Brookyln Food Conference

During the first session, I went to a Teen Program: Nutrition 101 hoping to learn something since it was a teen program. Turned out, it was boring; it was taught by two high school sophomores and I felt that they did not know what they were talking about. They were reading from their papers and I was not absorbing anything from that so I ditched half of the session for the stuff in the gyms. We talked about nutrients, sugar, fats, etc; waste of my 45 minutes.

I thought that the second session was more interesting; I went to the School Food Activism workshop. They talked about some of the main problems with school lunch and what can be done to solve them. The lack of resources and the lack of participation hinders them from getting students to eat healthy. I agree with the fact that people (not just parents but students too) are not doing things to make school lunch something better. They also mentioned that students should talk to the manager of the kitchen to let their voices be heard. I feel that students lack that knowledge; but then again, if there were students (like myself) who were educated about this, they would probably not do anything. One of the reasons might connect to the tactic of control: fear. Students might be afraid that they do not have enough power over the authorities to make a change. Others, might just need a plan to unleash their leadership skills. Students need to know that they can change the food that are being served at school and they can choose what is being served. Hunter surveys show that students do not want to be labeled as being poor and that reminded me of the Food Stamp issue. I think it is just stupid to care about what others think of you regardless of the situation. Someone at the session mentioned food meditation and she said that doing the meditation allows one to actually taste the food, even though it might take an hour to eat a strawberry. I started to take food meditation into consideration and started to think about the way I eat my food. First, I imagined myself meditating at the dinner table and then I saw my mom telling me to finish my food. I feel that people do not take the time to appreciate the food they are getting and they do not think about how the food come about. Then on the other hand, I am not saying to sit there and spend your lunchtime thinking about where the food came from instead of getting your energy.