Personal Essay Idea

For my personal essay about food I am thinking about writing about my eating habits. I want to talk about how as a baby I was obsessed with eating carrots and then as my life goes on I always have a type of food or restaurant that I am obsessed with! My Great-Grandma always had an eating habit like this too and my family always talks about how I am just like her with food. I have attached a picture of my family, my boyfriend, and my grandparents and two of my cousins from this weekend we went to Benihana's for dinner, which is a place I love to eat at and even get carryouts from.  Then I want to tie in how working at our Country Club has impacted my food habits. I also want to talk about how college has impacted my eating habits and has caused them to change a lot. Any feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated! (:

Inside McDonald's

I watched Inside McDonald's and found it to be very intense in a way. How many people do you think McDonald's serves a day? The answer is 52 MILLION people....that is a huge amount! Just thinking about that and reflecting on the class discussions, the book I have been reading and the blogs and how much food is processed it makes it kind of scary to think about. In the movie it is all about McDonalds and talks about the restaurants, employees, and food. I picked this movie mostly because I read Fast Food Nation, which made many references to McDonalds and other fast food companies. I googled a few videos after watching the movie and found this video about where the meat comes from to very interesting. I also came across a video where there was a fight within McDonald's!

A few facts that I found to be interesting is that McDonald's has more than 31 thousand restaurants in 118 countries! That is a lot of McDonald's and to even think about they are located all over the world. Within the movie it talks about how the location of McDonald's really lead to the most business. The McDonald's on the express ways attract the most customers because it is so convent. Also, it is said that McDonald's sell mostly hamburgers and fries the most out of all the food they offer on their menu. I am not sure why that is it just seems to be that way because I think of things as if I am driving and eating a hamburger would be pretty challenging to eat while driving....even though it would probably be dangerous for me! While watching how McDonald's packages their food up is very gross! It does not seem clean to me at all and after watching that made me rethink if I will ever want to eat McDonald's again! I found a short clip like the part that they showed in the movie to show this. While watching this movie it for sure will continue to change the way I eat and what I now consider to eat!

Why Do Fries Taste So Good?

While continuing to read Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser it is just so interesting to learn about how the fast food production has started many years ago. It talks about companies such as McDonalds, Burger King, other old burger places that were around then, and pizza locations.

While reading the next part of book I found chapter five to really be an interesting chapter, which is titled Why Do Fries Taste So Good? This chapter focuses on the production of  fries and how they are made and how they came about. It was very interesting to me to watch that video that I found online and read about the production of fries back in the day.

This chapter starts out talking about the J.R Simplot Plant in Aberdeen, Idaho. He grew up working on his family's farm in Idaho. At the age of 15 he dropped out of school and was able to find work in a potato house. After working there for one year he then was a potato farmer. Thinking about that, if something like that happened in today's society it would be looked at in such a different way! This type of situation just shows how times have changed. In today's society it is usually that you go to school to get an education and then continue on to pursue a higher degree. It just shows how over the years situations like this can change so much.

After many years he was very involved with potato farming with buying, selling and even sorting potatoes. I found this next part of the book to be very interesting because they can began to talk about how he was the largest shipper of potatoes. In the end he ended up selling frozen french fries to McDonalds. In the book there is a quote from Ray Kroc talking about frozen french fries, which states, "almost sacrosanct" (68).

This book was a book I was not sure about when first began reading it, but in the end I really ended up enjoying the book. It talked about the production of fast food with all the different food industries and how different foods got started in within the fast food business. Personally in my earlier blog I talked about how they wanted to put a  McDonald's into Disney when it is such a high end vacation spot for families to this day still! I just find that to be so interesting and never would have assumed anything like that was talked about before.

FAST FOOD NATION!

The book I am reading is Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser. Once I sat down to read this book I got this feeling that I did not like, which was thinking that during the book they could/may possibly discuss on how they produce fast food in great detail. After reading awhile into the book they did not even come close to talking about...luckily! This book is one of my favorite books so far. As much as I have read it is about how fast food has expended over many years. It is about how Carl Karcher and the McDonalds brother, produce fast- food industries all over southern California. It also connects it back to Walt Disney World. 





As far as I have read into the book thus far my favorite chapter would be chapter two. During this chapter it talks how Walt Disney and McDonald's are extremely similar. While reading this it was so interesting because thinking about it now I never would have even thought about how these two people connect within each other. Ray Kroc was involved in making McDonald's one of the most successful fast food places. Kroc and Disney were both born in Illinois, high school drop outs, served in World War I, and moved to Southern California after the war. Who would have thought that these people would be so incredibly successful without finishing high school and not getting some type of college degree....sure shows how the world has changed over time and is continuing to change!

Through out this chapter it shows how McDonald's restaurants have expanded all over the world and into the outside world even. Since these two people were such close friends Kroc tried to have a McDonalds in Disney. He tried to make this happen by sending a letter out to Disney asking him if there would be room in the park. Sadly, this did not work out there were disagreements on how the money would be taken care of. Disney wanted to raise some prices of the food, so he would get more money, but in the end Kroc just did not like that idea. Personally, it did not surprise me reading that, while thinking about how high class Walt Disney World is today...how would you react about this? Throughout the rest of the book to how far I have read it discusses more on how Disney has come along in the very beginning stages along with food production.

Walt Disney who was a business man, animator, cartoonist, producer, director, screenwriter, entrepreneur, and voice actor. 

Ray Kroc became part of McDonalds's and led it to be one of the most successful fast food restaurants.

The Love For Food

Food Within the Kavulich Family

I think it is safe to say that most of us highly enjoy food....am I right? Food is absolutely part of my own everyday life. We as humans eat all day long (or at least I do). The main reason why I think part of my day is spent either thinking or eating food is due to my parents. All growing up my mom was the cook in my house she cooked every single dinner and would pack us lunches for school each day. When ever my dad tried to cook it always seemed to turn into some sort of disaster! Overall, my mom is a terrific cook once in a great while she will burn something or a meal will go wrong, but in the end it is always very enjoyable to consume what she makes.

The College Way of Eating

Now, that I am two years into college and having to cook for myself I can say it is a challenge for me. Unlike my mom cooking is something I am horrible at! I have many problems when I try to make food such as, 1. I never know what to make 2. I burn it 3. I do not have all the ingredients I need 4. I may skip a step that is important. After realizing how bad of a cook I am I realized I would be better of just eat frozen meals, bagels, noodles, etc. On a side note everything that I do eat I like. So, I figured out even though I clearly struggle at cooking I still some how manage to eat everything I like (which is a miracle since half of it is frozen meals).

The Way We Eat 

I do work at a country club back home, so I know and often see what a majority of the people eat. Even back at home my family and I go out to dinner often. What I can say is that people in today's society eat so incredibly bad including myself! We all love those greasy and fatty meals because they taste so good, but yet we all know how bad they are for our health. I always seem to have this "health kick" every now and then where I tell myself how bad I eat and how I need to start eating better by having fruits, veggies, etc. Do you think it works well for me? No, it doesn't! I works for a few days then I get bored of eating that healthy food all the time, so go back to my poor eating habits. From ages 3-18 I was a regional competitive figure skater where I was forced to eat health if I wanted to keep training and competing like I was. Since being at Western is where my eating habits changed a lot, it never led to me gaining an insane amount of weight. I am not really sure why that is, since I am pretty lazy all the time except for when I am in class or on campus for something. What I do know is that the way my body is health wise it can not be too great from all the poor food I consume (yikes!!). After reflecting on my living style of food I will now tell myself once again on why I should eat healthier....I will hope it works better for me this time, since all the other times I tell myself this it seems to fail!