similar to a real orange. Disgusting, right?
• The one thing I noticed about the writer's strategy was the way she stayed biased throughout the entire article until the end, where she suggested eating an actual Valencia orange in the morning to save yourself from ingesting chemicals and drinking what some would consider 'fake orange juice'.
• Because almost all of the American population drinks orange juice first thing in the morning, I think it's important for everyone to read this article or at least research the topic themselves; ignorance isn't always bliss

'Pink slime'

Reading Journal Entry

• The article I read was "'Pink Slime' distracts from food safety fight" by Brent Jones.
• The article talked about how the recent controversy of 'pink slime' blew up all over the media and distracted the government from focusing on more important issues involving the food industry.
• One thing I did like about the writer's technique was his use of bullet points. I feel that if you're really trying to get a point across without adding too much unnecessary information, bulleting is the way to go. Another thing I thought was a good idea was his use of hyperlinks. This is good for the reader to see sources of the information that the writer is relaying, and to find out more information on specific details of the article.
• I do recommend that people read this article mainly because the controversy of 'pink slime' was so widespread throughout the media, that people need to realize there's many more problems with the food industry. Another reason why is because the article points out that this 'pink slime', although a gross thought, is proven to be more safe than most other raw meat. 

Argument Essay Proposal

The theme I chose at the beginning of this semester was food. Almost every article I have looked at has talked about how we, as a country, can reduce the amount of fast food we consume and what we can do about childhood obesity. The answer is obvious, eat more fresh food and less processed food. While I was looking up topics to write about, I ran into a debate under the name of "What it Takes to Fight Obesity", and of course I figured it would say exactly what all the other articles I've read have said. But a comment from an anonymous reader said this:

"4) Give people incentives to work out and exercise. When people work exercise, it helps manage blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. Doing so saves money in health care costs. Perhaps make gym memberships tax deductible. One health insurance company used to give people a certain amount of money at the end of the year if they used their gym membership a certain amount of times a week (the swipe card was the indicator for it)."

An brilliant idea! Why have I never thought of this before? So this is what I will be arguing. The American government should be rewarding the people who are making an effort to become a healthier country instead of going on about what we can do to change. It's time to make that change.

Lab-Made Meat; Ethical or Not?

Reading Journal Entry

• I read the article How long will it be before you can eat meat that was made in a lab? by Michael Spector
• The article is about how ever since the discovery of stem cells in mice, scientists are able to make meat in a test tube. The article questions the boundaries humans will have to be willing to cross once we start to realize how dangerous our consumption of meat really is the ourselves and the planet.
• One thing that came to my attention was the amount of energy and resources the meat industry uses. According to the article, "The global livestock industry is responsible for nearly twenty per cent of humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Cattle consume nearly ten per cent of the world’s freshwater resources, and eighty per cent of all farmland is devoted to the production of meat." I never stopped to think that as each week passes, there are millions of people eating meat every single day; it doesn't stop, just like anything else really. So when you think about it, the idea of science-produced meat is economically genius, although the thought of it does make me feel a bit queasy. There will come a day where the world will have to consider this idea, and it's all our fault.
  
• Before reading this article, I didn't know that these were actual experiments that were going on. In the article, the author described how the scientists would go about creating this meat. " In-vitro meat can be made by placing a few cells in a nutrient mixture that helps them proliferate. As the cells begin to grow together, forming muscle tissue, they are attached to a biodegradable scaffold. There the tissue can be stretched and molded into food, which could, in theory, be sold, cooked, and consumed like any processed meat." It then goes to say that nowadays there's a good percentage of food that we consume that is either over-processed or completely made in a lab, so what's wrong with making meat in a lab? But as I said before, the thought of my piece of steak or the bacon I eat in the morning was made in a test tube of cells and nutrients.. Makes me want to gag.
• I would definitely recommend everyone read this article because it's a look into what we should expect to happen in the future if we don't stop having such a bad effect on the enviornment.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Reading Journal Entry 

• I watched Michael Pollan's interview on ABC's Good Morning America
• The interview was about Michael's book "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual". He gathered reader's tips and rules for buying, preparing and eating food, and put the most important one's in a book with illustrated pictures by Maira Kulman. 
• One of the rules was "Always order the small". Michael said that when McDonald's first started out, their only available soda size was 7 ounces. Nowadays a small is 16 ounces, that's over double the amount of what it used to be. I work at Starbucks Coffee shop and our small, or "tall", is 12 ounces. It's funny to watch first-time customer's faces when they see how tiny the small cups are, and they usually end up upgrading to the next size, a 16 ounce cup, but that's not the biggest we have. Our largest sized cold cup is a whopping 31 ounces, it's only available for tea and brew iced coffee, but you would not believe how many people ask to get sugary frappachinos or even some of our not-so-healthy lattes in them. So I can relate to this rule because of the overwhelming amount of people that don't know how unhealthy they're being by just ordering a drink.
• He makes a point about how the way we eat is what's been passed down from generation to generation in our own families. The things we've learned are better than anything that science will ever discover because, when you think about it, before the FDA was founded and before all of the diet fads, people ate just fine. There was no science reports about finding causes of cancers or diseases in food, but because of the new age and way of farming we have to worry about those things.
• I would say this is a really informative video to watch if you're a lover of food. There are tips of how to better enjoy your meals, what to avoid, and rules that you should eat by.

Memoir Draft

"What do you guys want for dinner tonight?"

My father was a very, very good cook. He asked me and my little brother this question while we drove to his house.  Every other weekend I would look forward to Sunday dinners in his cramped kitchen; he'd make dinners like roast chicken, steak, corned beef and cabbage. Mmm! It was delicious, and he made it all from scratch. 

"Chicken?" I'd suggest. 

"Chicken? Again?? You guys are starting to look like chickens!" He'd joke about that constantly; I almost believed him. "Let's stop at Roxy's and see what specials they have for today."

Roxy's is considered a landmark in my hometown, anyone would recognize the pink neon ROXY'S sign from a mile away. It's the place to get the freshest meat and produce at a cheap price; its only downside was an overwhelming smell of fish that you could sense what seemed like a mile away.

We walked in and headed straight to the butcher's counter out back. There was a big white freezer with two men in back of it whose job was to measure out the weight of the meat and package it for the customers right in front of them. My dad skimmed the produce and decided to get a cut of beef for a roast. He walked from aisle to aisle picking up potatoes, carrots, green beans and Gravy Master as me and my brother followed behind him. 

My father lived in a three family house on a side road in Dorchester, my grandfather and his half brother lived in each of the other two floors above him. It wasn't the nicest of areas, there was always yelling coming from outside late at night, and cars sped by the front of the house so I wasn't very safe to play outdoors, but it was my second home. The indoor was very small; there was a parlor, or a "palah" as my dad would say it with his thick Boston accent, a bathroom, two bedrooms and a kitchen. It was nothing special but it was always warm and strangely inviting.

When we got back to the house, my brother ran to the parlor to play his Play station as I helped my dad bring in the groceries. He flipped on the television to the local news and unpacked the food we were about to feast on later that night and I sat down at the round kitchen table with him. He asked how school was going, how the family was and things of that sort. It was nice to spend that time with him.

Time had passed and he could tell I was getting hungry. He looked up at the ticking clock on the wall and decided to take out the food from the fridge. The sound of the steel knife separating the fibers of the vegetables and landing on the wooden cutting board was a satisfying sound to say the least. I asked if I could help but he had everything taken care of. He was the type that did everything himself. He placed the tin pan filled with the roast and the vegetables into the oven; it was time to wait.

Every Sunday my dad would have my grandpa come down to eat with us; it was a nice change from his usual frozen TV dinners he made himself every night. He walked from the third floor down to the first where we were.

“Here he comes!” Yelled my dad, I could hear his old worn slippers dragging against the tile out in the hallway.

The front door opened and in he walked, always with a smile on his face. He loved seeing me and my brother as often as he could. He walked into the living room and greeted my brother, then joined me and my dad around the kitchen table.

“How ya been!” He’d ask me. “When’s the food ready?”

“A few more minutes,” my dad said, “Hey, did you hear tomorrow’s weather? Beautiful!”

The show Cops was on the TV, one of my dad’s favorites. They laughed at the screen watching the criminals try to outrun the police as I sat there spinning the Lazy Susan in the middle of the table.

“DING!”

Dinner was ready, finally! My dad put his old burnt oven mitts on and pulled out the roast from the oven. The smell spilled out into the air, dancing around the kitchen. It smelt like home.

“Andrew! Dinner!” I yelled to my brother.

I opened the kitchen drawer where my dad kept the utensils and picked out four forks and four knives. I got plates from the drying rack near the sink and placed them on the table. The noise of the electric food slicer screamed as my dad cut into the roast. The suspense was killing me, I was so hungry.
My grandpa placed a bowl of the mixed vegetables, soft and warm from being in the oven, in front of me. Then the gravy boat. And finally, my dad was finished with the carving and placed the roast onto the table.
There we were, three generations of my family gathered together on a Sunday evening ready to share a meal together. What could be better than that? We dug in, it was delicious. The flavorful meat covered in gravy, the green beans still crisp from being so fresh; the sound of metal scraping against the ceramic plates as we scooped the food into our mouths.

Moments had passed and we all sat back in our seats in satisfied bliss. That Sunday night's dinner was the best my dad ever made.

Where Is My Mind

I'm not completely set on where I'm going with my theme. After reading the blogs from the Master List, I feel like I need to think of a different direction to go with food. Maybe I'll write about how food makes people feel good. Or maybe about the overweight issues America is facing and how we can do something about it. Or maybe the total opposite of that, and why mainly girls in America are starving themselves.

I don't know. Feedback anyone?

Rhetorical Analysis: Have It Your Way

America loves burgers, that's for sure. I mean, the word America is mentioned three times in this ad. It's pretty clear to someone like myself who studied the ad that Burger King is targeting the all american family to go out and buy their burgers.
What I noticed right away with this ad was that the two people featured look like they could be father and son, and that they're dressed exactly alike. They're both wearing blue hats and blue sweatshirts, with white tee shirts underneath. So, maybe the ad is mainly targeting the lower-class families? It is fast food, and fast food is cheap; it would make sense. The young boy is holding a burger that's much larger in size than the older man's burger, which I'm assuming goes along with the caption "Love 'em big or love 'em small. We've got a burger for every appetite." Based off their facial expressions, it looks like the son is happy about having the bigger burger. And it almost seems like the father is giving him a look that says something like 'You'd better eat all that'. Overall, it looks like they're enjoying their visit to Burger King.
Another part of the caption says "100% pure beef and flame-broiled. Every one served fresh, hot and tasty." Now, I don't know about you, but that kind of imagery makes me want to go out and buy one of these burgers. As I stared at the ad, I noticed there were a total of 5 burgers in the ad, 3 of which are a close up view. The colors are bright, the buns look plump and delicious, the vegetables look fresh. That alone would get the average viewer to consider buying their product. Also as I mentioned before, the word America appears three times, and twice it is in big bold letters compared to everything else. It's almost as if they're trying to say that you're not a real American if you don't like burgers from Burger King.
I think whoever designed this ad had the right idea. It does appeal to almost everyone; young kids, adults, Americans, families, and anyone who loves burgers. That's a pretty tough list to not fit into. This ad probably appeared in a magazine of some sort, or maybe it was in the subway where the public could see.

Theme Proposal

Out of the choices we had for themes, I would like to research and write about food. Everyone eats, and mostly everyone enjoys eating, I know I do! But what are we really putting inside our bodies? Do we know where our food is coming from? There are always stories of how farmers are feeding their cattle growth hormones, or that their coating their vegetables and fruits with pesticides. How does that affect us? It's something that I find interesting and would really like to look into.

Recess Has A New Boss

I read the article Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has a New Boss, and it's basically about how Broadway Elementary School is teaching their children to be more active during recess. They hired a recess coach to get all of the kids to play fun games together in peace, including the ones who'd usually sit out because they didn't consider themselves 'athletic'. Before the coach, the kids would get hurt and fight each other over stupid things such as who had a ball first, but ever since that has all come to an end.

Reading and Writing

I've never been much of a writer, but I do enjoy reading a good book when I can actually convince myself to sit down and read one. It's almost as if I have a permanent writers block and I can't tap into the creative part of my brain. It may be a result of not taking any creative writing classes in high school, and so I'm hoping this class will help me learn to be a better writer.
But when it comes to reading, I mostly enjoy non-fiction. Not the boring kind, like autobiography's about some old timer president, but the kind that tell a story. For example, I read the book All Soul written by Michael Patrick MacDonald. It's based on his life growing up in South Boston during the time that Whitey Bulger ran the streets and racism was still a major issue, especially when it came to busing the children to school. It mostly focused on all of the problems that he and his family had to deal with as a result of the era they grew up in. The story was so interesting to me, that I ended up finishing the book within two days.
But like I said, it takes a lot for me to convince myself to shut off the computer and just read a book. I'm hoping this English class, and future classes, change that for me. And I'm hoping I can learn how to write like I wish I could, with ease and confidence.