Have you ever experienced hunger? Of course you have. But have you ever experienced the kind of chronic hunger where you can’t physically move because you have no energy? Where you can’t go to school or your job? Where you are so terrified because you know you are a few short days away from death? Malnutrition and hunger affect about… Read more »
What would it be like if you never ate another piece of chocolate? Would your life be any less meaningful? Would you still be able to find happiness? Or would you not be able to continue living if you couldn’t stop at the convenience store to pick up your favorite chocolate snack while filling your car with gas? I don’t… Read more »
The concept of being “hungry” is an interesting topic to evaluate. Think about the millions of people around the world who go hungry for extended periods of time. They may not know where or when their next meal may be. They may suffer from malnutrition, leading to various health problems. An estimated 795 million people around the world suffer from… Read more »
In contemplating living systems, it’s difficult to imagine that so many “dead” systems form relationships with human bodies that can bring such differences in how lives unfold. Humanity brings to life systems that are otherwise inert. It is easier for me to imagine how living systems theory works in an interactive way between organisms and the environment when I imagine… Read more »
Chocolate has gotten somewhat of a bad rap recently and deservedly so. But if chocolate demands and/or prices shifted and children were no longer forced to harvest cocoa, would the majority of them return to school or continue working doing something else? I think it is a fair question to ask when trying to determine just how much blame the… Read more »
Each contemplative practice in this course so far has been the part of the lesson that I look forward to the most. It’s a way for me to digest the information from the week, and put it into perspective in regards to my own thoughts and feelings. While each contemplative practice has forced me to think critically about each issue,… Read more »
When you are hungry how you do feel. (Shoe) Usually tired? Foggy? Often angry? After taking the time to contemplate hunger in our contemplative practice this week I came to see hunger in a more multifaceted way. In addition to the terrible condition of being hungry, people who are going hungry are also adversely effected by the condition that huger… Read more »
Check out Tristram Stuart’s TED talk on the global food waste scandal. I felt that it really accentuated a large bounty of the political ecology of the world food system. It also touched upon Peter Quinn’s work in his article Hunger Games: Who Gets to Eat & Who Decides. Essentially, as Stuart described the modern-day realities of the world… Read more »
International trade allows us access to fruits, vegetables, spices, and much more from other countries around the world. There are so many foods in our markets, grocery stores, and restaurants that we take for granted. The number of resources, work, travel, etc. that goes into producing goods elsewhere and bringing them to the United States is not noticed by many of… Read more »
In week 3, we discussed how chocolate gets from the cacao farms on the Ivory Coast, to the neatly packaged commodity that we all know and love. As images of children, taken from their families as slave laborers, were shown performing the difficult tasks of harvesting cacao beans, my heart sank. As we learned that farmers, who are underpaid, had… Read more »