HW # 6 - Food Diary

Cajun shrimp with roasted red peppers

Salmon on Caesar salad

Food Diary

Wednesday, September 29th

Breakfast:
Peanut butter and jelly on toast 190, 70, 88
Orange juice 150


Lunch:
Chocolate croissant 370
Orange juice 150

Snack:
Chocolate croissant 370
Orange juice 150

Dinner:
Salmon on Caesar salad 400
French bread 180
Strawberries and blueberries 70
Cranberry juice (2 glasses) 300

Total # of calories = 2,488


Thursday, September 30th

Breakfast:
Peanut butter and jelly on toast 190, 70, 88
Orange juice 150


Lunch:
Ravioli with mushrooms 400
French bread 180
Cranberry juice (2 glasses) 300

Snack:
Chocolate croissant 370
Orange juice 150


Dinner:
Cajun shrimp in the shells (in olive oil) 350
Salad 150
Potato chips 300
Strawberries, blueberries 70
Apple juice(2 glasses) 220

Total # of calories = 2,988

It seems as though I could take in some more calories during the day if 3,845 calories a day is an accurate amount of what I need according to my height weight and activity level. Sometimes I have more snacks in a day than I have recorded here, but the truth is that our refrigerator is not great for snacking. My mother shops for food before every meal, and there are never any leftovers in our house. The freezer usually just has icepacks for sports injuries in it. The good part is that we get healthy meals that are also delicious. For example, the Cajun shrimp we had tonight is one of my favorite meals. The shrimp are cooked in their shells in olive oil, hot pepper, and jerk sauce. The taste is so tangy and the fact that the shells hold in the sauce and that we can eat them with our fingers makes the whole experience memorable.

We have salad every night. The lettuce is usually Romaine or red leaf. There is red onion in it and tomatoes. These ingredients are organic. My mom thinks that buying Organic foods is worth the price because there aren’t chemical fertilizers used to grow them (she hopes), and we want to encourage organic farmers so there will be more of them. She also puts in watercress that usually is not organic and some grated Parmesan
cheese. The dressing is olive oil (organic) and vinegar. Having salad every night makes us all feel healthier. We all like broccoli, which is a good thing. When my brother and I were young, we had lead in our blood from the dust from window sills in our old house. The dust would get on toys, and we put everything in our mouth. The doctor said the Broccoli counters the lead, and so we had it every night for about three years. It’s amazing that any of us can look at broccoli. My mom’s spinach is the best. She cooks it in a little olive oil, garlic, and Dijon mustard. I inhale it.

When it comes to chicken, I do care that it is organic. If you read about non-organic chicken farms, you feel quite ill. The chickens are crammed in together and have to peck at their poop and get shot up with antibiotics, which get passed on to human eaters. There was a chicken farm in Queens near a soccer field where my team played. They had their heads chopped off on a conveyer belt in the same room they grew up in. The smell of the place was fowl (get it?), and the floor looked as though it was in a slaughter house because it was. The team never went to Mcdonald’s after a game at the chicken farm.

HW # 5 - Dominant Discourses Regarding Contemporary Foodways in the U.S.

A dominant discoure on foodways in the U.S. is the obesity epidemic. According to the New York Times article "Fixing a World That Fosters Fat," approximately 72.5 million adults in the United States are obese, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the cost of obesity to the U.S medical system is about $147 billion annualy. The sad news is that McDonald's quarter-pounders got cheaper by 5% from 1997 to 2007, and the price of fruit and vegetables went up by 17% from 1997 to 2003. This information came from Dr. Barry Popkin, who teaches at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Dee W. Edington, who directs the Health Managemaent Reasearch Center at the University of Michigan, says that it is important to change the culture and environment before changing individual behavior. The only way to do that it seems is to make healthy food more affordable.

Another common foodways discourse is the problem people seem to have with vegetables. When the Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption, it was discovered that only 26% of the nation's adults eat vegetables three or more times a day. Additionally, the amount of vegetables Americans eat has barely changed since 2000. A market research company called the NPD Group's most recent report called "Eating Patterns in America" concluded that a little less than a quarter of meals include a vegetable and a little less than a fifth of meals prepared at home include a salad, which is 5% less than in 1994. As the consumption of vegetables decreases in the U.S., the obesity rate continues to increase. According to the New York Times article, "Fixing a World that Fosters Fat," the real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast food meals." Based on this quote, I can infer that it's not that people are unaware of the bad food choices they make but that bad food is so available and affordable.

Food contamination is a big foodways discusiion topic especially recently since 1,500 people got sick from the bad eggs in Iowa. According to a recent New York Times article, "Senate Bill on Food Safety Is Stalled," the Senate is holding up a safety inspection bill that the House of Representives passed over a year ago. Right now even if the F.D.A.(Federal Department of Agriculture) finds filthy conditions at a chicken farm, it can't order a recall of the eggs because of the Senate not having approved the inspection bill. The article says that Dr.Margaret Hamburg, Commisioner of Food and Drugs, is hopeful that the legislation will eventually pass and "bewildered by the lengthy battle to schedule a vote." Of coarse there is a Republican senator, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma who is against the bill so I don't knoow why Dr.Hamburg should be bewildered.

HW # 4 - Your Families' Foodways

My parents tell me that they did not have foodways in common when they met. In fact, my mother says that the first year they knew each other she pretended to like the foods he liked. My dad was born in South Carolina, and his parents moved to Detroit with his grandmother on his mother’s side when he was a baby. Both parents worked in the car industry, and they did not have much money. His mother was also a terrible cook. He remembers having a lot of Wonderbread dipped in soda or “pop,” as they say in Detroit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. His grandmother was a good cook though and made fried chicken, grits, and sweet potato pie. They had corn from a can, and he can’t remember ever having salad.

My mother’s mother was English and went to school in France. When she married my American grandfather, she learned how to cook from some French cookbooks and from Julia Child, who had a television show. My grandfather loved what she made except for the fact that she never made dessert. She hated sweet things, and my mother says she couldn’t even her own birthday cake when she was a child. My mother says her father called their family dessert poor and would take her and her brother out to get ice cream cones after dinner. My grandfather’s favorite breakfast was half a cantaloupe with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle, and my grandmother could not even look at it. They had salad for dinner every night and lots of other fresh vegetables as well from their own garden.

When my mother first met my father, he gave her a glass of coke, which she hates, and a Hostess Twinkie. She said she didn’t know they were still allowed to sell them. The first time he took her to a restaurant for a special occasion, they went to Sylvia’s in Harlem. She pretended to love the food but actually thought it was too greasy. He also took her to a soul food restaurant for breakfast on a regular basis. She hated almost everything but said it was delicious. After they were married, my father says they ate disgustingly healthily. Now he is used to healthy food, and as long as my mom makes fruit tarts for dessert, he is happy.

How does my mother’s cooking affect me? I am used to a huge variety of foods and salad every night. Last night we had mussels, corn on the cob, salad, French bread, and a blueberry tart. This is one of my favorite dinners. I love our dinners except for the fact that during the week we never have dessert. There is usually fruit though. I could also use some more chocolate. My brother and I were never allowed to have candy growing up. No – that’s not fair. We could have gummy worms and bears from the health food store that were sweetened with fruit juice. Neither one of us has ever had a cavity. We used to get chocolate bars once and a while and hide the wrapper where mom would never find them. Except that she did find them. Now that my brother is at Columbia studying public health and helping children in Northern Manhattan who suffer from obesity and asthma, he really appreciates the way my mother fed us. We also play a lot of sports, and our coaches tell us to eat the same things we have always had at home. There is one problem though. My mother only buys enough food for each meal. Our refrigerator is often practically on empty.

HW # 3 - Food - Fast Food Insights and Green Market Realizations

First of all, I have to say that the chances of Mickey D making any money off of me were doomed when I was still inside of my mother. She ate no junk food when she was pregnant, had no soda, had a ton of fruits and vegetables (mostly organic), and ate nothing with chemicals or even regular sugar. I probably spent as many of my early years in greenmarkets as I did at playgrounds. When I started playing soccer at age seven, my coach would tell us to eat bananas, chicken, and broccoli and to forget McDonald’s and Burger King. When I went on school trips though, teachers would sometimes take us to McDonald’s for lunch. You would think that when given the chance I would rebel against my mother and my coach, but the strange thing is I didn’t. I hated the smell of McDonald’s and I still do.

When I walked into the McDonald’s in Union Square for this assignment, that sickly smell of grease shot up my nose and went straight to my brain. I walked right out without talking to anybody. I crossed over to the Union Square Green Market and went straight to the Martin’s Pretzel stand, where I have been doing business since fourth grade. These pretzels are the bomb diggity. The extremely nice guy at Martin’s Pretzels gave me a free sample as he always does and told me a few things about the company. He said that “Martin’s pretzels are to machine-made pretzels what a BMW is to a Yugo.” (I checked Google, and the Yugo was made in Serbia. It was voted the worst car of the millennium.) They make the pretzels by hand unlike other pretzel makers, and they can only make twelve a minute. Making them by machine changes the texture of the dough and hurts the taste. They are also boiled in water and soda before they are baked, and the soda makes the crust incredibly crispy unlike all other pretzels I’ve tried. Almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, when I come up out of the Union Square subway, I stop at Martin’s, and the same guy gives me free pretzels. I often buy a bag
for lunch, and then at the end of the day around six I sometimes get more free ones on my way home.

The other stand I know well at the Union Square Green Market is the Breezy Hill Orchards one. The items I usually buy there are the cranberry walnut cake and the apple cider doughnuts. The cranberry walnut cake is fresh and juicy and not really the consistency of cake. It smells of cranberries and orange juice and even though it is the size of a big brownie I can eat it in about thirty seconds. It has fruit juice in it but no sugar so my mother will always get me one. On my own I buy the apple cider doughnuts which do have sugar in them. They smell strongly of apple cider and are incredibly moist. You get three in a bag for $2.50, and sometimes they are my lunch. The women who work at this stand are always friendly, and because I don’t go to soccer practice until close to the time the market closes, they sometimes gives me free doughnuts. The woman I talked to yesterday told me that the farm in Staatsburg, New York, where all their products come from is really beautiful and a great place to visit. They have also just opened a stand at the green market in Brooklyn not far from where I live. Great! Now I can get their doughnuts on Sundays.

HW # 2 - Food - Initial Thoughts

When I think of food off the top of my head, I think of Joey Chestnut and Nathan's Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. When I was younger, I was fascinated by the idea that someone could actually eat fifty something hot dogs AND the rolls. I mean I could imagine scarfing down the dogs, but, come on, with the doughy rolls too? Not possible. Now I understand that the contenders prepare for days by expanding their stomachs with lettuce or something and then they throw everything up afterwards, so it is all less romantic.

After this summer's contest my brother, a serious athlete who can eat a lot, told me that we could have our own contest. He produced a box of Saltine crackers and bet me a dollar that I could not eat four of them without drinking water. I said, "Would you like to raise that bet to $5?" I was so sure that I could eat about a whole box of crackers without a drink if I had the right incentive. My brother tried first and he could not swallow all four crackers. I was shocked. I thought, "Easy peasy winning this bet." I ate two crackers. Then I tried to swallow two more, but the first two had soaked up every ounce of moisture in my mouth and I just gagged. I couldn't get them down. I lost the bet. I blame my saliva glands, which just did not perform.


Another great food time with my brother took place in a Chinese restaurant. We were with his friend Bryan and a few other of his friends. Bryan is badly allergic to shellfish. He said he barely made it to the emergency room the last time he tried
a crabcake. When the waiter came, he asked if the spring rolls had any shellfish in them. The waiter said they didn't, but my brother said, "Are you sure? This guy could die with just one shrimp leg." The waiter brought the food, and when Bryan bit into his spring roll, he could see a whole shrimp inside. He put it on the side of the plate, and we all tried to get the waiter's attention. When he came, Bryan told him what happened, and the waiter asked to see the shrimp. Bryan couldn't find it, and the reason he couldn't was because my brother ate it. He is so greedy for food that he just reached for it while everyone was trying to call the waiter because
he was so hungry he said. He ate the evidence, and the waiter didn't believe Bryan. My brother tried to say that there really was a shrimp and it was delicious, but the waiter wasn't buying it. After the meal, he brought us all fortune cookies, and my brother was given a chocolate one. It was the first time that any of us had seen chocolate fortune cookies. My brother opened his and it said, "Servitude is the gift we give to the world." He called the waiter over again and told him, "These are racist fortune cookies! First you tried to kill my friend (Bryan is also black), and then you insult me." The great part is we were all laughing so hard including the waiter that this was just a good New York City food time.