Eating the Hyphen

In the first piece, "Eating the Hyphen" I really liked the way Lily Wong went about getting her point across. She explained her strange process of eating dumplings to make a point about what food means to her in Chinese-American culture. Her point was that you don't have to try and "act" like a certain person to be a certain ethnicity. For example, eating dumplings with ketchup like an "American" shouldn't make Lily Wong any less Chinese. I also really enjoyed Wong's rhetoric and how the piece was written. The tone of the first half of the piece was very humorous and the second part was a bit humorous, but she got a good point across at the same time.

"Reclaiming True Grits" had a purpose very similar to that of the first piece, but a bit different. While "Reclaiming True Grits" was also about the food of a certain culture, it dealt more with the cultural issues and stigmas surrounding the food. In this piece, Bryant Terry talked a lot about the how people perceive soul food as being unhealthy, when the only unhealthy soul food is instant soul food. Bryant Terry also talked about how unhealthy eating habits have been romanticized and normalized in cultures. I totally agree with this. Even though these days everybody is obsessed with being skinny and fit, the way most of the world views food is distorted. For example, look at the size of the average plate. These days, it's normal for people to eat way more food than they need to.

The writing style of "Reclaiming True Grits" was similar to that of "Eating the Hyphen", but it was much more serious. Bryant Terry also included a recipe for a traditional dish of his culture but unlike Wong, he uses history to support his argument.

College Food Focus Reflection

For me, eating exclusively in a cafeteria is nothing new. Before UNCA, I attended The School of the Arts in Winston Salem. Since I lived on campus there, I am pretty accustomed to eating in a cafeteria but what is new for me is not consistently being active. At The School of the Arts, I majored in ballet so I was "working out" for at least 3 hours a day everyday and didn't have to worry so much about the kind of food I ate. This is the first time in almost my whole life that I have complete freedom of what I can eat but am not constantly active.
So far, I'm not the best at making healthy food decisions at college. My diet the last few days has consisted mostly of Chinese food, burritos and chips. I think that balancing my schedule has played a big part in my diet. In college, (at least in my experience so far) you don't always have time to sit down for an hour and have lunch. A lot of the time I'm in a hurry, so I go for the quickest thing I can find like a burrito or left over Chinese food. I'm sure I'm not the only student with this problem because I see people every day walking around campus eating hot pockets or pop tarts.
When I do have time to sit down and have a good meal, I'm not necessarily very good at eating healthy. I tend to go with the foods I'm most comfortable with like sandwiches and pizza, instead of some of the healthier, "riskier" options. Unlike Camille Kingsolver, I'm not very conscientious of the origins of the food I eat. I rarely know where my food comes from or when it is in season, much like the people Camille Kingsolver describes in her writing. However, in the two weeks I've been at UNCA, I think I have gotten a little better at thinking about the food I eat more. For example, I'm starting to read descriptions of the food and informative signs in the cafeteria. Who knows, in two more weeks I could be seeking out locally grown food!

Eating Disorders

The first piece, "Her Chee-to Heart" was very entertaining to read but I didn't really understand the purpose of it past to of entertain the reader. I think the authors target audience was very large, being anyone who had eaten junk foods as a kid (or as an adult). The authors knowledge of her target audience is used as a form of rhetoric, because it lets the reader connect through experience with what the author is saying. For example, the author writes, "Yodels, Twinkies, Hostess Snowballs. They make people nostalgic for elementary school, those wonderful years when we were advised to eat beef and pork." (McCorkle, 32) Overall I enjoyed this piece. I thought it was pretty entertaining, but since I had just eaten a large meal before reading it, all the talk about fatty foods made me feel a little gross.

The second article on the other hand, was a polar opposite of the first one. This second article, "Not Just a White Girl Thing" was meant to inform the reader of the popular misconception that only rich, perfectionist white girls have eating disorders. The article explains in detail how women, and men of all different ethnicities have eating disorders and how an eating disorder does not only mean bulimia.
What I really appreciated about this article is how Susan Bordo talked about culture and media being the ones to blame for many young women's eating disorders instead of unhealthy food and big chain restaurants. One of the reasons I don't usually like to read about eating disorders is that so many people blame America's problem with eating on big companies and chain restaurants. While I think chain restaurants and big companies have a bad influence on American's eating habits, I heavily believe in moderation, much like Bordo and I don't think big food companies should hold so much control over us. Bordo brings up great points about the media, such as the story of the women in Fiji who were introduced to American television and developed eating disorders. Bordo also has statistics that heavily support her points, such as, "57% of girls have fasted, used food substitutes or smoked cigarettes to lose weight" (Bordo, 274).
Another thing I appreciated about this piece was her recognition of men with eating disorders. Coming from the ballet community, I know a lot of people with eating disorders, many of which are male ballet dancers. While it's a fact that there are more women than men who have eating disorders, I think some people forget that men are targeted by the media to be skinny and fit as well.
I think Susan Bordo did a great job with her article "Not Just a White Girl Thing". She used statistics about eating disorders as rhetoric, which I think was very effective and she talked about the media, which is not always given the blame for eating disorders.

What The World Eats

The thing that shocked me the most about this passage was the ratio of food to family members in certain countries. For example, an American family of four could spend nearly 350 United States dollars a week on food while an Egyptian family of twelve could spend close to 70 United States dollars a week on food. It didn't take very long for me to find a pattern in food spending across the entire world. There was a British family of four who spent 250 United States dollars on food a week, a French family of four who spent 400 United States dollars a week on food and a Norwegian family of five who spent 370 United States dollars a week on food.
I realized that America, along with most European countries spent more money per week on food than other countries. Pretty shocking? Right? I didn't think so either, but I wanted to know why, so I decided to research the subject for an answer.
After pages of google results and news article after news article I had a thought. In countries such as Chad, Egypt and Ecuador, most families ate fruits and vegetables while American and European families ate mostly packaged food. Could this mean that certain families were growing their own food while American and European families were just buying their food at a store? I looked up the decline of the small American family farm and found out that there are nearly 4 million less farms in America than there were 100 years ago. This lead me to believe that most Americans and Europeans are too dependent on big industries for their food. I think that if more people grew their own food or bought food locally they would probably be healthier, spend less money, and support more local business.