Thank You Cereal!

Every year we come around the bend of finals week, I start to reflect on why my body feels so much like crap (to be blunt). Obviously the stress of all the work and the very few hours of sleep has something to do with it, but personally I feel like what I eat is a major contributing factor to that feeling as well. I was sitting and thinking about what I've eaten this past finals week and the list is not too enticing. The main dish I consumed, was cereal. I ate it at various times in the day and night, and sometimes ate it with milk and other times ate it dry. There were also times when I would sit and eat a bowl of cereal in the dining hall, but other times where I would dump some dry cereal in a plastic baggy and munch it on the go. Cereal is never more a part of my diet than in finals week, and I believe this is because it has proven itself to be one of the most convenient meals. Like I said, I can sit and eat it or go and eat it, and even when I take the time to sit, it is a fast paced sit down meal. Also, to me, and I think to many college students, cereal is a food that does not carry a distinct label of what "time of day" food it is. I mean, sure it's mainly a breakfast food, but most of us college students don't feel very weird eating cereal at different times of day (including 12am!) Cereal also comes in handy during finals week when the dining hall doesn't have much to offer, due to the fact that we are ending the semester and not ordering more food. The cereal is always out and always in the same place. It is a food that we can rely on; you can't do much wrong with cereal. So heres to cereal, not the most nutritious food, but a helping hand to the end! 

Grocery Store Lies

I was recently strolling around the aisles of a local grocery store and found myself paying more attention to the items on the shelves than I ever had before. As this semester comes to a close, I realize how much more conscious this course has made me about the food I buy and eat. As I surveyed the various food items around me, I started to feel as if I was surrounded by lies; the lies of the grocery store. The way food was displayed and portrayed, the lack of information on the labels, just a couple of things that jumped out at me. However, one item in particular grabbed my attention; the boneless Perdue chicken breasts. 

What was it about this item? The romanticized picture of the farm. On the top of the package, right in the center was a photo of an old beautiful farm house. On both sides of the farm house sits two long structures, most likely representing where the chickens are housed. There are trees and a grassy lawn with the sun either rising or setting in the background. The picture sends a message to the consumer that Purdue raises the chicken he or she is buying on a beautiful "home-owned" farm. From taking this course, I know for a fact that this message is a lie. In the film, Food Inc., our class was able to view how Purdue really treats their product and farmers. A woman that housed chickens for Purdue allowed cameras to enter and see for themselves the horrendous conditions they are in and also explained some of the abuse Purdue puts on its farmers. The chicken house was stuffed full of chickens struggling to stay alive. They were so big that they could not walk and their legs were broken from the weight. Feces was everywhere and dead chickens were scattered across the ground. It was a disgusting scene and the woman had nothing good to say about the process and she believed the public needed to know. 

This is so far from what is displayed for consumers in the grocery store. The aesthetics of a chicken package give us a feeling of comfort, that this food came from a nice American farm house standing on the grass in the sun. I took a quick picture of the package (displayed above) and kept walking, full of disgust. It is truly amazing how to keep ourselves comfortable, we have no problem turning a blind eye. The lie of the little farm house lives on, and it lives right in our local grocery store. 

Pumping Iron

To be blunt, I know there is a lack of iron in my diet, and that leads me to believe that I am deprived of the nutritional value that comes from iron-rich meals. With no intention to sound like a hypochondriac, after reading Nevin S. Scrimshaw’s article on iron deficiency it dawned on me that a good majority of female and male college students –myself included –have some moderate form of anemia. Iron has the function of transporting oxygen in blood by pairing with hemoglobin to “pick up oxygen in the lungs and shuttle and release it throughout the body”. About 73% of your body’s iron supply is found in hemoglobin during the creation of red blood cells (Scrimshaw). Common symptoms of iron depletion are weakness, headaches, extreme fatigue, chest pains, shortness of breath and paleness. I am not trying to compare the deficiency of iron in students’ diets to that of Scrimshaw’s field of study in developing nations such as Kenya and Indonesia, but his studies did pose the question in my mind –how can I improve my consumption of iron in the foods offered by Wheaton dining?

A woman between the ages of 19 and 50 need 18mg of iron daily, and a man needs 8mg of iron, but vegetarians may need even more milligrams because plant products have a lower iron turnover percentage when it reaches your blood. So, let’s start with the most important meal of the day: breakfast. For me, this seemed to be the easiest meal to find good sources of iron. Breakfast cereals are surprisingly iron-rich because of the whole grains in them. A bowl of Cheerios has 45% of your daily serving of iron in ¾ of a cup. Other cereals high in iron are Frosted Mini Wheat’s, Life cereal and Oat Bran Flakes. Lunch proved to be trickier to find iron for my diet, as I am a pretty picky eater when it comes to meat (a food extremely high in iron). I decided to pair a bowl of clam chowder and a salad to compensate for a plant source and seafood source of iron. A serving of clams (3 oz) is 14 mg of iron. Dinner was very similar to lunch, and I ended up stumbling upon broccoli soup, a type of roasted chicken and brown rice as potential iron rich items. I must say that from reading the nutritional facts of each of these foods, they by themselves are not very iron rich but together they are sufficient enough to supply a meal with enough iron. Broccoli is one of the most iron-rich green vegetables, and poultry along with any other meat will be a reliable supply of iron.

Throughout this day, I realized finding foods to eat with enough iron in them forced me out of my comfort zone of my normal five or six meal choices here at Wheaton. What I need to realize is the importance of iron for my health, and making small adjustments in what I choose for breakfast, lunch or dinner could make all the difference!

Want more information about creating an iron-rich diet? The University Health Center’s website provides tips on which foods to eat and proposed menus to achieve the highest amount of iron in your daily diet. Just click here! https://www.uhs.uga.edu/nutrition/iron.html

Peace and World Conscience House: International Potluck

Apparently, as a Peace House tradition, we have an International Potluck every year to bring together or ethnicities and cultural heritages through the usage of homemade food. When first hearing about this gathering, I was really stumped as to what I should make because another housemate upstairs said he was going to make Irish soda bread so I wasn't allow to duplicate the same country. I thought long and hard about other places where my heritages have stemmed from and I thought of England. An old time favorite of mine was my mother's homemade Shepard's Pie, or otherwise known as Cottage Pie. This dish is thought to have stemmed from Northern England in the 1700s by poor families who needed to use the left over scraps of meat from the previous day's meal. Shepard's pie consists of beef, or lamb, covered in corn and mashed potato which would have been accessible to make a hearty meal. Surprisingly, some of my housemates have never tried, or heard of, Shepard's pie before. It had been a staple food in my household growing up so it was odd to think that other's had never tried a dish like this. Out of respect and hunger, we all agreed to try each other's dishes for a taste of what we all call home (and to judge each other's cooking abilities of course!)

African Donuts and Taco Soup 

At this Pot Luck, we had an array of cultures represent such as the Dominican Republic, Mali, Ivory Coast, Italy, Ireland, and Poland. Everyone was responsible for making their dishes homemade so no frozen dishes were accepted. This gathering brought our house closer together over the shared commonality of food. Not only was the house invited to this gathering, we asked our close friends to come and enjoy the food we prepared as well. We all love to eat and eating food from our culture as well as each others' was a really rewarding experience.

Chicken and Cheese Empanadas 

Even though Peace House consists of eight individuals from eight different places around the world, we were about to connect and share our experiences through the power of food.

Our One-of-a-Kind Pot Luck Experience 

Halloween: Breaking Boundaries

Well it’s about time that the sugar high from Halloween is wearing off, and we’re all struggling to exercise and trying to get fit until we relapse in a fit of gluttony that is Thanksgiving. Though Halloween was 2 weeks ago, I still find people munching on leftover candy and talking about their experience during the festive holiday.

I am not a person who greatly favors sweets and candy, however the experience that the candy creates is something of a marvel. Little kids love trick-or-treating, but there comes a certain age in which that could be considered ‘socially unacceptable.’ This does not mean that adults are alienated from this event; we just incorporate it into our lives in different ways.

Every year Wheaton hosts a cohort of young trick-or-treaters that flood a designated part of campus to ask for candy. Our private, often seemingly closed-space campus is suddenly opened to the public all for the sake of giving away candy. Well it may not just be the candy per se, having these young children flitter around brings a warm feeling to heart- or at least for me it does. As a person who no longer trick-or-treats, seeing the joy on these children’s faces makes me reflect on the excitement I used to get. As we age and move through different life stages, our ways of eating change and Halloween takes on a new meanings.

Trick-or-treating can be interpreted as just another cog in our blighted, inauthentic culture infected by capitalist, consumerist thinking. I, for one, never thought that the holiday could present issue for some that could not afford it. Observing kids costumes you can sometimes distinguish who has the funds to buy a fancy, high-quality, well-produced store outfit versus one that is put together with objects lying around the house.

But to kids none of this matters. Whether handcrafted or store-bought, kids seem to be able to push this thought away and focus on the fun experience that trick-or-treating. Who cares what you wear when your objective is to have fun collecting candy? As longs as you are able to fashion something, whilst going around the neighborhood class doesn’t- or should not- affect the amount of candy a kid should get. For one time of the year, class lines become blurry and should be almost indistinguishable.

As an adult I find that my idea of Halloween may still be dressing up, but, instead of going out for candy, I often find pleasure in the food I can create to reflect the ‘Halloween experience.’ Making toffee apples, brownie graveyards, incorporating pumpkin spice in everything, and decorating my living accommodation are ways in which I can experience Halloween as an adult. But my student budget can only stretch so far and I have to be aware I may have more limitations than others when it comes to the costume or candy that I buy.

I have been to a fair-share of Halloween parties and one can easily tell who much money was put into the decorations and the food. And yet, just like when we were kids, we push this aside for the sake of having fun. Now, we are often awarded for our creativity of handmade costumes and decorations. As we age we become more aware of our socio-economic status, however when Halloween rolls around we are once again freed of these constraints as long as we wear the holiday proudly, just like when we were young.

It’s all well worth it.

Post Food.inc

Thursday morning, after finishing Food Inc, I was over come with a desire to eat better. As I was about to leave, my fellow classmate Ivy stopped me and changed my morning. First she asked if I wanted to go get some breakfast off campus (always a game changer for my morning), and then she told me about this amazing place, The Breakfast place. She described how this place specialized in locally sourced, grass-fed meat, as well as locally grown veggies and coffee(fyi, some of the best coffee I have ever had, no bitter after taste) I had been going to Wheaton for 4 years, considering myself a well informed eater in the area and I had never heard about this place. This place is a hidden gem tucked away in the corner of a small building in attleboro. Unassuming from the outside, and one of the most down to earth places on the inside. The walls are strewn with chalkboards showing amazing seasonal specials and their locally sourced Razzo's coffee. 

Outside of their ingredients, it was not much different from any other diner I had ever been in. It had the same feel, same affordable prices, and the same adorable down to earth conversation you can expect in any diner. It was refreshing to see a business catering to all manner of people, from college students like myself to individuals, for example when I was there, wearing work boots and pants, covered in many different stains I can only assume came from a hard job of physical labor. Even the people who worked there expressed to me an interest in being a hair dresser outside of working at the diner. The Breakfast place successfully brought together individuals of different classes and backgrounds over a meal they could be proud of. Especially in a time when foods such as grass-fed beef and locally sourced veggies are considered an upper middle and upper class diet by most, it was nice to see the food not commodified, but made accessible to everyone. Similar to Stoneyfield's message, the food was accessible, and made for everyone. It wasn't some fancy over blown, place with fancy items on the menu, it was the Breakfast Place, with steak and eggs, eggs benny, corned beef hash, and waffles and french toast that would blow your mind. No what I had, was special, grilled tomato, with an herb hollandaise sauce, and locally sourced uncured bacon. Especially after watching a movie like Food Inc. This place was a refreshing change from the foods I, as a college student usually have access to in neighboring areas.  

Food in Context: Peacock Pond

 

​Recently, my Ponds to Particles science class took it upon ourselves to conduct a relatively thorough cleanup of Peacock Pond. Our goal was to clean out waste, raise awareness, and restore the ecosystem to its natural equilibrium. Expecting to find mostly plastic and glass products, I was shocked to find that upwards of 166 pieces of food waste were recovered in less than two hours (and believe me, we could have found more). This food waste consisted primarily of fruits that appeared to have been attained by students from Chase and Emerson dining halls. My first inquiry was what was the reason students were throwing food into the pond, and what kind of effect would it have on the delicate ecosystem?

      Students clean Peacock Pond 

​While waist deep in the murky waters of Peacock Pond with fellow students and President Hanno, it was brought up that a certain team (that will remain unnamed) had a hazing ritual involving freshman throwing oranges across the pond, and when the fruit inevitably couldn't make it to the opposite bank, the freshman would have to swim across the pond. Other stories such as fruit-throwing challenges, acts of boredom, and disposal of unwanted food waste were all shared, and I came to the conclusion that people were not viewing the fruit as food, but as a means of entertainment. Surprisingly, only a small portion of people admitted to using the pond as a place to dump trash, but rather indicated that they had thrown trash in for sport. Therefore, in the context of Peacock Pond, food no longer holds value as a means of nutrition, but becomes a game.

​Unfortunately for the plants and animals living in the pond, that fruit is neither a means of nutrition, nor a means of entertainment. Little do the students of Wheaton College know, those rotting fruits create a surplus of bacteria and acidity in the water.  In the context of animal life, those fruits are detrimental to their environment. This just demonstrates a reoccurring theme in Feast or Famine and the field of anthropology, that context can change the meaning of an object. In the context of Chase or Emerson an orange is sustenance, in the context of Peacock Pond oranges are toys, and in the context of the biodiversity living in the pond oranges are poison. These acts also demonstrates to the larger community that Wheaton Students are not concerned about food conservation, the ponds ecosystem, or the aesthetics of their home. Food should remain in the context of production, distribution and consumption.

Most Important Meal of the Day?

If you were a college student and you had to juggle athletics, classes, finishing a huge lab for bio, studying for your econ mid-term on Friday, going to the SGA meeting, trying to keep a social life, while trying to get 6-7 hours of sleep a night, when do you have time to eat!? Growing up, my mother made sure I ate a hearty breakfast every morning before school or before I left the house (a granola bar or yogurt didn't suffice). My mother would have french toast, homemade cinnamon buns, scrambled eggs, cinnamon toast, pancakes, coffee cake, dunkin donuts, or danish prepared for my siblings and I whenever we woke up for school. Although I'm in college now and away from my mother's cooking, I still must eat a filling breakfast every morning before my first class or I cannot be functional. During the fall semester, I have to rely on Chase or Emerson to provide that breakfast because I usually have 7:00am practice that ends right before my first class of the day.

This morning, I didn't have morning practice so I woke up and prepared myself my own breakfast the way my mother used too. I made homemade batter (my favorite) and used my griddle pan to cook the pancakes. Of course butter, syrup, coffee and milk are necessary with pancakes and I also had some rice pudding that is not shown in the picture below. I am fortunate enough to live in a themed house on campus and be able to cook my own food at my convince and not have to fight to use the stove with other students in the dorm or on a floor. No matter what I have to do, I will always eat breakfast in the morning because it is what keeps me fueled all day.

Food and Comfort in Memories

The past few days have been challenging for my family. Sunday morning my Grandma passed away at 90 years old. The week before was a long road, and being an emotional roller coaster, was exhausting for many in my family. So, what does this have to do with food? It hit me Sunday evening, and after a day of reacting to my Grandmother's passing, when someone brought up the question "what do we want to do for dinner?", that food is most certainly connected to our feelings of comfort and celebrating memory. How exactly did I realize this? Well, it was clear that my family was not eager to cook up a meal, yet at the same time, it did not seem like anyone wanted to sit in a restaurant. A few minutes in to the pondering silence, my Mom declared that she had an idea. I had one as well, and as soon as I looked at my Mother I knew we had an idea in common. "We should go and get clam cakes and chowder and eat at the beach" she said. Exactly. Exactly what I was thinking. Everyone was in agreement and off we went. But why? Why was this the common idea? Because this was the meal that reminded all of us of my Grandma. My Grandpa and Grandma built a beach cottage before they had my mom and her siblings, and the little blue cottage remains in our family today. The beach has been a place of love and peace for our family for as long as I can remember, and I've always thought of that as a gift from my grandparents. When our family gathers at the beach cottage in the summer, clam cakes and chowder is a meal we often share. Even in the winters, when we took my Grandma out to eat, it would be to a place where she could get clam cakes and chowder. That meal is a memory we have of her. So, on a day we felt distant from her and felt her absence, it was not surprising that the food we ate was a way to fill that hole. As I ate the clam cakes and chowder at the water's edge, it was as if the food was bringing back a rush of memories with my Grandma. 

As my family continued to eat, an amazing sunset took form over the water. It was as if the heavens opened up to show all of its radiant light. In that moment and in that place, with the assistance of my meal, I felt my Grandmother and knew she was ok and knew my family would be ok. Is it possible for food to assist in both constructing and recalling memories? I think yes. Not only that, but food can produce an internal comfort that we may not be able to create without it. It may just be a clam cake and just a bowl of soup to one, but to another it can mean family ties and an experience that remains, from someone no longer in reach.