Bananas are found in every grocery store as cheap, affordable produce, but the fruit represents more than just something we eat and enjoy. It is symbolic of the many economic, social, environmental and political problems where the cheap price-per-pound label on the banana comes at the cost of the lives of workers in the banana industry in order to keep… Read more »
Few people want to take responsibility for their actions that cause negative consequences and even fewer would want to take responsibility for someone else’s. Hearing that the U.S. alone emits four times the amount of greenhouse gasses compared to other countries is not something new to me and I have recently tried to take responsibility to minimize my impact on… Read more »
The water crisis in India raises concerns of global climate change endangering not only the availability of water for consumption, but also for agricultural and infrastructure use. Prevalent coal power plants in India rely on water to generate steam for electricity, water needed for concrete for infrastructure, and reservoirs are running dry. Things have gotten so bad that farmers have… Read more »
Tristram Stuart’s TedTalk The Global Food Waste Scandal reveals the global scale of food wasted and addresses the different ways to tackle food waste in the midst of growing world hunger. Stuart presents the unfortunate reality we live in and the responsibility we play in further perpetuating world hunger with the statistics indicating that with the surplus of food in… Read more »
Peter Menzel’s Hungry Planet depicts the various dietary and health lifestyles choices from various families around the globe. The Western diet, generally consisting of red meats, refined grains, processed foods, high fat and sugar content, as well as large food chains such as McDonalds have become popular making its way to countries like Japan, but not so much in countries… Read more »
In wealthy countries like the U.S., hunger is not really something often brought up because it is not generally a life and death issue here. I have been fortunate enough to grow up in a household where fridges were almost always stocked and putting food on the table was never really an issue. The Lesson 05 Contemplative Practice: Feeling Hunger… Read more »
With fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats set at premium prices and junk foods disproportionally priced relative to them, it is no surprise that consumers do not eat healthier. In his book The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Michael Carolan’s views cheap food as a “shorthand for understandings for grocery store prices that don’t reflect foods total costs or discussion about… Read more »
Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food illustrates how the obsession with nutritional science has moved the Western diet into the wrong direction and has instead harmed the wellbeing of Americans alike. Pollan exposes the ideology of “creating and marketing all manners of new processed foods and permission for people to eat them,” demonstrating the food industry’s creativity in finding… Read more »