Industrial Food Diary: A reflection
For two days I recorded everything I ate and drank over the course of those 24 hours. One day I ate as I would on any regular day. However, the second day was meant to be an effort to eat as little processed food as I could. You might not think that these lists could be that much different, but when you are actually thinking about the food as far as how it came to be, there is plenty of room for separation between these diaries.
On the first day I truly ate as I normally would, so this was not difficult. I usually eat a small breakfast before class, hit the dining hall in the middle of the day, and then eat a somewhat large dinner at my apartment. I usually don't view my meals as that unhealthy on a daily basis, but this assignment kind of led me to believe otherwise. When looking at what I ate on the first day, most things I ate were processed. From the bagel and cream cheese I ate for breakfast to the pasta and sandwich I ate for lunch, these foods I eat are highly processed. When I think about it now, the dining halls have no choice but to serve highly processed food. Their job is to feed large masses of people quickly, so what else could you expect. It certainly is not the place where you would find cooking similar to that of an Italian grandmother. This, as we learned, is one who uses simple ingredients and basic utensils to provide one or two meals for her and her family. In this case, many processed ingredients are used to make processed meals with big machines to feed hundreds of people everyday. Efficient? Perhaps yes. However, this is not the healthiest food one could eat.
On the second day I enjoyed the challenge of making an effort to eat foods that were "natural" so to speak. I think I did pretty well. Eggs are a quick and easy breakfast that are not considered highly processed. It is simply an egg that you cook and scramble. Salads and grilled chicken breasts are foods I would consider to be pretty healthy, so looking at my lunch I would say I successfully avoided many other options that are much more processed, even though chicken could be seen as highly processed depending on how you look at it. Overall, the things that I still had trouble eliminating were sauces and dressings. Ranch and barbecue sauce are not great for you by any means, but when the effort is there to eat a mostly wholesome meal, I can live with it. The experience definitely opened my eyes to some things, and I realized that sometimes when you think you are eating somewhat "healthy", the food that you are putting in your body was almost always still processed in some way. Usually, it was processed in a lot of ways. Pandora's Lunchbox highlights this throughout the whole book, and I think it is tough not to agree with Warner at this point. So many foods are not what they seem, and there are so many ingredients and a lot of processing involved in mostly any common food. I might need to rethink my meal plan, but I also need to eat! Isn't that quite the dilemma... Is eating healthy even possible?!
On the first day I truly ate as I normally would, so this was not difficult. I usually eat a small breakfast before class, hit the dining hall in the middle of the day, and then eat a somewhat large dinner at my apartment. I usually don't view my meals as that unhealthy on a daily basis, but this assignment kind of led me to believe otherwise. When looking at what I ate on the first day, most things I ate were processed. From the bagel and cream cheese I ate for breakfast to the pasta and sandwich I ate for lunch, these foods I eat are highly processed. When I think about it now, the dining halls have no choice but to serve highly processed food. Their job is to feed large masses of people quickly, so what else could you expect. It certainly is not the place where you would find cooking similar to that of an Italian grandmother. This, as we learned, is one who uses simple ingredients and basic utensils to provide one or two meals for her and her family. In this case, many processed ingredients are used to make processed meals with big machines to feed hundreds of people everyday. Efficient? Perhaps yes. However, this is not the healthiest food one could eat.
On the second day I enjoyed the challenge of making an effort to eat foods that were "natural" so to speak. I think I did pretty well. Eggs are a quick and easy breakfast that are not considered highly processed. It is simply an egg that you cook and scramble. Salads and grilled chicken breasts are foods I would consider to be pretty healthy, so looking at my lunch I would say I successfully avoided many other options that are much more processed, even though chicken could be seen as highly processed depending on how you look at it. Overall, the things that I still had trouble eliminating were sauces and dressings. Ranch and barbecue sauce are not great for you by any means, but when the effort is there to eat a mostly wholesome meal, I can live with it. The experience definitely opened my eyes to some things, and I realized that sometimes when you think you are eating somewhat "healthy", the food that you are putting in your body was almost always still processed in some way. Usually, it was processed in a lot of ways. Pandora's Lunchbox highlights this throughout the whole book, and I think it is tough not to agree with Warner at this point. So many foods are not what they seem, and there are so many ingredients and a lot of processing involved in mostly any common food. I might need to rethink my meal plan, but I also need to eat! Isn't that quite the dilemma... Is eating healthy even possible?!
Day One - Monday, September 17th
Day Two - Tuesday, September 18th
- 1 plain bagel with cream cheese
- 1 bottle of Ice Mountain water
- pasta with red sauce
- 1 cheese-filled breadstick
- 1 glass of blue Powerade
- 1 wheat wrap with ham, salami, pepperoni, pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, and chipotle mayo
- 2 pulled pork sandwiches with barbecue sauce and pepper jack cheese
- 1 glass of water
Day Two - Tuesday, September 18th
- 2 scrambled eggs
- 1 glass of water
- 1 salad with peppers, shredded cheese, and ranch dressing
- 1 grilled chicken breast with barbecue sauce
- celery with peanut butter
- 1 glass of 2% milk
Refrigeration nation
The contents of someone's refrigerator, as well as their freezer, can tell us some things about who they are. It gives us insight as to how they shop, and what they’re perspective on health may be. It can provide an idea of how many people they live with, and it can tell us simply what kinds of things they like to eat and drink. For this assignment, a friend of a friend agreed to let me use his refrigerator. I have never met this kid before, and he does not go to MSU. I received these pictures and began to study the contents. I came to a few conclusions, but there are certain things I could not infer about this kid and his family.
First, looking at the freezer I noticed a large can of coffee. From this, I believe that this is a working family, because we all know that coffee is important for starting and making it through the work day. The freezer also contains a frozen pizza, lean cuisine, popsicles, and canadian club whiskey. The family doesn’t have an issue with processed foods, and they are always prepared for a quick meal. They might be a busy family and frozen meals can be a nice thing to have. The popsicles are not too bad. I honestly made a judgement at first, but they aren’t the worst thing for you. I assume there may be kids in the house. Having alcohol in the freezer in a large size tells me that both parents probably enjoy having a glass on occasion. This confirms my belief that I am looking at the freezer of a working family because alcohol is good for stress. Frozen meat and vegetables are also noticeable. I’m guessing the family has no problem eating meat, and they probably try to incorporate a vegetable with most meals.
The fridge is packed with food. I think there is more than one kid living in the house. A lot of leftovers are in tupperwares. They save their food and don’t throw it away. A foam to go box is visible, and I think that the family likes to treat themselves by eating out once a week. There are many condiments and dressings in the side door, some sugary like jelly and ketchup. Sriracha and habanero salsa means they like a kick.
Thinking about processed food and what I read in Pandora’s Lunchbox, I would say that this family does an alright job avoiding processed foods, but they also don’t mind it too much. The take out is reasonable, but if it’s a weekly thing it is not the best from a health standpoint.
What I found doing this assignment is that as much as you think you may learn things from looking at a refrigerator, there are a lot of things that can’t be determined. The overall health of this family seems average, but we can’t actual judge based on these pictures. Clearly there are 4 or 5 people in the family and the parents work. They like to drink occasionally, and they live a busy lifestyle consisting of some quick frozen meals and leftovers. I would say the family has a middle upper class steady income and spends a decent amount of money on food because they can afford it. We don’t know anything else based on just these pictures. Overall, I didn’t love this assignment simply because I don’t think I got as much out of it as I thought I would.
First, looking at the freezer I noticed a large can of coffee. From this, I believe that this is a working family, because we all know that coffee is important for starting and making it through the work day. The freezer also contains a frozen pizza, lean cuisine, popsicles, and canadian club whiskey. The family doesn’t have an issue with processed foods, and they are always prepared for a quick meal. They might be a busy family and frozen meals can be a nice thing to have. The popsicles are not too bad. I honestly made a judgement at first, but they aren’t the worst thing for you. I assume there may be kids in the house. Having alcohol in the freezer in a large size tells me that both parents probably enjoy having a glass on occasion. This confirms my belief that I am looking at the freezer of a working family because alcohol is good for stress. Frozen meat and vegetables are also noticeable. I’m guessing the family has no problem eating meat, and they probably try to incorporate a vegetable with most meals.
The fridge is packed with food. I think there is more than one kid living in the house. A lot of leftovers are in tupperwares. They save their food and don’t throw it away. A foam to go box is visible, and I think that the family likes to treat themselves by eating out once a week. There are many condiments and dressings in the side door, some sugary like jelly and ketchup. Sriracha and habanero salsa means they like a kick.
Thinking about processed food and what I read in Pandora’s Lunchbox, I would say that this family does an alright job avoiding processed foods, but they also don’t mind it too much. The take out is reasonable, but if it’s a weekly thing it is not the best from a health standpoint.
What I found doing this assignment is that as much as you think you may learn things from looking at a refrigerator, there are a lot of things that can’t be determined. The overall health of this family seems average, but we can’t actual judge based on these pictures. Clearly there are 4 or 5 people in the family and the parents work. They like to drink occasionally, and they live a busy lifestyle consisting of some quick frozen meals and leftovers. I would say the family has a middle upper class steady income and spends a decent amount of money on food because they can afford it. We don’t know anything else based on just these pictures. Overall, I didn’t love this assignment simply because I don’t think I got as much out of it as I thought I would.
McChick-fil-a
“McDonaldization” is a term coined by the sociologist George Ritzer to describe attempts to make human life more homogeneous, predictable, and machine-manageable. For this exercise we were asked to go out into the world and disrupt some aspect of a McDonaldized process. I visited Chick-fil-a to see what kind of reaction I would receive.
Chick-fil-a always has a long drive thru line because it is so popular. Customers don’t like to wait any longer than they have to for their food. So, to disrupt the McDonaldized process of a pretty efficient drive thru, I asked the guy behind the counter several questions about the menu. I asked what was good, what he liked, what he thought I would like, and more questions about the contents of each meal. The worker was a male a little bit older than me, and he surprisingly was answering most of my questions. This was true until about 3 minutes later when he finally told me that he was going to have to ask me to make a decision to keep the line moving.
I wouldn’t say that this assignment was hard, but I would say that I was a little uncomfortable doing it. I have always been a person who doesn’t like to draw attention or do something out of the ordinary in public. So, this was one of those things that forced me out of my comfort zone. The reaction from the worker was better than I thought it would be. I think this is because it may have been kind of believable that I had so many questions because not everyone eats Chick-fil-a, and it is not a place like McDonald’s where almost everyone is guaranteed to know the menu. It is a more unique place. However, while ordering I glanced into my rearview mirror a few times to see what the customers behind me were doing. The lady directly behind me was noticeably annoyed. She had her elbow on the door and her hand against her head, and I saw her raise her hands up eventually as if to say, “What is the deal up there?” This is when I started to feel bad, because it’s not like me to do this.
In the article we read called, “The McDonaldization of Society,” George ritzer describes all the ways in which McDonald’s and other McDonaldized companies are successful. This can't be argued. The method of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control has made billions of dollars in many countries all over the world. It works, and consumers will always flock to it in some way because it is convenient, and convenience is everything these days. McDonaldization is usually unhealthy for consumers. Mass produced products are made the same every day with the same process in the midst of a system that never changes. Nothing is original anymore, and all they want you to do is keep spending money. The truth is people will keep spending money at these institutes because like Tim Wu states in his article, “The Tyranny of Convenience,” “Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences.”
Chick-fil-a always has a long drive thru line because it is so popular. Customers don’t like to wait any longer than they have to for their food. So, to disrupt the McDonaldized process of a pretty efficient drive thru, I asked the guy behind the counter several questions about the menu. I asked what was good, what he liked, what he thought I would like, and more questions about the contents of each meal. The worker was a male a little bit older than me, and he surprisingly was answering most of my questions. This was true until about 3 minutes later when he finally told me that he was going to have to ask me to make a decision to keep the line moving.
I wouldn’t say that this assignment was hard, but I would say that I was a little uncomfortable doing it. I have always been a person who doesn’t like to draw attention or do something out of the ordinary in public. So, this was one of those things that forced me out of my comfort zone. The reaction from the worker was better than I thought it would be. I think this is because it may have been kind of believable that I had so many questions because not everyone eats Chick-fil-a, and it is not a place like McDonald’s where almost everyone is guaranteed to know the menu. It is a more unique place. However, while ordering I glanced into my rearview mirror a few times to see what the customers behind me were doing. The lady directly behind me was noticeably annoyed. She had her elbow on the door and her hand against her head, and I saw her raise her hands up eventually as if to say, “What is the deal up there?” This is when I started to feel bad, because it’s not like me to do this.
In the article we read called, “The McDonaldization of Society,” George ritzer describes all the ways in which McDonald’s and other McDonaldized companies are successful. This can't be argued. The method of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control has made billions of dollars in many countries all over the world. It works, and consumers will always flock to it in some way because it is convenient, and convenience is everything these days. McDonaldization is usually unhealthy for consumers. Mass produced products are made the same every day with the same process in the midst of a system that never changes. Nothing is original anymore, and all they want you to do is keep spending money. The truth is people will keep spending money at these institutes because like Tim Wu states in his article, “The Tyranny of Convenience,” “Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences.”