Tuesday:
Dinner: For dinner i had penne alla vodka with parmesan cheese on top because it adds extra flavor. I also put salt on about everything i eat which is bad but i got the habit from my mother. We also had some cut up bread on the side to dip in the pasta sauce. We ate at 8pm because i had my tv show at 9pm so i wanted to be in my room by 9 and my mom doesn't let me eat in my room. We ate dinner at the dinner table just me and my mom. My mom cooked the meal and called me up when it was ready , i stopped doing homework and joined her. The pasta and sauce came from Gourmet Garage ( where we buy all of our food) so did the bread. We use silver wear when we eat, except when eating the bread. The tv was not on because we usually talk about my day/ hers, she likes to talk alottt. I think [if i can remember] at this dinner we talked about the swine flu , because it was on the news just before dinner time. Then we talked a little about whose going to move me into my dorm in arizona because both parents cant come. Before i felt really hungry because i usually feel most hungry at dinner time because i know my mom makes really nice home-cooked meals :) and afterwards i usually feel full and have to sit and watch some tv to digest before finishing my homework.
Wednesday:
Breakfast: nothing, i never eat breakfast, only on weekends and when i do eat it its usually a muffin from the vender at school ad eat during gym period.
Lunch: for lunch on wednesday we got out of school early so i went home to my dads to eat to save some money instead of eating with my friends. What i ate when i got to my dads was a bagel with butter. I was home alone so i ate by myself with the TV on , watching a movie. I also had a glass of mango juice. The bagel was from Whole Foods and so was the juice. I ate with my hands because i don't know how else to eat a bagel. Before i ate the bagel i was just relieved that my dad even had food in the fridge because he always buys food the night OF dinner. and after i ate i felt satisfied nothing special. i had to go to the dentist after so i was just dreading leaving the house.
Dinner: Well when i got home from the dentist to my moms house, i had the WORST headache because the numbing in my mouth was going back to normal and i was starting to feel the pain from the cavities. So because of that i took a nap at about 5pm and then i woke up at 10pm and wasn't hungry at all for an odd reason so i just laid in bed and watched tv until i feel asleep again.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Food Cultures: Home and Corporate(#3)
I would say that my family food ways is that we do eat a good variety of foods. When I'm at my moms we always eat something different. My mom loves to cook so she is always trying out a new recipe from African foods, Indian, Mexican, classic American, etc. One thing that stays constant is that she ALWAYS makes a big salad with every meal and always makes sure i have vegetables with each of my meals to stay healthy. Then when i am at my dads house which is two nights a week, he always shops at Whole Foods every night on his way home, he never gets enough food to last the week, just a meal for the night, that is because he cant cook :( So when I sleep at his house he calls me up on his way home and asks what I want from whole foods, I usually get Mac and cheese or chicken or a burrito or a salad / soup it all depends on the mood.
When comparing the way that I eat with the rest of the Americans, I would stay that I am partially like the others. When im at my mothers house, I think that I eat differently because she always has something new on the table and we hardly order in , but then again I see the way we eat similar to in movies and tv shows because its very “typical” for the parent to say to their child “always gotta eat your greens!” which is totally like my mother! She always has her side plate of greens. But when I am at my fathers house I do think we are “Typical” Americans because whenever I am there we eat typical American food and he doesn’t cook, which is the stereotype for husbands in the U.S, we also order in a lot, which represents the U.S as well because it shows how lazy we are that we order people around to make food for us. Also with my father we usually find ourselves watching tv at the same time, which is a habit that Americans have when they eat. But with my mom she finds that when sitting at the dinner table, the tv shouldn’t be on because it our time to converse and talk with out any distraction, over a nice meal.
going a little off topic , when i think of americans i mostly thing of fast food, like mcdonalds, burger king ,etc. that is one thing that i am happy my family never brought me into ! Because when i look around at all the people in new york/the rest of the country, a lot of the families are eating mcdonalds, and overweight. It represents such a bad picture for us because when people out of the country think of the US they think: fast food.
When comparing the way that I eat with the rest of the Americans, I would stay that I am partially like the others. When im at my mothers house, I think that I eat differently because she always has something new on the table and we hardly order in , but then again I see the way we eat similar to in movies and tv shows because its very “typical” for the parent to say to their child “always gotta eat your greens!” which is totally like my mother! She always has her side plate of greens. But when I am at my fathers house I do think we are “Typical” Americans because whenever I am there we eat typical American food and he doesn’t cook, which is the stereotype for husbands in the U.S, we also order in a lot, which represents the U.S as well because it shows how lazy we are that we order people around to make food for us. Also with my father we usually find ourselves watching tv at the same time, which is a habit that Americans have when they eat. But with my mom she finds that when sitting at the dinner table, the tv shouldn’t be on because it our time to converse and talk with out any distraction, over a nice meal.
going a little off topic , when i think of americans i mostly thing of fast food, like mcdonalds, burger king ,etc. that is one thing that i am happy my family never brought me into ! Because when i look around at all the people in new york/the rest of the country, a lot of the families are eating mcdonalds, and overweight. It represents such a bad picture for us because when people out of the country think of the US they think: fast food.
Internet Research (#2)
Question: Why are the serving sizes in America SO big?
I found some really interesting things when researching the topic of serving sizes in the USA. I am just going to go ahead and list a couple of my findings:
-That food companies are constantly competing with eachother, so that when one company makes their portions bigger, the other has to do the same. Once Mcdonalds creates supersize, so does all other fast foods, etc.
-When people see such a huge portion for a small price they think they are getting a bargin so they buy more of it. its a good value for the price!
-since we have been corupted by the big meal sizes, oversized portions start to look normal to us
-When we go to other countries and eat out we find that their portions are "tiny" but they are really actually normal.
-"In the 1970s, around 47 percent of Americans were overweight or obese; now 66 percent of us are. In addition, the number of just obese people has doubled, from 15 percent of our population to 30 percent."
-"A study comparing eating habits today with twenty years ago found that participants poured themselves about 20 percent more cornflakes and 30 percent more milk than twenty years ago."
- that the size of a plate, bowl, and cup sizes have grown bigger and bigger as the years go buy!
http://diabetes.about.com/od/doctorsandspecialists/qt/bigportions.htm)
http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22178/49492-portion-size--now/3
I found some really interesting things when researching the topic of serving sizes in the USA. I am just going to go ahead and list a couple of my findings:
-That food companies are constantly competing with eachother, so that when one company makes their portions bigger, the other has to do the same. Once Mcdonalds creates supersize, so does all other fast foods, etc.
-When people see such a huge portion for a small price they think they are getting a bargin so they buy more of it. its a good value for the price!
-since we have been corupted by the big meal sizes, oversized portions start to look normal to us
-When we go to other countries and eat out we find that their portions are "tiny" but they are really actually normal.
-"In the 1970s, around 47 percent of Americans were overweight or obese; now 66 percent of us are. In addition, the number of just obese people has doubled, from 15 percent of our population to 30 percent."
-"A study comparing eating habits today with twenty years ago found that participants poured themselves about 20 percent more cornflakes and 30 percent more milk than twenty years ago."
- that the size of a plate, bowl, and cup sizes have grown bigger and bigger as the years go buy!
http://diabetes.about.com/od/doctorsandspecialists/qt/bigportions.htm)
http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22178/49492-portion-size--now/3
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Break Homework : Health Insurance
Now is may not be what you want to hear but when i interviewed my family about our health care/ insurance we have, it turns out that we have only had positive experiences. When i asked my mom what is our experience with health care in the US she said that we are "very fortunate that your father's employer has a good health insurance plan for the entire family. which relates to the fact that yes we do have health coverage through an HMO, Medicare or CHIP.
I cannot answer the next question about having to wait a lot of time in the emergency room because no one in my family never had an emergency where we had to wait.
The only time that we had trouble with medical bills is when we had switched to a new dentist and they told us that they took our health insurance company and then when the bills came , let me just say it was a large amount of money just for cleaning! i think that it is ridiculous that they charge so much just to clean your teeth and show you an x-ray of your mouth!
Now the last question i asked my family was about their experiences with their doctors and surprisingly my dad had a great experience. My father had a 5 bypass surgery [open heart surgery] about two years ago and it was all covered by his insurance and he says that the doctors were all incredible and that the hospital that treated him was more then accommodating to him and let him stay afterwards for recovery.
im not going to use my families example when comparing to the families in the movie Sicko because our family is happy with our health care. What im going to compare is the fact that some family have no health insurance in the US and when they do get sick or have an emergency they end up having to pay a HUGE bill. but in contrast, people in Europe or Canada , they get free health care! i was so surprised when watching the movie because i learned so much about other countries, and from that i actually learned alot about the US . what i learned was that for example people in France are so lucky to have free health care and free child care because it really does make a difference in how one grows up . Then from this i learned that the US sucks when it comes to health care because they dont provide any for free! it can put a family in debt ! The US not having free health insurance is leading to 18,000 additional deaths due to lack of health insurance! I mean there isn't much to say about the subject except for the fact that i believe we should run under the government of another country because it seems that they are living the "better" life and when you compare the society we have to theirs you can see a HUGE difference in our appearances and just the way we act in general .
I cannot answer the next question about having to wait a lot of time in the emergency room because no one in my family never had an emergency where we had to wait.
The only time that we had trouble with medical bills is when we had switched to a new dentist and they told us that they took our health insurance company and then when the bills came , let me just say it was a large amount of money just for cleaning! i think that it is ridiculous that they charge so much just to clean your teeth and show you an x-ray of your mouth!
Now the last question i asked my family was about their experiences with their doctors and surprisingly my dad had a great experience. My father had a 5 bypass surgery [open heart surgery] about two years ago and it was all covered by his insurance and he says that the doctors were all incredible and that the hospital that treated him was more then accommodating to him and let him stay afterwards for recovery.
im not going to use my families example when comparing to the families in the movie Sicko because our family is happy with our health care. What im going to compare is the fact that some family have no health insurance in the US and when they do get sick or have an emergency they end up having to pay a HUGE bill. but in contrast, people in Europe or Canada , they get free health care! i was so surprised when watching the movie because i learned so much about other countries, and from that i actually learned alot about the US . what i learned was that for example people in France are so lucky to have free health care and free child care because it really does make a difference in how one grows up . Then from this i learned that the US sucks when it comes to health care because they dont provide any for free! it can put a family in debt ! The US not having free health insurance is leading to 18,000 additional deaths due to lack of health insurance! I mean there isn't much to say about the subject except for the fact that i believe we should run under the government of another country because it seems that they are living the "better" life and when you compare the society we have to theirs you can see a HUGE difference in our appearances and just the way we act in general .
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Wealth and Poverty in US -Internet Research [not finished]
1) Has poverty changed over time?
- After doing some research i learned that yes the poverty rate in the US has changed over the years. It states that in the 1950's the poverty rate was at 22% which represents about 40 billion poor people ! This was when the poverty rate was at its peek because after that the rates decreased to 15% and below. When it started to decrease a lot , it was around the time of 1959-1969 , thats when it became 12% . over the years the rate increased and decreases due to economic difficulties as we moved into recession. Over all the latest rate that this site shows is 2007 and it was 37.3 million people were poor. Which is 12.5% . Looking at this rate you can see how the rate changed from the 1950's to 2007!
[http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm#change]
2) Follow up question: Why was the rate so high in the 1950's?
- the rate in the US was so high in the 1950's because it was right after the great depression. the rates were actually the highest around the 1940's and 1930's because that was during the great depression. at that time the rates reached a peak of 40%! almost half of America! The reason for the "Great Depression" was because there was a sudden crash in the stock market and the country became poor. This all relates to today i feel like because our stock market is crashing and people are spending money in the wrong places, we might be reaching that peak in the poverty rates soon :(
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression]
3) How many children under 18 in the US in poverty ?
- i found this website that tells me how many children are in poverty but its for the year 2007
- After doing some research i learned that yes the poverty rate in the US has changed over the years. It states that in the 1950's the poverty rate was at 22% which represents about 40 billion poor people ! This was when the poverty rate was at its peek because after that the rates decreased to 15% and below. When it started to decrease a lot , it was around the time of 1959-1969 , thats when it became 12% . over the years the rate increased and decreases due to economic difficulties as we moved into recession. Over all the latest rate that this site shows is 2007 and it was 37.3 million people were poor. Which is 12.5% . Looking at this rate you can see how the rate changed from the 1950's to 2007!
[http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm#change]
2) Follow up question: Why was the rate so high in the 1950's?
- the rate in the US was so high in the 1950's because it was right after the great depression. the rates were actually the highest around the 1940's and 1930's because that was during the great depression. at that time the rates reached a peak of 40%! almost half of America! The reason for the "Great Depression" was because there was a sudden crash in the stock market and the country became poor. This all relates to today i feel like because our stock market is crashing and people are spending money in the wrong places, we might be reaching that peak in the poverty rates soon :(
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression]
3) How many children under 18 in the US in poverty ?
- i found this website that tells me how many children are in poverty but its for the year 2007
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