Organic food Essay Example for Free

Organic food Essay We have all heard the phrase â€Å"What you don’t know won’t hurt you† and it has undoubtedly applied to many situations in our lives that we are still unaware of. We like to toss around this phrase without worrying too much about what it implies because that is the whole point of the phrase, not to worry. When it comes to what we are putting into our bodies, though, what we do not know can indeed hurt us immensely. In the United States, we have grown accustomed to not thinking much about what we are consuming. The main factors we look for in food are taste and price. We live in a consumer society where money rules our nation, it rules our lives, and it rules us. Money has become the main focus for every decision we make, but when it comes to something as important as our health, should we look at a few other factors? With societies concerns focusing on wealth and profit, there is no surprise that the food industry finds the cheapest ways to produce the most food. Consequently, this produces many negative effects on aspects of our lives such as our health and the environment. When choosing what foods to consume, we should begin to pay more attention to factors other than the price tag. The food industry obviously plays a big role in this epidemic of processed food, but they are not the only ones to blame. Yes they are the ones taking advantage of our ignorance by mass-producing cheap food that they know we will not think twice about, but the ignorance is our fault. Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, describes the current foundation of the food industry, â€Å"Our food system depends on consumers’ not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing† (Pollan 245). Pollan is correct in his assumption that most Americans do not know much about their food besides how much it cost. Most of them are not even aware that they do not know what is in their food. They subconsciously assume that chicken is chicken and cheese is cheese, but unfortunately that is hardly ever the case. Many people choose to live along these guidelines of â€Å"ignorance is bliss† by not paying attention to the horror stories of the food industry; they turn their heads from documentaries on animal treatment and plug their ears at the mention of the real ingredients of their precious snacks. As long as the food they are eating tastes good and did not cost a lot of money, they are content with not knowing how unhealthy it might be. Pollan further explains another reason people buy the cheapest available food: It makes good economic sense that people with limited money to spend on food would spend it on the cheapest calories they can find, especially when the cheapest calories—fats and sugars—are precisely the ones offering the biggest neurobiological rewards. (Pollan 108) People with lower incomes are confined to buying cheap food, typically the most processed and unhealthy food, because with their limited funds they cannot afford to care about the quality of what they are eating. They buy what is cheapest because that is all they can get. As long as they have food in their stomachs, they do not complain or worry too much about the side affects. Eating food that may not be very healthy definitely outweighs the alternative of eating nothing and starving. Americans are ignorant of the food that they purchase either because they choose not to educate themselves or because they really have no choice. Either way, they are missing out on other possibilities of obtaining food that have many advantages. Not knowing what our food is made of also prevents us from knowing what alternative food options are available to us. Because we see no problems with our current food choices, we see no reason to discover new ones. The processed food at the supermarket is all we know because it is the most convenient and affordable from of nourishment we can obtain. Pollan’s book includes the testimony of someone who buys food from a local, organic farmer, â€Å"†¦for me it’s all about the taste, which is just so different—this is a chickinier chicken. Art’s chickens just taste cleaner, like the chicken I remember when I was a kid† (Pollan 252). The food available from local farmers is not only better for our health and the environment but it also tastes better. We have grown accustomed to the artificially flavored food we buy from grocery stores and do not realize that the food we eat could taste better and more natural. The locally grown food tastes healthier and more natural because that is precisely what it is. The artificially engineered taste of chicken in a common chicken nugget is not what a chicken should taste like. Besides enhanced taste, buying from local farmers offers many other benefits as well. An organic farmer interviewed in The Omnivore’s Dilemma explains some more benefits of buying locally, With our food all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water—of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. (Pollan 243) One of the main reasons why people do not want to look into these alternative methods of eating is because they are more expensive. People overlook these opportunities because the organic food appears overpriced, but when you evaluate all these factors it might not be as overpriced as you might think. Yes the food is more expensive but it stands true that you get what you pay for. When paying more, you are receiving a whole lot more that benefits your health, community, and environment. The extra money that would be spent on food, you might save on your medical bills and taxes. Locally produced food is healthier for you and it carries a much less chance of containing disease and illness. Another bonus of buying from local farms: there is less pollution created than in the factories and slaughterhouses of the globalized food industry. If people became aware of alternative food options and the benefits associated with them, they would be more inclined to pay better attention to what they are buying. This would not only improve ones personal health, but also the environment. Although money remains a very important role in deciding what we purchase, it would benefit us to consider a few other aspects of the food that we buy. Paying attention to details such as what goes into the food, where it is produced, and how it is produced would lead us to make healthier decisions. More often than not, a satisfying answer to these questions will not be found in the food at our local supermarkets, but rather a local farmer. Buying from these farmers would mean supporting a healthy environment and body. Their production methods are healthier and much more environmentally friendly than any factories in a big-name food industry. While it may seem that this is a simple choice, many Americans will continue to ignore these truths. When it comes down to it, money rules everything and it will take a lot more than the promise of better health for people to overlook a price tag. They say ignorance is bliss, but when that ignorance leads to decisions that contaminate our bodies and our environment, the bliss will be short lived.

Analysis of A Light In The Forest by Conrad Richter Essay -- A Light i

Analysis of A Light In The Forest by Conrad Richter A Light In The Forest by Conrad Richter is an amazing story of one Indian boy's will to survive and struggle to overcome many obstacles. A light in the forest is about a white boy who was kidnapped from his family by Indians when he was 4 years old. An Indian couple from the tribe adopted him and raised him as their own son naming him Lenni Quis or True Son. They taught him the religion and customs of the Indian people and he came to live by these customs and to love his new family. But then 11 years later, the white men came back to reclaim all of the people the Indians kidnapped, even if they didn't want to come back to with the white people. True son was forced to come back to his white family very much against his wishes. This is the story of True son and his battle to get back to his Indian family. This is also the story of his family's reaction to their son who was taken from them and is now returned very different than when he left them 11 years earlier. The biggest question that was raised for me when I was reading this book, was who is your real family, the people who are your blood relatives, or the people who raised you and loved you for many years. While I was reading this book, I was wondering why the white people were so set on bringing True Son back to the "white land." It was obvious he wasn't being harmed and wanted to stay with his Indian mother and father. I think they should have just left him with his Indian mother and father. I think that by True son rebelling against his White mother and father, he was showing that he didn't want to stay with them and that he should be able to choose his own destiny. If his white mother and fat... ... and weak while the Indian people are wild, free, strong, and independent. I think that the title "A Light In The Forest" means that True Son is a special person hidden away in the forest. That even though the white people think that the Indians are savages, they are really quite civil and raised this boy as their own, always treating him well. He is a success story. The title doesn't tell much about the story, but when you first read the title you know that it is probably about a forest and something in that forest. I think that there could have been better names for the story, like ones that related the book to Indians or a lost boy found. The name a Light In The Forest doesn't tell as much about the book as it could, but it is a good title because it leaves the reader wondering what that light is, and it makes the reader curious to read the book.

Insomnia and Dreaming

For the occurrence of dreams, an uninterrupted period of sleep is needed. So if the quality of sleep declines, the dream recall frequency will decline as well. As experiments shown us, people of mood disorder and depression have a reduced dream recall frequency. Also people having Apnea and increased daytime sleepiness, CNS and PLM will have the same results which are a decline of sleep quality and a reduced dream recall frequency. Insomnia is the most frequent, it is considered as a symptom and it is a subjective dissatisfaction with sleep, also difficulty with sleep initiation and sleep maintenance. The stages may look like this, increased sleep latency, increased awakenings and arousals, decreased sleep efficiency, increased time of wake after sleep onset, decreased total sleep time, decreased rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) and decreased deep sleep in stages 3 and 4. A study on 289 people have showed over a 6 year period in the life of the experiment, that there is a comparison between individuals reporting insomnia to those reporting no insomnia. Those reporting were 141 and those none reporting were 148 individual. The only difference was in the nightmare recall frequency that was found higher in the insomnia group. Also this finding took into consideration people taking medications and those who were not taking any sort of medication inside the reporting insomnia group. A decrease in dream recall was shown; a decline in dream recall is recorded with disordered sleep. Those with sleep latency more than 30 minutes reported a decline in dream recall. As for sleep effiency the groups with a higher percentage (85%) had more dream recall frequency than others. Individuals with a WASO (wake after sleep onset), of higher than 60 minutes had a lower dream recall than others. Also stages 3 and 4 showed a significant decline for the group reporting insomnia. As a result, people with 360 minutes of continuous sleep have an increased nightmare and dream recall. As a conclusion, dreaming requires a minimum quality of continuous sleep. People reporting insomnia has lower levels of dream and nightmare recalls. I can not say that I had a personal experience in insomnia. But surely I saw close people in my family having this problem. When I used to live in my grandparents house, I used to notice how my uncle would wake up in the middle of the night after slept for a maximum of an hour. He used to walk around the house for a while, than take out his collection games that he used to build and try to reshape them. He would do this for a couple of hours before returning to bed. I might say that I noticed how he would wake up in a bad mood. Also when he was asked to remember certain events and details it would take him a while. I think his changeable mood as a result of sleeping for a very limited number of hours may have affected his way of thinking. Also I noticed how he would sleep for several hours during the day to compensate the lost sleepless nights. As a direct effect, my uncle started taking bad decisions in his field of work and was finally advised to see a physician. These days after seeing the difference I realized that I was right in describing his insomnia at the time. Reference: Pagel, J. F. 1,3; Shocknesse, Shannon 2 (1)University of Colorado School of Medicine and Director, Sleep Disorders Center of Southern Colorado, Pueblo, Colorado (2)Rocky Mountain Sleep, Pueblo, Colorado Dreaming and Insomnia: Polysomnographic Correlates of Reported Dream Recall Frequency. [Article] Dreaming. 17(3):140-151, September 2007.

The History and Goals of the Chicano Movement

The Chicano Movement emerged during the civil rights era with three goals: restoration of land, rights for farmworkers and education reforms. Before the 1960s, however, Latinos lacked influence in the national political arena. That changed when the Mexican American Political Association worked to elect John F. Kennedy president in 1960, establishing Latinos as a significant voting bloc. After Kennedy was sworn into office, he showed his gratitude by not only appointing Hispanics to posts in his administration but also by considering the concerns of the Hispanic community. As a viable political entity, Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, began demanding reforms in labor, education and other sectors to meet their needs. Historic Ties The Hispanic community’s activism predates the 1960s. In the 1940s and ’50s, for example, Hispanics won two major legal victories. The first—Mendez v. Westminster Supreme Court—was a 1947 case that prohibited segregating Latino schoolchildren from white children. It proved to be an important predecessor to Brown v. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court determined that a â€Å"separate but equal† policy in schools violated the Constitution. In 1954, the same year Brown appeared before the Supreme Court, Hispanics achieved another legal feat in Hernandez v. Texas. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment  guaranteed equal protection to all racial groups, not just blacks and whites. In the 1960s and 70s, Hispanics not only pressed for equal rights, they also began to question the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This 1848 agreement ended the Mexican-American War and resulted in America acquiring territory from Mexico that currently comprises the Southwestern United States. During the civil rights era, Chicano radicals began to demand that the land be given to Mexican Americans, as they believed it constituted their ancestral homeland, also known as Aztlà ¡n. In 1966, Reies Là ³pez Tijerina led a three-day march from Albuquerque, N.M., to the state capital of Santa Fe, where he gave the governor a petition calling for the investigation of Mexican land grants. He argued that the United States annexation of Mexican land in the 1800s was illegal. Activist Rodolfo â€Å"Corky† Gonzales, known for the poem â€Å"Yo Soy Joaquà ­n,† or â€Å"I Am Joaquà ­n,† also backed a separate Mexican  American state. The epic poem about Chicano history and identity includes the following lines: â€Å"The Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken and is but another treacherous promise. / My land is lost and stolen. / My culture has been raped.† Farmworkers Make Headlines Arguably the most well-known fight Mexican Americans waged during the 1960s was that to secure unionization for farmworkers. To sway grape growers to recognize United Farm Workers—the Delano, Calif., union launched by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta—a national boycott of grapes began in 1965. Grape pickers went on strike, and Chavez went on a 25-day hunger strike in 1968. 3/10/1968 - Delano, CA- Senator Robert Kennedy (L) breaks bread with Union Leader Cesar Chavez as Chavez ended a 23-day fast in support of non-violence in the strike against grape growers. Bettmann  / Getty Images At the height of their fight, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy visited the farmworkers to show his support. It took until 1970 for the farmworkers to triumph. That year, grape growers signed agreements acknowledging UFW as a union. Philosophy of a Movement Students played a central role in the Chicano fight for justice. Notable student groups included the  United Mexican American Students and the Mexican American Youth Association. Members of such groups staged walkouts from schools in Denver and Los Angeles in 1968 to protest Eurocentric curriculums, high dropout rates among Chicano students, a ban on speaking Spanish and related issues. By the next decade, both the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unlawful to keep students who couldn’t speak English from getting an education. Later, Congress passed the Equal Opportunity Act of 1974, which resulted in the implementation of more bilingual education programs in public schools. Not only did Chicano activism in 1968 lead to educational reforms, but it also saw the birth of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which formed with the goal of protecting the civil rights of Hispanics. It was the first organization dedicated to such a cause. The following year, hundreds of Chicano activists gathered for the First National Chicano Conference in Denver. The name of the conference is significant as it marks the term â€Å"Chicano† as a replacement of Mexican. At the conference, activists developed a manifesto of sorts called â€Å"El Plan Espiritual de Aztlà ¡n,† or â€Å"The Spiritual Plan of Aztlà ¡n.† It states: â€Å"We†¦conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and our political life.† The idea of a unified Chicano people also played out when political party La Raza Unida, or the United Race, formed to bring issues of importance to Hispanics to the forefront of national politics. Two female Brown Berets, a Chicano activist group, stand together in matching uniforms. David Fenton / Getty Images Other activist groups of note included the Brown Berets and the Young Lords, which was made up of Puerto Ricans in Chicago and New York. Both groups mirrored the Black Panthers in militancy. Looking Forward Now the largest racial minority in the United States, there’s no denying the influence that Latinos have as a voting bloc. While Hispanics have more political power than they did during the 1960s, they also have new challenges. Immigration and education reforms are of key importance to the community. Due to the urgency of such issues, this generation of Chicanos will likely produce some notable activists of its own.