Author: Jeremy

I started out my journey by reading an article titled “The Unabomber Was Right.” The Unabomber is a man who believed that technological civilizations were bad and wanted to tear them down. He was pushed to this opinion when he was living in a cabin in the woods with no power and electricity. The Unabomber had a favorite place he visited within the woods. This place was a little body of water that calmed him and one day when he went to visit there was a big road there instead. He started bombing to gain notoriety for his manifesto on technological civilizations. I asked what details specifically did this manifesto contain and I began to realize the general ideas which all resulted in evidently slowing down technological civilizations till they were weak and then getting rid of them before the grew back up again. I then began to think if this was even possible. So much of the world is ran on technology and it makes things simpler and less time consuming. When searching I realized that in order for the Unabomber to reach his dream he would need a strong argument to convince the majority to follow his manifesto. This is when I stumble on an article that stated 70% of Americans fear Robots taking over in the future. If these people fear that this may happen then the Unabomber could use this as leverage to convince people that one day technology may hurt us even more than it is now. While reading this article I thought about the movie iRobot. This movie stars Will Smith as a detective who is trying to solve a murder that may have been committed by a robot. If the world ever gets to how that movie is then it would be quite the scary site.

Jeremy Diaz

November 4, 2018

 

Conference Two Report & Reflection

Feedback Report

Report the goals for improvement you had set for yourself after Conference Two.

Summarize the feedback you received during your conference, paying attention both to feedback about new learning and improvement (or lack thereof) on habits, skills and techniques you needed to work on after Conference One.

You received feedback on your writing process, your reading process, your current abilities to integrate your own ideas with those of others, and your engagement as a learner in the course so far. This section should report the most important pieces of feedback you received in all of these areas. Review your notes from the conference, the rubrics you received, any notes or comments on your paper and the conference recording you made to refresh your memory.

Be sure to include both positive feedback about what you’re doing well and constructive critical feedback indicating process or skills you’ll need to work on.

Feel free to use subheadings to organize this section of your reflection, but don’t feel obligated to. Please don’t write in bullet points.

One of the biggest things I was asked to work on was my intro. In this paper I struggled with creating an introduction that lead readers to the question. I should have used more of Kolberts work to lead the readers to the question I eventually formulated. Another thing I must do is use more of a variety of signal verbs throughout my paper. I used some of the same words like states and says. I should use other words like argues. I must try not to assume the readers knows everything and provide more of a background when writing my paper. I should also try new things like using block quotes and brackets.  I also need to work on my work cited page because I always forget to put that in.

Analyze/Reflect

For the things you’re doing well, explain what you’re doing well and why it’s working. For things you need to work on, try to figure out and explain the obstacles to your growth and what you need to overcome them.

To help you figure out why things are going well or what’s limiting your growth, consider this: Learning to write well takes special knowledge about writing (for example, about process, techniques, goals) and about the topics you’re writing about, engaged persistent effort, frequent and varied practice, mentoring and feedback from someone who knows how to do it, learning from failure, and a commitment to learn anchored in an understanding of the value of writing in your own life.

To help you assess the value of what you’re learning in this class for your own life as a student, aspiring professional, citizen, and real human being, explain where else in your life you might be able to apply what you’re learning about reading, writing, and integrating your ideas with others, even if you have to adapt those skills to the different circumstances.

One thing that I believe I am doing well are getting the work done in general. I get the all my work in on time, but I also feel like I can give more. I also feel like I read comments and respond to them very well. If someone gives me a suggestion I try my best to take that advice into account and use it to my advantage so can improve my paper. I do a pretty good job of using quotes from the text in my paper but I can add a little more from the text in my intro and quote more instead of explaining things.

Action Plan/Adjustments

Feedback and reflection are only useful if you take actions based on them. What is your plan to act on the feedback you received in your conference? How can you build on your successes, learn from your failures, and make adjustments for the next arc of the course?

You’re free to explain your plan in any way you see fit. But your plan should be a SMART one and action-based. Proposed actions should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable in a reasonable amount of Time, and Relevant to the feedback you received.

This is not a SMART goal: I plan to do more margin notes when reading.

This is: I intend to make at least two annotations on every page of my reading starting with this week’s readings, with the further goals of making text-to-text connections and challenging the claims of other writers.

To get started thinking about your plan, you might consider asking yourself the following three questions:

1. What should you continue to do?

I think I should continue to focus and receive feedback positively. I take all comments and what Meaghan says into account when writing and I think because of that it helps my papers improve from start to finish.

2. What should you stop doing?

I should stop being lazy and also start formatting better. I also think I should work in using different signal verbs instead of using the same words over and over again.

3. What should you start doing?

I should start working a little more on my papers instead of waiting till the last minute because I think if I start at an earlier time then I my paper can improve.

I found the thinking in dark times video very hard to listen to. Dr. Roger Berkowitz was a very boring person to listen to and his concepts were very hard for me to understand. One thing that I did hear him talk about a lot and I liked was this common theme of hope. It seemed like no matter what happened or will happen we must keep hope in mind. He explained that this was an idea from Hannah Arendt and after anything she would explain she would end it with some type of hope. There is also a point where they talk about survival. Hannah Arendt argues that what is at stake is survival and human existence. I don’t think this is true because I feel as though at some point in time this earth will no longer host us. We have less than 100 year of gasoline left which means we have a limited time to find an alternative energy source. On top of that our population on this planet continues to keep growing nonstop and that means resources that are irreplaceable will run out much quicker. Therefore, I believe that regardless of what we do to survive some day we will reach “the end of the world.” It’s inevitable. One thing that really interested me was when Dr. Roger Berkowitz read a quote. This quote stated, “factual truth is greeted with greater hostility than ever before.” This quote honestly got me to think about how people never want to listen to any advice anymore. The world is at a point where people just have to live and learn on their own because everyone is so hard headed these days. Overall Dr. Berkowitz had some interesting things to say but I believe his presentation of it wasn’t up to par. He had a very mellow voice that put listeners to sleep and was just reading quotes a lot of the time. I struggled paying attention at times because of this and I wish he could’ve presented better.

Jeremy Diaz 

Eric Drown 

English 122 

October 21, 2018 

When reading the “XXXL: Why are we fat” article a big question appeared to me. Initially, I wondered how we can get big corporations such as Mc Donalds or Burger King to change their ways. Would we need to cut them out of our diet a little or should we boycott them completely? I eventually decided to move on from that question because I noticed that there hasn’t been any significant positive change in fast food ever. If they have not changed yet, why would they change for people’s health now. Many other questions came to mind and I continued to read Kolbert’s article. I read interesting facts about rapid weight gain and Kolbert pointed out some possible reasons for this weight gain. I eventually came to the point where I was wondering why these people who run the fast food industry aren’t doing anything to help people with weight when it is primarily their fault. I realized that fast food won’t change so it is us that must change, but how? Should we stop eating fast food altogether?  

What I have come to realize from Kolbert’s work is that people are gaining weight at an unhealthy amount and nobody can find out why. They went back and checked genetics to see if there had ever been a time before when people gained weight at such an unhealthy amount as we’ve seen in recent years and there is no correlation. The only major change we can see in both now and back then is that we now have fast food. Therefore, this could be the cause for major weight gain. Back then people actually had to do hard labor to have good food. If you wanted chicken, you had to raise it and then kill it yourself. On top of that you would have to take all the feathers off and cook it yourself. Now people just go to the super market pick up a pack of ribs and throw it on the grill. In other words, it takes little to no work to get the food you so desperately want. So, I encourage people to at least find the healthiest way to prepare food and cook it ourselves. Yes, it is more time consuming and a little more expensive, but I think having a better body and feeling healthy is worth the investment.  

Obviously fast food restaurants wouldn’t agree with my claim because it would take away from their income and business. These restaurants wouldn’t be willing to switch up their menu because if people want a healthy meal like a salad then they already know where they want to go for that. The same goes for if someone wants a quick order of a burger and fries. They know that they want to go to Wendy’s or McDonalds and so on. So clearly even if fast food restaurants wanted to change it would affect their business and therefore gives them no reason to change unless they start losing money selling what they are now. This is one reason why we must give up fast food. They won’t change unless they are forced to, and the power is in our hands. 

Now that I had a general idea that fast food was one of if not the main contributor to rapid weight gain over the past couple years I wanted to know why people wouldn’t just stop eating it. In Kolbert’s article she introduces a new argument when Kessler begins to say some people have an addiction to eating food. Kessler argues “Foods like Cinnabon and Starbucks strawberries and cream Frappuccino are like drugs.” He also compares this to the addiction of gambling. It is similar to high risk high reward. People know that there is a high risk to gambling but they do it anyway because if they are successful there is a high reward. For food there is always the reward of enjoying the taste of what you are eating but at the same time you are always putting your health at a high risk. The people Kessler is trying to reach here is fast food eaters as well as nutritionist. If fast food eaters hear this maybe they will be more cautious with the amount of fast food, they eat weekly. Nutritionist can use this as leverage when advising people what to eat and what is bad to eat. Hopefully by hearing about this some people who can’t stop eating these unhealthy foods everyday will try to reach out for help and be more cautious with what they are eating.  

Kessler’s argument that food is like a drug is true. Maybe some people will say that they could stop eating junk food every day and stick to a healthy meal plan, but you don’t realize how much unhealthy things you eat until you actually have to give it up. These are the things that make food “taste good” to us and add flavoring. There also certain ingredients added that will make you want to have more. I was doing some personal research online and stumbled upon an interesting fact. When reading on eatthis.com they introduced this to me; “refined carbs, fat, salt and sugar—the four primary ingredients in fast food—are downright addicting.” These restaurants literally put ingredients in the food so that your body wants to have more and more of it. In a way that’s kind of sick. Eatthis.com also had some information on a study done on mice. The study website reports, “Studies show that mice who have been fed diets with high levels of those very nutrients display withdrawal symptoms and are more sensitive to stressful situations after they were put on a more healthful diet.” It’s clear that what happened to these mice is the same thing happening to us and these restaurants don’t even want us to notice. Why should we continue to support them if they don’t care about our wellbeing? The answer is we shouldn’t at all. 

At first, I thought to myself in order to get people to boycott these fast food places, I would have to find a way to convince them that the food isn’t good for them. But some people don’t care about how healthy the food is so then I realized I would have to prove to them that these fast food industries didn’t care about their health in multiple ways. There are multiple examples of this within Kolbert’s article, one of the main one’s being that the calories in the food has increased over time. Kolbert provides evidence of this with research that states “Before McDonalds discovered the power of re-portioning, it offered just a small bag of french-fries which contained two hundred calories. Today a small order of fries contains two hundred and thirty calories.” This is a clear sign that they don’t care about people’s health and wellbeing. It also correlates with what I read on eatthis.com about the four main ingredients being addictive. The food shows no sign of changing anytime soon either. This goes back to why we must change our eating habits and our diets. There is clear evidence that the food itself has addictive products within it and it’s not like these products are good for our bodies. We need to fuel our bodies with the right things and get a good balance which we don’t receive when eating fast food. 

I know that fast food places won’t change for the better because if they were going to they would have done it a long time ago. Kolbert introduces some facts that show people have been getting weight at an unhealthy amount over the past couple years based on research. She states, “in the early nineteen sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight.” Kolbert eventually explains “During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had balloon; 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight.” McDonalds, among other fast foods, should have taken these facts into account back then and changed what goes into their foods so it could be a little healthier.  But they didn’t change back then and won’t change their methods anytime soon. Instead, they feel as if they put more into the food that people will instead feel like they are getting a bargain and continue to eat at their restaurant and making them money. If people realize this is who they are buying from and supporting then they will feel a sense of urgency to discontinue their support of these food chains. 

Overall I believe people need to wake up and see that they need to cut back on all the fast food they are eating if not cut it out of their diet completely. Everyone deserves to be healthy, but you can’t accomplish that if you are not eating properly. The fast food chain will never change what it is serving to us because that bad food is the product they’re sell as well as what they make their money off of. If someone wants a healthy meal they know where they want to go for that. Same thing goes for if someone wants something quick and greasy they will go to a fast food restaurant. They know people will keep coming and eating their food because of their ingredients that cause cravings. We need to fight this crave for that food and pick something to eat that will be good for our bodies in the long run. Since they will never change we must change our lifestyle and eating habits or else the numbers of obese people will just continue to increase. If we fight off the urge to eat these bad foods people will be in a much better place physically and mentally. It will also set up better eating habits for the future generations but it starts with us now. 

Jeremy Diaz

Eric Drown

English 122

October 21, 2018

When reading the “XXXL: Why are we fat” article a big question appeared to me. Initially , I I eventually eventually decided to move on from that question because I noticed that there hasn’t been any significant positive change in fast food ever. If they have not changed yet, why would they change for people’s health now. Many other questions came to mind and I continued to read Kolbert’s article. I read interesting facts about rapid weight gain and Kolbert pointed out some possible reasons for this weight gain. I eventually came to the point where I was wondering why these people who run the fast food industry aren’t doing anything to help people with weight when it is primarily their fault. I

What I have come to realize from Kolbert’s work is that people are gaining weight at an unhealthy amount and nobody can find out why. They went back and checked genetics to see if there had ever been a time before when people gained weight at such an unhealthy  amount as we’ve seen in recent years and there is no correlation. The only major change we can see in both now and back then is that we now have fast food. Therefore, this could be the cause for major weight gain. Back then people actually had to do hard labor to have good food. If you wanted chicken, you had to raise it and then kill it yourself. On top of that you would have to take all the feathers off and cook it yourself. Now people just go to the super market pick up a pack of ribs and throw it on the grill. In other words, it takes little to no work to get the food you so desperately want. So, I encourage people to at least find the healthiest way to prepare food and cook it ourselves. Yes, it is more time consuming and a little more expensive, but I think having a better body and feeling healthy is worth the investment.

In Kolbert’s article she introduces a new argument when Kessler begins to say some people have an addiction to eating food.. Kessler argues “Foods like Cinnabon and Starbucks strawberries and cream Frappuccino are like drugs.” He also  compares this to the addiction of gambling. It is similar to high risk high reward. People know that there is a high risk to gambling but they do it anyway because if they are successful there is a high reward. For food there is always the reward of enjoying the taste of what you are eating but at the same time you are putting your health at a high risk. The people Kessler is trying to reach here is fast food eaters as well as nutritionist. If fast food eaters hear this maybe they will be more cautious with the amount of fast food, they eat weekly. Nutritionist can use this as leverage when advising people what to eat and what is bad to eat. Hopefully by hearing about this some people who can’t stop eating these unhealthy foods everyday will try to reach out for help and be more cautious with what they are eating.

I thought to myself in order to get people to boycott these fast food places, I would have to find a way to convince them that the food isn’t good for them. But some people don’t care about how healthy the food is so then I realized I would have to prove to them that these fast food industries didn’t care about their health. There are multiple examples of this within Kolbert’s article, one of the main one’s being that the calories in the food has increased over time. Kolbert provides evidence of this with research that states  “Before McDonalds discovered the power of re-portioning, it offered just a small bag of french-fries which contained two hundred calories. Today a small order of fries contains two hundred and thirty calories.” This is a clear sign that they don’t care about people’s health and wellbeing.  Kolbert introduces some facts that show people have been getting weight at an unhealthy amount based on research. She states, “in the early nineteen sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight.” Kolbert eventually explains “During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had balloon; 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight.” McDonalds, among other fast foods, should have taken these facts into account back then and changed what goes into their foods so it could be a little healthier.  But they didn’t change back then and won’t change their methods anytime soon. Instead, they feel as if they put more into the food that people will instead feel like they are getting a bargain and continue to eat at their restaurant and making them money. I feel like if people realize this is who they are buying from and supporting then they will feel a sense of urgency to discontinue their support of this food chain.

In conclusion I think people will see that they need to cut back on all the fast food they are eating if not cut it out of their diet completely. Everyone deserves to be healthy, but you can’t accomplish that if you are not eating properly. The fast food chain will never change what it is serving to us because that is what they make their money off of. If someone wants a healthy meal they know where they want to go for that. Same thing goes for if someone wants something quick and greasy they will go to a fast food restaurant. Since they will never change we must change our lifestyle and eating habits or else the numbers of obese people will just continue to increase. One day I hope we can reach a moment where getting a meal isn’t about money or time but about others health and well being.

Jeremy Diaz

Eric Drown

English 122

October 21, 2018

When reading the “XXXL: Why are we fat” article a big question appeared to me. In my own view, I wondered how we can get big corporations such as Mc Donalds or Burger King to change their ways. Would we need to cut them out of our diet a little or should we boycott them completely? Many other questions came to mind and I continued to search for the answers in Kolbert’s article. I read interesting facts about rapid weight gain and Kolbert pointed out some possible reasons for this weight gain. I eventually came to the point where I was wondering why these people who run the fast food industry aren’t doing anything to help people with weight when it is primarily their fault. I realized that fast food won’t change so it is us that must change, but how? We must limit our fast food eating to little or none at all.

I thought to myself in order to get people to boycott these fast food places, I would have to find a way to convince them that the food isn’t good for them. But some people don’t care about how healthy the food is so then I realized I would have to prove to them that these fast food industries didn’t care about their health. There are multiple examples of this within Kolbert’s article, one of the main one’s being that the calories in the food has increased over time. Kolbert provides evidence of this with research that states  “Before McDonalds discover the power of re-portioning, it offered just a small bag of french-fries which contained two hundred calories. Today a small order of fries contains two hundred and thirty calories.” This is a clear sign that they don’t care about people’s health and wellbeing.  Kolbert introduces some facts that show people have been getting weight at an unhealthy amount based on research. She states, “in the early nineteen sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight.” Kolbert eventually explains “During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had balloon; 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight.” McDonalds, among other fast foods, should have taken these facts into account back then and changed what goes into their foods so it could be a little healthier.  But they didn’t change back then and won’t change their methods anytime soon. Instead, they feel as if they put more into the food that people will instead feel like they are getting a bargain and continue to eat at their restaurant and making them money. I feel like if people realize this is who they are buying from and supporting then they will feel a sense of urgency to discontinue their support of this food chain.

But that’s just for McDonald’s. What can I do to continue to convince people to not eat elsewhere? Well the answer is that they have an addiction. The definition of an addiction is  . In other words, it is something that you feel you can’t live without. Kolbert introduces Kessler to elaborate on this. Kolbert argues “Foods like Cinnabon and Starbucks strawberries and cream Frappuccino are like drugs.” He also  compares this to the addiction of gambling. It is similar to high risk high reward. People know that there is a high risk to gambling but they do it anyway because if they are successful there is a high reward. For food there is always the reward of enjoying the taste of what you are eating but at the same time you are putting your health at a high risk. The people Kessler is trying to reach here is fast food eaters as well as nutritionist. If fast food eaters hear this maybe they will be more cautious with the amount of fast food, they eat weekly. Nutritionist can use this as leverage when advising people what to eat and what is bad to eat. Hopefully by hearing about this some people who can’t stop eating these unhealthy foods everyday will try to reach out for help and be more cautious with what they are eating.

The last way I would try to convince people to stop eating fast foods is based on the recent rapid weight gain. What I have come to realize from Kolbert’s work is that people are gaining weight at an unhealthy amount and nobody can find out why. They went back and checked genetics to see if there had ever been a time period before when people gained weight at such an unhealthy  amount as we’ve seen in recent years and there is no correlation. The only major change we can see in now and back then is that we now have fast food. Therefore, this could be the cause for major weight gain. Back then people actually had to do hard labor to have good food. If you wanted chicken, you had to raise it and then kill it yourself. On top of that you would have to take all the feathers off and cook it yourself. Now people just go to the super market pick up a pack of ribs and throw it on the grill. In other words, it takes little to no work to get the food you so desperately want. So, I encourage people to at least find the healthiest way to prepare food and cook it ourselves. Yes, it is more time consuming and a little more expensive, but I think having a better body and feeling healthy is worth the investment.

In conclusion I think people will see that they need to cut back on all the fast food they are eating if not cut it out of their diet completely. Everyone deserves to be healthy but you can’t accomplish that if you are not eating properly. One day I hope we can reach a place where getting a meal isn’t about money or time but about others health and well being.

Jeremy Diaz 

Eric Drown 

English 122 

October 21, 2018 

When reading the “XXXL: Why are we fat” article a big question appeared to me. I wondered how we can get big corporations such as Mc Donalds or Burger King to change their ways. Would we need to cut them out of our diet a little or should we boycott them completely? Many other questions came to mind and I continued to search for the answers in the article. 

I thought to myself if people were to boycott these fast food places, I would have to find a way to convince them that the food isn’t good for them. But some people don’t care about how good the food is so then I realized I would have to prove to them that these fast food industries didn’t care about their health. There are multiple examples of this within Kolbert’s article one of the main one’s being that the calories in the food has increased over time. Kolbert provides evidence of this with research that states “Before Mcdonalds discover the power of re-portioning, it offered just a small bag of french-fries which contained two hundred calories. Today a small order of fries contains two hundred and thirty calories.” This is a clear sign that they don’t care about people’s health and wellbeing. They feel as if they put more into the food that people will instead feel like they are getting a bargain and continue to eat at their restaurant and making them money. I feel like if people realize this is who they are buying from and supporting then they will feel a sense of urgency to discontinue their support of this food chain. 

But that’s just for McDonald’s. What can I do to continue to convince people to not eat elsewhere? Well the answer is that they have an addiction. The definition of an addiction is the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity. In other words, it is something that you feel you can’t live without. Kolbert introduces Kessler to elaborate on this. Kolbert argues “Foods like Cinnabon and Starbucks strawberries and cream Frappuccino are like drugs.” He also compares this to the addiction of gambling. It is similar to high risk high reward. People know that there is a high risk to gambling but they do it anyway because if they are successful there is a high reward. For food there is always the reward of enjoying the taste of what you are eating but at the same time you are putting your health at a high risk. Hopefully by hearing about this some people who can’t stop eating these unhealthy foods everyday will try to reach out for help. People sometimes know they need help but struggle to go out and seek for it.  

The last way I would try to convince people to stop eating fast foods is based on the recent rapid weight gain. What I have come to realize from Kolbert’s work is that people are gaining weight at an unhealthy amount and nobody can find out why. They went back and checked genetics to see if there had ever been a time period before when people gained weight at as an unhealthy amount as we’ve seen in recent years and there is no correlation. The only major change we can see in now and back then is that we now have fast food. Therefore, this could be the cause for major weight gain. Back then people actually had to do hard labor to have good food. If you wanted chicken, you had to raise it and then kill it yourself. On top of that you would have to take all the feathers off and cook it yourself. Now people just go to the super market pick up a pack of ribs and throw it on the grill. In other words, it takes little to no work to get the food you so desperately want. So, I encourage people to at least find the healthiest way to prepare food and cook it ourselves. Yes, it is more time consuming and a little more expensive, but I think having a better body and feeling healthy is worth the investment. 

In conclusion I think people will see that they need to cut back on all the fast food they are eating if not cut it out of their diet completely. Everyone deserves to be healthy but you can’t accomplish that if you are not eating properly. One day I hope we can reach a place where getting a meal isn’t about money or time but about others health and well being. 

 

When reading the article “XXXL: Why are we so fat?” written by Elizabeth Kolbert I found that there were many things I didn’t know about the food industry. Kolbert goes in many directions to find an answer to the reason why we are gaining weight so rapidly and this leads her to look at others research as well as look into the history of the food industry. When reading through Kolbert’s journey through this question I began to for some questions of my own. Some of these were about food itself and others were about finding ways to prevent unhealthy weight gain. 

The first place I found myself surprised was when I read a fact Elizabeth wrote. This fact was a discovery made by Eric Finklestein in which he states “For most people, an iced Coca-Cola used to be a treat reserved for special occasions. He continues his research with “Today, soft drinks account for about seven per cent of all the calories ingested in the United States, making them the number one food consumed in the American diet.” Even though I understand soda tastes good to people I still had many questions to ask. Why don’t people limit the amount of soda they drink if they know it is bad for them?” Is food just addictive as drugs are? That could be one explanation for it or it could be because of the price. Multiple times I have walked into the local convenience store and bought a bottle of water for two or three dollars and gotten a soda for half the price. This is too big of a problem for us to just sit around and let people get fat. I understand for some that they just have a slow metabolism and due to this they will struggle to lose weight regardless of what they eat, but for other we must find a new plan to get America back on the right track. Finkelstein closes his research by inserting a new argument “If it’s cheap to consume too many calories worth of ice cream or Coca-Cola, it’s even cheaper to consume fewer.” Though I agree with Finklestein’s idea I don’t think it’s all that simple. We must do more than just say don’t buy something because it is unhealthy. 

Another place in the article that was interesting to me was the history of how sizes came to foods. Kolbert introduces a man named David Wallerstein and begins to tell his story. Wallerstein was the first individual to serve different sized popcorns in a movie theater. Ray Kroc who was the owner of McDonald’s argued “if people wanted more fries, they could always order a second bag.” Wallerstein repels this argument by saying “they don’t want to eat two bags—they don’t want to look like a glutton.” There was a strategy behind Wallerstein’s moves and it was that if people were seen with two bags of popcorn or fries then other would judge them as fat. But if they were seen with just one bag that contained the number of fries two smaller bags could hold then they wouldn’t be as self-conscious. This is a good strategy but at the same time taking advantage of people. Wallerstein knew that people would order the bigger sizes and all he was worried about was increasing revenue. He didn’t care if that meant that all of America would begin to gain weight at an unhealthy amount. At the same time, I believe Wallerstein is not to blame for this. If he weren’t to come up with this concept someone else would have. Then we would be talking about that person instead of him in this article. Kolbert also investigated the experiment conducted by Wasnik. The experiment is explained as follows “Wasnik invited participants to cook dinner for themselves with ingredients he provided. One group got big boxes of pasta and big bottles of sauce, a second smaller boxes and smaller bottles.” Kolbert states that “the first group prepared twenty-three per cent more and downed it all.” This led me to ask is there a psychological theory to why people eat more when given more? Maybe this is because we eat with our eyes instead of our stomachs. 

The last thing that shocked me was reading in the article that America was no longer the “fattest” country in the world. A book titled Globesity states “Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Malta and Slovakia, the portion of overweight adults is actually higher than the U.S.” This was funny to me because foreigners always make jokes about how Americans are fat and we eat like garbage. It turns out that we are not the only ones. This got me to question if American food is really the problem. Has American Culture begun to spread all over the world? Is there a loss of traditional food in these countries as well? Maybe instead of having a Gyro stand in Greece now there are McDonalds everywhere. I also realized that this was my first-time hearing this and I wondered if the government was trying to keep it a secret. It must be because they also aren’t doing anything about it which I believe they should. They try to enforce certain fixed meals within public schools but there is only so much you can do and as it is kids don’t like the food being served in schools. Do we have any access to healthy foods? Maybe there is a few farms that could be used to make sure people are getting the right nutrition on the daily. Overall as a planet we need more individuals and programs to step up and help us tackle this issue. 

I’ve come to conclusion that McDonalds and Burger Kings will never stop serving what they do. They make so much money off it and that’s all they care about. For there to be some type of change we must act against the fast food industry and any unhealthy junk food. We can have junk food every now and then even maybe one or twice a week but as soon as we are eating it every day for every meal then a bigger problem is presented to us that must be stopped.

My question maps have shown me that curiosity is like an engine that needs fuel. The fuel for curiosity is questions. You can feed your curiosity by asking questions that will lead to an answer. That is what was done on my question maps and these questions will guide you from start to end. They stimulate the mind and lead to even more questions. One of the best things about curiosity is that even when you feel like you’ve reached a conclusion in some aspect there is still more to be discovered. A great example of this is when George creates his formula on instincts. He found an answer to his one question on if he would ever discover something new. But this led him to discover that humans really only do things if it benefits themselves or someone the care about. Because of this result George was saddened and wanted to prove it wrong. Basically, George’s curiosity was stimulated by the results to his initial question and he wanted more. This side goes hand in hand with understanding an argument. The first time you hear and argument you may be confused by the mindset of the person explaining it to you, but this doesn’t mean we should shut it off. For all we know we may go on to agree with this argument at some point, but we won’t know unless we listen. Even then listening isn’t enough. This goes back to asking questions on things you don’t understand so you can be brought to the light. A person who is arguing is going to be able to answer most if not all questions about their argument. If they’re not able to do so then they may not have a good argument. But you won’t be able to know this unless you at least give their opinion a listen. If I was to write an essay about one of these bigger question ideas, I think I would track my thought process when reading so I can use that as a tool to explain my initial thoughts, thinking process and my conclusion from the overall reading. By doing so I would also give the reader an easier time reading my essay and understanding where I got all my ideas from. This is what is done through both conversations and I was able to see this through the question maps and listening through multiple times. One opened ended question I’d like to read and write about is “Why are we here?” This question is a big question and crosses multiple platforms and ideas while never really reaching a conclusion. For some there is religion involved with their conclusion to this question and for others they aren’t really sure. But overall this would be a good question to explore.