Reflections: Weeks 5 & 6

Week 5:

This week I was one of the people who was assigned the review of Reading 15: Feeding the World. I found this article very interesting it rasied a lot of questions in my mind. The article had four main topics; Society's 4 Transitional Stages, Evidence for Negative Population Growth, Future Food Supply/Demand Balance, Protecting the Environment, and the Challenges Ahead. The main thing that got me thinking was the difference between supply and demand. It really made me ask myself what are we going to do if the demand of food surpasses the supply. From 1995-2000 both the population and income grew rapidly. If that streak continues to grow at the same rate, the future food supply will fall beneath the overall demand for food. There are already countries who face hunger, so in some places the demand of food has already passed the supply. What if this was a problem for the whole world? What would we do? Who could help us? There are a lot of questions that seem to have come up when reading this article. This is why its so important for us to protect the environment and our earth while we still can. If we dont take care of it now who is going to take care of it later?

This week we also began to watch the documentary "A Diet For a New America". This documentary was hosted by John Robbins, and it really opened my eyes to what we eat. There were a lot of interesting facts stated some of the ones that caught my eye were:

~ With the amount of meat we Americans eat (individually) in one meal, other countries can feed 4 or 5 people with the same amount!

~There was a part in the documentary were a patient goes in to the hospital to get his blood tested and the doctor noticed fat in his blood sample. The doctor then asked the patient if he ate anything before he came to the hospital and the patient said yes, he had a cheeseburger and a milkshake. The fat that was found in his blood sample was the fat from the foods that he had been eating.

~Finally, the way that we raise some of the meat really made me think. Some people prefer tender, leaner meat. The way that farmers get that is by keeping the cow confined in a small area so that the meat can become more tenderized.

The documentary was very interesting and made me think a lot about how much meat I consume and what kind. For a lot of Americans it is common to have meat as the main course. Through meat we recieve proteins, vitamins, etc. Other countries find other ways to get the same nutrients whether it be through rice or pastas. It got me thinking what I could substitute meat for.

We also had an Eye Opener due this week on CSPI, which stands for Center for Science in the Public Interest. For this assignment I took a tour of the food supply. Here you could see what goes on in areas of the farm and in the public and learn more about them. The places I toured included: The Fertilizer Factory, Factory Farm, Supermarket, Hospital, Animal Feed, Irrigation, Pesticides, Feed Lot, Restaurant, Manure Lagoon, and Slaughter House. This tour tied in well with the documentary we were watching also.

Week 6:

This week we were all individually assigned a chapter from the book and we were to write a review on the chapter. The chapter I read was Chapter 14: Buzz Cut. This article focused mainly on the Great Bear Agreement and how many of the forests in British Columbia are being cut down at an alarming rate. The Great Bear Agreement helps protect the forests, trees, wildlife, etc in British Columbia and also in Canada. This article was pretty interesting and I enjoyed reading it. It was also interesting to read about everyone elses chapters.

My final thoughts.....I really enjoyed these last couple of weeks, the things we have been doing in class have really helped open my eyes up to a lot of things. I have started to think more about what I eat and what I do to help/hurt the environment. Thanks for reading my post:)