Category Archives: Farming

Meditations on a Raisin

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Why do Afghans grow grapes if there are so many reasons not to? Wine is illegal there; they don’t have many refrigerators to keep grapes fresh; and it’s a hard crop to grow in many ways. But if you lay the grapes out on your rooftop to bake in the sun, you’ll eventually find a reason to grow grapes in… Read more »

Is It Possible Nutritionism is Not a Health Movement?

In Michael Pollan’s book In the Defense of Food, his observation that people have become more sickly, more overweight, and less healthy since the inception of the social craze of nutritionism (81) is incredibly interesting. The opposite is suggested by the concept of nutrition, so how could this have happened? With a heavier focus on nutrition in society, or at… Read more »

US Farm Bill

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Stantis, Scott. “Of Course There’s Pork.” Birmingham News. Alabama: Birmingham , 2001. Print. Because I consider myself politically-inclined, I suppose what stands out to me most from this week’s lesson is the immense scale and scope of corporate agribusiness’ power in our society. For all of the benefits it has brought, and there seem to be many, to be sure,… Read more »

The Ripple Effect

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Having taken previous nutrition courses, and being someone who has spent the better part of my adult life as a vegetarian, I am cautious about what I consume, though admittedly, not as strict as I could be given what I know about the food I eat and its effects on the body. That being said, much of what was discussed… Read more »

American’s and Their Food Consumption

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While food is clearly a crucial aspect of living, it seems that it has become so engrained into our (American’s) everyday lives that it is often not thought about in a deeper level. The role of food in our society and how it has, in a way, controlled our lives since the very beginning of our kind it quite thought… Read more »

Back to the farm

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What was my grandmother eating? This is the question posed by Michael Pollan’s book, and is a query I found myself investigating. For me, I transposed the question onto my grandfather, who grew up on a farm. This farm, on which the family subsisted throughout the Great Depression, allotted him a status as a young man that few in South… Read more »

Nutrition – Complex or Simple?

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For me, the biggest take away here is the vast amount of misinformation surrounding food and nutrition. We as a society are so wrapped up with the latest diet fads, all in an effort to lose weight quickly or look a certain way, and yet we don’t even realize by following that path, we’re basically feeding ourselves nonsensical artificial foods… Read more »