My views on Food

In # 13: How has your view of food changed? by WyattLeave a Comment

For me, food has always been something that I had to have not necessarily something that I have always enjoyed. I usually do not want to stop my day, or whatever I am doing, to stop and eat. It has always been something that has been more of an inconvenience in my day and results in skipped meals often. That is not to say that there are not foods that I will gladly stop any day for. I don’t think that this view on food will ever really change for myself but I do hope to change my eating habits. Through this course I have learned a lot about different food sources, impacts of what we eat, and much much more.

Before this course I was very familiar with food safety practices in production and domestically. Growing up I was highly involved in 4-H and spent many summers attending day camps on all sorts of topics, but the most impactful one was a day two day camp on food safety and preparation. I still use what I was taught that day to this day, probably 15 years later. I also felt fairly comfortable with my knowledge of world hunger and how scientists around the world are working to solve this problem. In high school my science teacher taught us about some different genetically engineered strains of rice which included added vitamins and minerals which were lacking in areas where rice is highly consumed.

I have also gotten to learn a lot about plant-based meat alternatives from my boyfriends family, who are predominantly vegetarian. It was really cool to see all of this knowledge from my experiences come together in this course and to learn more about each of these topics. For me, learning always occurs more when I have experiences related to what I learn, so I feel like this really helped me in this course. I think I learned the most about food psychology and culture and novel foods. I think these two also go hand in hand a lot, as what is considered novel in the United States may not be novel in India or Chile.

When I think about food and culture I instantly think of a Runza, which may be novel to someone in Washington state but to someone in Germany is just another menu option, by a different name of course. One of my favorite projects in elementary school was when everyone in my class researched Christmas in a different country around the world, mainly because we got to try sorts of cookies and candies everyone made. Food and culture are so closely related that even certain food smells may make you think of certain cultures. For me anytime I smell garlic or onions I think of Italian food and fluffy golden brown garlic bread, which at one point may have been a novel food in areas that garlic can’t be regularly grown.

Novel foods are something that is very interesting to me because they rely so much on culture, a big one for United States consumers will be insects moving forward. I think the biggest battle with these novel foods, especially in the U.S. is shifting perception around them. Many people only see bugs as gross and dirty and now are being asked if they’d like to eat them. This is what I am most excited for is seeing how companies market these products and how successful they can be in U.S. markets compared to markets that they have existed in for years.

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