Never before have I taken a class in my academic career that has had something like the contemplative practice activities we’ve done in class. The whole concept of contemplative practices, and literally sitting in silence for minutes at a time in a lecture setting definitely had me feeling a little uneasy at first (and still does). However, after participating in the raisin-eating activity, I can see why Karen has us do this. As we’ve learned in class and the Pollan reading, we seem to always be at a crossroads when it comes to prioritizing our free time. This is especially relevant when it comes to the gathering, preparing, and cleaning up of food. In the same respect that we aren’t able to prioritize food the way we’d like, we also don’t prioritize thinking about the struggles others in the world face when it comes to obtaining food let alone being able to prioritize it. That’s why by having us do contemplative practices, Karen is allowing us time to think deeply about these worldwide food problems that we wouldn’t otherwise prioritize to do in our free time. I think back to eating the raisins in the dark, where all I could think about was how it reminded me of viewing the film “Supersize Me”. As part of that film, it showed the processing that popular menu items such as Chicken McNuggets undergo. I just remember the pink chicken goo used to make the nuggets, and my stomach responding to seeing that by making me feel like I was on the brink of death. I got a similar feeling when thinking about how the raisins were processed, and it made me realize that essentially anything I eat is processed. This activity combined with what I had read in Pollan has lead me to believe that there won’t be an easy way out of this system, if at all.
