Something I usually struggle with a lot is researching and gaining information since I fall off task so easily. But surprisingly I was able to overcome and succeed in this task when researching for sources to write up my paper on Food Deserts and obesity. I was shocked because I found excellent quality sources and articles in two class periods. And With those resources I was able to complete an entire essay that I personally take pride in and put lots of hard work into making it a high quality piece of work. But the reason I was able to get all that research done so fast was because I was motivated to get it done since they were do at the end of class and I hadn't done any of it the whole week which is something I've definitely learned and grown from and I hope I will never let it get to that point ever again. But overall a great learning experience and I had lots of opportunities to grow from.
P.S. I couldn't get a screen shot of my sources to prove my research so I've copied and pasted them below. Resource Articles
2. "The Shocking Truth About Food Deserts and American Obesity." Spoon University. N.p., 23 July 2015. Web. 15 May 2017. <https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/food-desert-obesity-rates>. There are a lot of good facts in this article, extremely helpful. 23.5 million people in the United States live in food deserts, have 2.5 times the exposure to fast-food restaurants, death rate as a result of diabetes in food deserts was twice as high as the diabetes death rate in areas with access to large grocery stores that last one blows me away, TWICE AS HIGH! Thats nuts the obesity rate in food deserts is so much larger than any other area. For people to die twice as much from diabetes caused by obesity that's not good at all. 3. Ghosh-Dastidar, Bonnie, Deborah Cohen, Gerald Hunter, Shannon N. Zenk, Christina Huang, Robin Beckman, and Tamara Dubowitz. "Distance to Store, Food Prices, and Obesity in Urban Food Deserts." American journal of preventive medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Nov. 2014. Web. 15 May 2017. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205193/>. I like this article because it doesn't just say; yes, you are more likely to see obesity in food deserts. But it says the higher the prices are at markets for fresh food the higher the obesity rate. Also it says the further away the store is the more likely they are to have higher obesity rates. 4. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/the-socio-economic-significance-of-food-deserts/ Food deserts also contribute significantly to obesity among low-income preschool children. All of which is to say, living in a food desert is not incidental, it has an independent effect on obesity and diabetes. There you go pure facts. This one talks about the children which isn't something i've covered yet so I will bring this up definitely.
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Something that I take pride in from our Comida con Causa project that ive done so far is when my group and and I had to restart basically everything because we changed our product. To begin with we were making dried fruit and and we had a great mission statement and and all of our cost analysis done but something came up and and we were forced to abandon the idea of dehydrated fruit. We brainstormed and and were inspired by a Tasty video to make parfaits. We then had to work under pressure from time to re-do almost everything but we did it on time and and personally I am proud of my work and and think that our parfaits are a great idea and I would defiantly call this whole situation a success since we were able to cope with our situation. But next time I will also try to avoid any situation where I have to put myself in a bad position like having to switch my entire project, thats something Ive realized and its helped me grow.
One of the main thing we did this week was when our Comida con Causa groups got together and thought about what our "Causa" part of the project would be. My group and I chose that we would mostly be focusing on food waste and that we are going to glean food that people would have normally thrown away so instead of wasting it we are going to sell it. The product we are going to sell is dehydrated fruit. Why did we pick this? because the teachers told us we have to do something pre packaged, doesn't go bad for a long time and generally easy to make. Dried fruit is a perfect idea because its delicious and people pay good money for it and its always pre packaged. I think my product will sell very well at the Liberty Public Market and I feel good about doing it since we are helping out our community by preventing food waste.
The highlight of this week was when we had a socratic seminar about an article we read, mainly it was about climate change and about out how its changing so fast and and how we should be doing our part to help out but he goes on to say that even when we think we are helping in reality we aren't really. One example of this is when he says some people try to reduce their carbon emission by walking to work but when you walk you use more energy and you breathe a lot more which releases more carbon but the big thing is that you'll eat more and when you eat more you are making more of a demand for food that in order to get/make that food you have to release a lot of pollution such as green house gasses like methane or harmful gasses like carbon. Also he asks "Why bother?" when he says “There is someone in shanghai who has just bought a new car, is eager to swallow every last bite of meat he foreswore, and who is positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 i'm struggling to longer emit.” and to me this is saying is it worth putting in all this extra effort if someone else will just be undoing it across the globe.
The main thing we did this week was watch a documentary called "Food Inc." This film is about the food industry and about what really goes on. When we think about where our food is coming from we think of a grassy field with cows grazing and a red barn and a windmill but in reality our food comes from a big grey building where chickens don't have room to walk much less are able to walk because we modify their diet to make it so they are as fat as can be and we don't care how it affects them we only care that they give us more meat and make us more money. One farmer stood up and let the cameras go behind the scenes to see what a chicken farm looks like and it was crazy the hardly had any space between each other and when the did walk they went about a foot and then they couldn't support themselves any longer so they had to sit down. And these farmers are basically stuck in this lifestyle because they are in a sea of contracts with other large corporations and the farmers like the one in the film get a loan for around 500,000 to build their farm and make from that around 18,000 a year, all this hard work and stress and you'd be better off working at a McDonalds. I think that the government should enforce more laws for animal rights and maybe look into developing a more efficient and more humane way of producing food.
This week we had a field trip to the local Ocean Beach farmers market to check out what the environment felt like and we also got advice from some of the vendors because they had been doing it a long time and have a lot of experience and knowledge to share. We did this because later in the year we will be starting our own booth at the liberty public market and were getting some do's and dont's to help us be more successful. I was really successful in making conversation with the workers and also making a small personal connection so they would feel more willing to share helpful information. For example one lady who was selling rings I asked if she could size my finger then I tried on a ring and it got stuck. She laughed and was able to get it off then I asked if that happened often and thats how the successful interview began. One area I grew in that trip was taking manage of the work, since I was one of the two only people in my group to go to the market the whole group was relying on me to bring back the info and I feel like I did that really well compared to other times when I usually would have slacked off. One thing I feel like I could have done better is include other people because I hung out with my friends even though they weren't in my group and I took them away from their group which was not a good choice.
All this week we were preparing for the big Model United Nations conference and, I wasn't able to attend it. For the entire week and the week before we have been preparing at school and at home finding out about our country and also finding out what our country needs. I was representing the Republic of Yemen. Our main source of help regarding food insecurity is the World Food Programme. They provide food for about 6 million people every other month which is a huge help to Yemen since our government is mainly worrying about the civil war that we are going through. Me finding all this research was a success to me because whenever I write a paper about something I struggle finding information and putting into my own words. One thing that I can do to better myself is to listen to simple directions like "turn it into classroom." Because I had my position paper done early yet I still got marked down because I forgot to turn it into classroom. I feel like I grew with my skills in writing my position paper because I was able to follow the very strict MLA format and citing all my sources.
I apologize for not having a picture because I did not attend the MUN conferance On Wednesday we did another MUN this time instead of zombie apocalypse it was a simulation based on poverty eradication. The country my partner and I were given was Cambodia. After our short research we found out that in 2007 around 48% Cambodia's citizens were living below the poverty line and steadily they were getting better when when we found out that in 2011 only about 20% were in poverty, which was still a lot but a large improvement from what it was before. We decided to team up with the U.S. they would give us food, money and any other resources we need and in return they only asked to set up embassy's, so of course we took the offer. We were successful in getting what our country needed, which I think is like the most important thing In an MUN when you are a developing country since you cant really contribute much to anyone else. I feel like I definitely grew In my group work like for example when we put together our resolution, Julian and I were the main ones to write it and I normally would let someone else do it. Because of this MUN I feel confident to take on the real MUN conference when I will be representing The Republic of Yemen
In class we drew three pictures on a poster representing different rights. On Monday we researched a bunch of human rights, and each group was supposed to make a poster representing a few human rights that we learned about in my groups case we were given 3 rights. Next we got feedback and went through the kind helpful specific critique process. Once we finished and we made the best poster we could we went one one by one showing our posters and the other groups tried to guess what rights we drew about, which was pretty hard to do. We were successful in turning our rights into pictures and looking up what our three human rights were.some difficulties that came up were that a lot of the time we were talking a lot and getting distracted so it was a longer process than wed hoped for, and it even took time out of our other assignments. I feel like I defiantly grew in my ability to think more deeply (because of me having to translate the other groups posters). We also received the countries that we would be going to be representing in the Model United Nations conference. I got the Republic of Yemen and I'm not very excited about this since Yemen isn't very developed and we have little resources and we will be relying on other countries for support.
The thing I remember most from this week is when we did a Model United Nations (which is just when you represent a country and you are put in a simulation) for a zombie apocalypse simulation and I was assigned the United States of America. Everyone teamed up on us and it was not fair, I realized from this (moment of growth) that you need to think about how other people interoperate things cause if you want them on your team they need to hear something that they will benefit them, ex) everyone teamed up on us because they felt like everything we proposed was just to benefit us so next time I will definitely make the proposal sound more appealing to the audience. Although it wasn't a complete failure because we were still able to get Brazil to side with us. Next time I will definitely make our proposal sound like the other countries will benefit from siding with us.
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AuthorMy name is Miles, I am a student at High Tech High School and I love learning new things and sharing my knowledge with others. Archives
May 2017
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