Sometimes, it’s easy to forget both where your food comes from and how it gets to your table. Our contemplative activities are moments when we get to stop for a moment and actually focus on food and the way we view it, consume it, and create it. The first contemplative practice we did in class was the raisin activity. When… Read more »
Busyness has become a virtue in western society – a society that demands constant productivity as a means for constant consumption. The lack of “free-time” and an ever-expanding market of distractions discourages the practice of mindfulness, but when it comes to our habits of consumption, particularly of food, the lack of careful contemplation can leave us ignorant to the larger… Read more »
Imagine a raisin. Dry, wrinkled, brown, devoid of life and vigor. What was once a plump, robust grape is now a shriveled, mass-produced food product; a representation of the industrialized agricultural system of the modern world. As I held this microcosm of the industrialized food system on my tongue and closed my eyes, I began to think about how this… Read more »
The second contemplative practice stood out to me as the most impactful; it came about the time I was plan to eat my first meal of the day, as I always end up forgetting to grab something in the morning. I was starting to get the first feelings of hunger that always precipitate a meal – not really necessity, just… Read more »
After experiencing a variety of contemplative practices, I have realized that food is strongly tied to the inherent privilege that individuals possess, or rather, do not possess. For Americans, whether we can afford healthy food options or not, there is always a readily available supply for purchase. We retain the privilege to a seemingly endless supply of food. We also… Read more »
One of the first ideas that struck me during the first week of this class was the idea of time and how we interact with it in our daily lives. We live lives that are highly scheduled and parcelled. I have found that over the course of my college career, time has been a factor that I have struggled with… Read more »
For the past several years, I have made cooking and reflecting on eating a mindful practice. When I have time to cook I typically reflect on the process, flavors, smells, and textures. I isolate my perception to what is directly in front of me. Several weeks ago, however, I contemplated a concept introduced in class as I prepared a batch… Read more »
Contemplative practices are strategies used to connect your studies to your personal experiences, and to be honest, I didn’t feel like I had a lot to learn from them. I try to practice mindfulness, but it doesn’t drastically or viscerally impact the way I see the world. In class, when Professor Litfin was explaining why she uses contemplative practices in… Read more »
Life is like a box of chocolates. This might mean something to your average first world consumer but to cacao producers in Africa the saying has no context. If it’s not obvious by the title the contemplative practice I found the most helpful was the chocolate practice. The combination of having both raw cacao and a piece of chocolate itself… Read more »
For a lot of us, overlooking water as a crucial resource is commonplace and its availability to us is often taken for granted. In other places around the world, having water readily available could mean saving millions of lives and increasing productive growth for a nation’s economy. As we sit comfortably in our own homes using and consuming as much… Read more »