“A ‘biological universe’ exists in a gram of soil.” (Fortuna.) I’ve often looked to the stars or the sea to picture a magic-like expanse that holds so many secrets and marvels of life. I’ve never given much thought to what is under my feet. After the contemplative practice from week 8, I started to search for words I have never… Read more »
Ignorance is bliss. Believing that I am doing the most good by eating a plant based diet was a form of ignorance that can’t be undone now that I’ve taken this course. Even food decisions made in good faith have consequences that are hidden along the journey to our plates. From the child labor we witnessed in week 3 to… Read more »
Our apathy, our lack of passion, is what might do us in in the end. We’ve become so acclimatized to what we are exposed to in our lives. Growing up in the Midwest, we become apathetic to farm animals. After all, do they not exist for anything but our needs? Spending a decade in California gets one very used… Read more »
From the past few weeks of reflection, I feel as though I’ve found an underlying theme of “if it were you and your family…what would you do?” If in the grand scheme of all in the world, if you knew that your actions such as over utilization of fertilizer that is poisoning the population or growing opium poppy that would… Read more »
Browsing and then deeply scanning through Hungry Planet, I was struck (but not surprised) by the difference in which the world eats. Sitting from my privileged vantage point, it is so easy to look for the processed versus unprocessed food, the quantity versus the quality. One would like to think that the developed world would have more… Read more »
When I was young, I thought I could live on chocolate. I probably would have tried without parental wisdom. As an adult, I think of chocolate as a decadent, cheeky treat that’s as accessible as a Twix from the office candy bowl. I told a friend of my new cocoa enlightenment. She quickly pointed out that I had, in fact,… Read more »
Politics and our aspiration to a high quality of life are sometimes at odds. In American culture, we are raised to believe that the improvement of the earth and our lives are entirely on our collective backs. In Maniates’ “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Ride a Bike, Save the World?” he speaks about the drops in the bucket from our individual… Read more »
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is no doubt an interesting read that pulls back the curtain on the modern world’s obsession with nutritionism. He illuminates where the food industry has seemingly herded the masses into a rabbit hole of misinformation and reductionist thinking. Pollan presents a solid argument into seeing food as a holistic, synergistic process that ties… Read more »