Reconnecting: The End of a New Beginning

The end of the school quarter often is a time to celebrate and to be able to bury a large amount of what was learned over the past three months. In my Anthropology of Food class I've realized this will not be the case. Although I may celebrate and be glad I won't be required to continue writing, the information learned was essential to my everyday life. Not a day will I go by without thinking about where the milk comes from that I put in my coffee or how the meat I have on my sandwich was processed. Considering my mother spent countless hours explaining the problems associated with eating junk food I am somewhat disgusted that I still crave it. Further, I am surprised how much this Anthropology of Food class has changed my food habits. Instead of taking my mother's advice for some reason I've choose to pay $1300 to learn it from someone else.

As I look at all I learned this quarter I must note that this course had many more implications than merely what I eat. Corruption in the food industry has begun to represent corruption and division among our culture much like rising food prices represent the overall economy. The love of money also could have been a key theme for this course as many of the problems we face can traced back to someone hungrier for money than for quality food. One of favorite sections of this course was the community gardens; I was incredibly impressed with the article about Honduras and how they have unintentionally become the poster-child for self-sustaining cities (a concept I never thought possible). I have also enjoyed reading Michael Pollan's book, again it was a lot of the same thing my parents attempted to instill in me but because it was coming from someone else it really seemed to stick.

I plan to continue this blog as I will be taking Anthropology of Comparative Healing next quarter and I believe many of the course concepts are closely related. With any luck this next course will better answer the question of "what to eat?", a question that is seldom asked in terms of health. I also would like to study the alternatives to western medicine; I strongly feel that sickness prevention is something that has completely been overlooked in the American diet. Please stay tuned as I transition from merely eating to stay alive into eating for sustained health...