Food egos

Recently, I’ve noticed that restaurants are no longer judged by simply their food in America. We take into consideration the atmosphere, tone, location, and even silverware of the restaurant. The food is no longer the only aspect that allows a restaurant to stand out. I know that, personally, when I see a restaurant that is broken down and grimy, I make up my mind not to go to such a restaurant. Even if the food is possibly the most awesome food in the world, it would take a lot of coaxing to just get me to go eat in such a place. I associate the look and feel of the restaurant with bad food, just as I associate good food with a place of great class and expensive china. I think that this is because as Americans, we tend to have a bit of an ego. A place that looks broken down and dirty doesn’t seem to deserve our praise or business, all while we strive to save up enough change just to get a couple bites to eat from a place that screams extravagance. We automatically assume that this place must have better food than a place that is simply a drive thru diner. I find this quite amusing because when I travel to Vietnam a couple of years ago, I found that the people were quite different when it came to matters of food. Instead of the extravagance and money we are used to seeing here in America, I saw tiny plastic chairs and stools, and tables poorly crafted of wood or plastic. Everyone was cramped into a small space and the chopsticks and spoons looked questionable. Yet despite all of this, the food was outstanding. Inside this little space of what could only be considered someone’s garage, was absolutely delicious food. It was hot, fragrant, and downright delectable. From this time on, I tried not to judge food by the atmosphere around it because I could be missing out on some great dishes. This is why I found it incredibly funny when Craig Claiborne criticized his $4000 meal because it did not have the same class of silverware of atmosphere. I think that we all have an ego when it comes to food, and if we suppress this ego, we might just find some delicious foods. Food should be the deciding factor for a restaurant, not the other stuff.

Food and all that associated

I think that food is one of the many aspects that characterize who we are in this time and day. It is something we use to describe our nationality, our culture, and ourselves. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to associate people with their food. Since I am Vietnamese, people often associate me with eggrolls, pho (beef noodle soup), rice, and various other dishes. I really don’t mind that people make this association because this food is a part of me. While I grew up on hamburgers and fries at times, I spent most of my solid food consuming years gorging on various authentic Vietnamese foods. Thanksgiving consisted of turkey, rice, a type of Asian salad, and various Vietnamese desserts. My mom’s cooking style fully embraces the term Asian-American. While the American foods were added more as a way to satisfy my sister and I’s cravings, they were still a part our diet. Almost every other night consisted of rice and some sort of meat and now that I am in college, I desperately miss this sort of menu. While I was happy with the American foods the first couple of days here, this feeling did not last long at all.

Food brings with it memories and emotions. When you think back to the many meals you have had, you simply don’t remember the food; you remember the situations you were experiencing when you were eating the food. I remember going to the cheesecake factory and gorging on various slices of cheesecake for my birthday. I also remember going to Vietnam and experiencing the street vendors and exotic fruits. I think that Anthony Bourdain’s book A Cook’s Tour really relates to the reader because he describes more than just the food, he describes his emotions and memories. This allows many to connect with his book because they too have their own memories with food. The only flaw that might exist is the fact that these are indeed his memories, and not the readers. Either way, I think that Anthony Bourdain has the right idea about how to describe food.

Skinny Bitch? No, Id rather be Chubby.

“Get off you Lazy ass and get skinny!” says the book Skinny Bitch. Personally, while I found these women’s approach to getting skinny modernly different, at times I felt that they were way too harsh. This book does not just suggest a diet. No, it suggest you throw out your entire lifestyle and embrace the vegan approach. While it is not advertised as a vegan book, Skinny Bitch promotes the cruelty-free, meat-free, dairy-free lifestyle. Basically, no meat, dairy products, sugar, eggs, or joy as it seems. While I don’t doubt that living this way would indeed make you a bit healthier and probably a lot skinnier, I found that the book pushes such a harsh, drastic change. I know that I, for one, am not willing to give up the things that I find such joy in eating, such as chocolate, coffee, sugar, just to lose a couple of pounds. Vegan is fine and dandy but I don’t think that I would just be able to change my eating habits just because a book is screaming at me to do so. That brings me to the diction and phrasing of this book. Overall, I found all of it a bit harsh. While reading the excerpts I could practically see the authors standing over me yelling at me to get off my lazy ass and throw out my cookies. From one page to another, it seemed as if it was insult after insult. The book goes from criticizing my coffee addiction at one moment to calling me a wimp for not being able to give up sugar on cue in the next moment. In fact, instead of feeling the desire to get up and do all of the things the book screamed at me to do, I wanted to chunk out the pack of excerpts and go eat a chicken sandwich and an ice cream sundae. I guess that this book might appeal to certain women, who find it refreshing that these authors are telling the “truth”. But I found myself more agreeing with the author of the second article, who criticized the book for being, in a way, a harsh cruel bully. And the comment about how the anorexic person hears the voice that sounds similar to that of the book really surprised me and made me dislike the book a bit more. It is not that I hate the book. In fact, I found it a bit witty at times and allowed me to relate because of the use of its language but it did not make me want to become a vegan. It was entertaining to read, but instead of convincing me to change my lifestyle, it made me want to cling on more to the bad habits that the book accused me of having.

Want a twinkie? dont lie, everyone does.

This past week’s discussions on obesity and weight problems has really brought to life the idea of “obesity” to me. Before these discussions, I associated the word with, pardon the stupidity of my language, gigantic, humungous, sick, 800 pound people who were trapped in their houses and unable to walk. I never associated the word with BMIs or so. I figured that fat was evidently fat and skinny was obviously skinny. I didn’t think that there was so much science involved with the classification. I guess this is partly due to the media influence on my life. I grew up wondering why I didn’t look like the celebrities on tv and such. While I was stick skinny, I was still very unhappy because it seemed that while I got that down, my proportions were off. I never seemed to be “perfect” or rather, “celebrity-like”. That website we looked at in class really opened my eyes. But personally, I think that it is extremely hard to classify someone’s weight. What exactly is the “correct” weight? If we go by the official nutritional scale, our “obesity” problem is larger, no pun intended, than we ever suspected. And when it comes down to it, I think that obesity is an emotional, physical, and ethical problem.

            When it comes to analyzing the causes of this problem, Chapter 10 really provides insight. It explains how casual arguments are never simple. They are complex and go to many levels. It is not simply what’s on the surface. You can not blame obesity on just the intake of calories. Could peer pressure, lifestyle, and metabolism contribute to it too? I think all of these things play a part in the cause of obesity. What causes us to eat more calories? Why defines obesity? As you can see, nothing about this “casual” argument is casual.

            Another subject that caught my attention was that of the fad diets and workouts. I think the reason this topic caught my eye was because I probably have heard or tried many of these before in hopes of obtaining that unreachable “perfection”. These things offer the easy way out. You get to eat the stuff that tastes so good, while growing closer to that desired look. Using this diet, I can look like this celebrity or by doing this workout plan I can resemble this celebrity. I think that the media contributes a lot to the making of these diets into fads. But personally, I think it comes down to self-evaluation. How you view yourself contributes to how you define obesity and diets, etc. For me, While Im content with my body image, there is no way I have totally come to terms with myself. I have days where the body demons rise through my self-imposed barriers and cause me to criticize myself. So I ask the question: is it ever possible to be completely and totally happy with your body in today’s society?

Time for me to move?

Can you imagine it? Dropping everything and moving to be closer to the Earth. Kingsolver describes quite a picture. It seems like the ultimate healthy lifestyle. Eat what you can produce and try to eliminate all else. Be true to the local farmers and stop abusing fossil fuels. Kingsolver even describes how she creates her own mayonnaise. She does everything from growing her own vegetables to making her own salad dressing. It seems very cool, like something I would want to do if it was at all possible. The more I think about it, some of the things Kingsolver does are not realistic to a college student’s lifestyle. I mean, do I really have the time to grow my own food? The lack of sunlight in the places I visit most often (my dorm, library, friend’s dorm) could pose a problem. Then there is the lack of funds part of the problem. As a broke college student, even if I wanted to live the lifestyle Kingsolver describes, I don’t think it is at all financially possible. Of course, raising my own chickens is out of the question, even though that would be very interesting. Can you picture it? A long line of chickens following me to class or running around the dorms. I think that the situation Kingsolver presents in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is realistic when considered in the perspective of Kingsolver and her family, but when you consider my life at this point, there is no possible way for this to work. Kingsolver is a novelist and her husband, a professor. They were financially stable and it was a viable option for them to survive on just the locally grown food. Where am I supposed to get such things? I don’t have a car and travelling an hour on the bus to reach a farmers market does not seem like a great idea to me. Overall, I must conclude that the idea of good living that Kingsolver describes is not at all realistic for me, at least not at this time.

The Evils of Corn

After watching King Corn, I found myself even more intrigued with the food we consume. Combined with the knowledge I gained from The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the food around me became very disappointing. My poptarts, my cookies, my yogurt – all contain corn. Corn here, corn there – honestly I was this close to becoming vegan in the hopes of being healthy, but then I realized everything they eat has corn in it too. So how is one supposed to be healthy in this world that King Corn and The Omnivore’s Dilemma depict? Before all of this, I could have gone “organic” but since that no longer has meaning what am I left with? I could drop the basic junk foods – chips, soda, twinkies, and poptarts – all filled with high fructose corn syrup. There goes a chunk of the teenage diet. I could eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but then I remembered that the shine on the fruits that makes them stand out in the stores are created by yet another corn substance. Meat’s out of the question because the cow or pig it came from was probably fed with grain, feed, etc… otherwise known as corn. After seeing what happens to the cow due to corn, I’m not so sure I want to do that. So what am I to do? Is it possible to live a cruelty-free, corn-free lifestyle in today’s world? As King Corn and The Omnivore’s Dilemma have shown me, corn dominates the food industry. There are billions of pounds of it being produced in a tiny portion of the country. Salads are always an option but then again the dressing that I adore wouldn’t fit the “corn-free” requirement. So that eliminates almost everything, except water. But I know someone is going to find a way to associate corn with that too. So in order to live a corn-free world, I must not eat or consume anything, wonderful. Corn has the ability to hold my diet hostage. So it as it seems the other options seem very bleak, I think that I will embrace my poptarts, and simply accept the fact that a corn-free lifestyle would involve me being anorexic and extremely unhappy.

So what are we supposed to do about this situation? We cannot go cold turkey off corn. Farmers would lose their jobs and we would be left with nothing to eat. Our dependence on corn is so great that its hard to change. When we discussed the farm bill in class, it showed me the amount of money invested in corn.  From here, it seems like the situation is a bit hopeless. We could slowly ease ourselves off corn, but the fact of the matter is, not enough people know about this growing problem. And now I wonder if that is better; Is ignorance bliss?

Ch. 10 analysis

Claim: Grass represents different things to different people and things and it is the source of almost everything.

Grounds: In 1984, Allan Nation heard sheep ranchers refer themselves as grass farmers. The simplest way to capture the suns energy in a form food animals can use is by growing grass. People see grass as background.

Warrant: If everything on the farm eats grass or uses it as a means to develop, then grass is the true source of everything and it should be appreciated and taken care of.

Backing: “Grass farmers grow animals –for meat, eggs, milk, and wool – but regard them as part of a food chain in which grass is the keystone species, the nexus between the solar energy that powers every food chain and the animals we eat.” “The animals come and go, but the grasses, which directly or indirectly feed all animals, abide, and the well-being of the farm depends more than anything else on the well-being of its grass.”

Qualifier: Grass is the base of the farm. The animals eat it, the crops need it to grow, and the farmers need it to survive. A fresh pasture is the start of a farm. Grass is used to harness the sun’s energy, which in turn gets eaten by the animals.

Rebuttal: Grass is not actually profitable and does not sell in today’s market. By putting so much time and effort into it, the farmers might be hurting themselves.

Whole Foods

Driving up into the parking lot of this massive building, the giant words “Whole Foods market” stares down at me. The outside of the building seems so modern, clean, and new. Already, I feel a bit healthier just by being in close vicinity of Whole Foods. I credit this feeling partially to the ethos that Whole foods has established. Over the years, Whole Foods has been the symbol of everything healthy, organic, and fresh. The name of the store itself brings along the connotation of natural unrefined products. People, such as myself, trust that everything we buy in whole foods will be good for our bodies and naturally grown or created. Also, it is hard to believe that something so corporate could be associated with all that is healthy and natural. Even as you walk in, the store is painted and decorated in a brown/green color scheme, all of which I associate with the planet. The bright colors of the vegetables are highlighted and the “organicness” of everything really seems to stand out to me. But I guess that’s what makes Whole foods so powerful and influential. Their ethos appeals to people and invokes trust and establishes a reputation of being organic, home grown, and pure.

Also, the layout of the store itself is very aesthetically pleasing. Everything just looks brighter and fresher. The colors jump out at you and as you walk through the area with the fruits and vegetables displayed, you can’t help but feel a desire to be healthy. Nuts and Coffee are displayed in cloth bags as if they were just picked, and both can be roasted on the spot. As I made my way through, I met the dessert area. My mouth started salivating on the spot as I looked at all of the carefully designed, delectable desserts. When I kept walking I reached the hot food bars: pasta, pizza, sushi, etc. It was all freshly made and this fact was published everywhere. Everything about this store screams freshness and good food. It is as if they are arguing that this is what food should look like; this is what it should represent.

Walking through the store, the word organic probably appears to me about 20 times. It is on the sign displaying many of the vegetables, it is on the box of crackers sitting on the shelf, and its even on the toilet paper being sold. Everything seems to be biodegradable and contribute in some way or another to the preservation of the planet. The totebags and aprons are all made of 100% hemp and when bought, Whole Foods donate a portion of the profits to an organization that is devoted to saving the planet. The store even has a program going on called BYOB – Bring your own bag. They plan to eliminate the use of plastic bags in order to have a healthier and greener world. Personally, I believe that while the cause is good, part of their intentions with all of this is to distract the shoppers from the prices. The prices for the products in Whole Foods are significantly more expensive than that of Wal-Marts. By appealing to the shoppers’ desire to help the planet, Whole Foods argues that their prices are a small price to pay in exchange for helping the earth. It is like by shopping at Whole Foods, you are accomplishing 2 things at once: you are doing your good deed for the day and you are getting groceries. Even their motto contributes to this: Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet. By using this appeal to emotion, Whole foods justifies their higher prices by saying that their product create “whole people” and help preserve a “whole world”.

 

 

Arguments, arguments, arguments galore

After reading the first 5 chapters of Everything’s an Argument, it seems that arguments are indeed everywhere and present in everything I do. Being the college student I am, I made a trip to Wal-mart this weekend to stock up on cleaning supplies, water, and the main part of the college student diet, junk food. As soon as I began to peruse the candy isle, the thought “hey, that’s an argument” kept occurring in my mind every time I looked at the candy selection. Bright colors and various flavors, all trying to convince me to buy that certain kind of candy. One bag of candy caught my eye as soon as I walked down the isle making my assessments. There was nothing special about the candy in general; they were simply little pieces of hershey’s chocolates. But the part that caught my eye was the fact that the candy was wrapped in pink aluminum with breast cancer ribbons printed on them. The bag was pink too and the words “Support the Fight against Breast Cancer” flashed brightly at me. I noticed this certain bag of candy because I saw that this bag used Pathos as a way of making its argument. It appealed to people’s emotions and feelings about breast cancer, trying to urge them to buy the candy as a way of supporting the cause. It seemed that the candy was trying to get me to connect with it. In the end, I stuck with M&M’s, due to its ethos argument. To me, M&M’s have a certain credibility because they have been around for so long and almost everyone in the world knows about them. They have a certain reputation, which I trust will provide me a good sugar rush.

Moving past the candy isle, I drifted towards the magazines. As I rifled through Cosmogirl, the ads showed me even more signs of pathos. Armani ads screamed sex, drawing out emotions in its readers. Product (red) ads urged us to buy certain products in order to help fight aids in Africa. Interest stories warned teenage girls, like myself, about the dangers of doing drugs. All of these things used emotion to build bridges with readers. The ads strive to draw out a certain emotion in a person so that they will buy those products. The connection created through the use of pathos makes up many arguments in the food industry. As I stood at check out, I wondered how many more things in my life I considered “mindless” would prove to be making an argument in some way or form.

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