Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating
By Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall, a renowned scientist of primatology, ethology, and anthropology, began her studies when she ventured to Africa to work for Dr. Louis Leakey in 1957. From there Goodall earned her PhD at Cambridge University in 1965. She continued her studies, focusing especially on the study of chimpanzees; hence Goodall's nickname "the chimpanzee lady." In 1977, she established the Jane Goodall Institute to educate young people about conserving chimpanzees and all the other animals of this planet.
Most of Goodall's books focus on her progressing studies, however, in Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, she discusses another issue focusing on human consumption. Goodall begins her book by touching on the roots of early agriculture, including national dishes from many different cultures and traditions. Then, she dives into modern agribusiness, a new lifestyle where commonsense farming has become more and more rare, especially in the United States. She discusses how mass consumption has developed from the idea of a monoculture, where farmers plant acres of the same crop. This creates a problem because if that one crop fails to grow, then the farmer has no other crop to rely on for profit, causing the farmer to use chemical pesticides. Insects developing resistance towards these pesticides led to the idea of genetically modifying crops so that they develop their own "natural" pesticide. Nonetheless, all of these techniques are poisoning our foods and our environment. The issue is rapidly destroying all farms mainly because GMO's spread easily through pollination and are difficult to kill.
Furthermore, Goodall addresses the issue of animal rights, going into detail...
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...ade, and how it got to his or her plate. Even when people are eating healthier foods, most are still unaware of why it is important to eat organically and locally. They do not realize what a huge contribution just one person is when they eat a diet based on organic and local foods. When you put into a perspective how much money is spent on just 3 months worth of food for one person that is from global supermarkets or fast food restaurants, you realize how much damage that is to the environment by supporting foods that are unnatural, unethical, and damaging to soil. A majority of people, especially Americans, is very unaware of how this is a serious issue. By educating people and encouraging them to eat for peace instead of pleasure, slowly and hopefully the world can change into a cleaner, healthier, and safer place, in which everyone can gain awareness and happiness.
Jane Goodall is a woman who has and still does work with chimpanzees in Tanznia, South Africa. The first time she went to Tanzania was in July 14, 1960 when she was just 26 years old.
It is heart breaking to see an obese American on the street,because one instinctively knows that the obese American is not making the best food choices. We are constantly establishing new and innovative ways for improving society in terms of technological advances and transportation, although as stated from Budiansky we are also to be blamed for transportation and environmental consequences. “A single ten-mile round trip by car to the grocery store or the farmer’s market will easily eat up about 14,000 calories of fossil fuel energy.”(8) Growing food locally and consuming food locally will save a trip to the grocery store. Innovative technologies don’t always have to be the case. Agriculture only makes up 2 percent of our nation’s energy usage,which is used for running farm machinery and manufacturing fertilizer. Using these effectively will allow us to avoid processed foods and reduce the obesity rate. Individuals with food allergies are able to ask farmers about how the food was grown or ask chefs at a restaurant what ingredients were used in a specific dish. As most of us we desire social interaction. Going to a local food market, allows us to meet different individuals that may offer favorable advice for selecting food items. Our lifestyles all come down to ourselves,which means choosing foods that are advantageous toward our health. If we are aware of where the food comes from, it is easier to make those choices that will benefit
In the book published in 2006, the Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural history of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, is a non-fiction book about American eating habits and the food dilemma that many Americans are facing today. Pollan begins the book by discussing the dilemma of the omnivore like ourselves, a creature with many choices of food. Pollan decides to learn the root to the food dilemma by examining the three primary food chains: industrial food chain, the organic food chain, and the hunter-gathering food chain. His journey begins by first exploring the industrialized food industry. Pollan examines the industry by following both corn and cow from the beginning through the industrialized process. The work on the corn fields of George Naylor shows him that the industrial system has made corn appears nearly in all products in the supermarket (Pollan 33-37). Pollen then decides to purchase a steer which allows him to see the industrialized monoculture of beef production and how mass production produces food to serve the society. Following his journey, Pollan and his family eat a meal at McDonald's restaurant. Pollan realizes that he and very few people actually understand how such a meal is created. By examining the different food paths available to modern man and by analyzing those paths, Pollan argues that there is a basic relation between nature and the human. The food choice and what we eat represents a connection with our natural world. The industrial food ruins that ecological connections. In fact, the modern agribusiness has lost touch with the natural cycles of farming. Pollan presents the book with a question in the beginning: "What should we have for dinner?" (Pollan 1) This question posed a combination of p...
Jane never received any formal college education, and because of that, she had her own way of thinking. She changed the whole rules of science at the time and became attached to her subjects, naming them and classifying their emotional behaviors. She noticed that the chimps behave different from the other species of monkeys. She began that the chimpanzees were more human than most people new, and Jane Goodall was about to change that forever. Jane named each chimpanzee with a very distinct name. The first chimpanzee had a long beard with a greying color, so thus she named the ape “graybeard”. She had received no official training in any category until after her first publishing’s.
"Early Days | the Jane Goodall Institute." The Jane Goodall Institute |. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. .
In July of 1960 at the age of 24 she went back to Africa along with her mom. She had never really worked with chimps before but was anxious to start. At first it was very difficult to observe the chimpanzees. Every time she would try to get close to the chimps they would always run away. Jane was determined to observe the chimps and here determination helped her develop the best method to study the chimpanzees. After working hard and staying determined she soon got the chimps to start trusting her. Jane stuck to her techniques and after two years earned the chimpanzees trust completely so much that they would come to her looking for food. She spent every day with the apes and this time helped her learn things that no one had ever learned about chimpanzees before. Goodall was devoted and hardworking when it came to earning the trust of the chimps. She would even eat food with them and spend time with them in the
Food is an essential part of everyday life without it one could not survive. Every day we make choices on what we put in to our bodies. There are countless varieties of food to choose from to meet the diverse tastes of the increasing population. Almost all food requires a label explaining the ingredients and the nutritional value allowing consumers to make informed decisions on what they are consuming. However, many may not be considering where that food is coming from or how it has been produced. Unfortunately, there is more to food than meets the eye. Since 1992, “ the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled, based on woefully limited data, that genetically modified foods were ‘substantially equivalent’ to their non-GM counterparts” (Why to Support Labeling). GM food advocates have promised to create more nutritious food that will be able to grow in harsh climate conditions and eventually put an end to world hunger in anticipation of the growing population. There is very little evidence to support these claims and study after study has proven just the opposite. GM crops are not only unsafe to consume, but their growing practices are harmful to the environment, and multinational corporations are putting farmers out of business.
Michael Pollan and David Freedman are two reputable authors who have written about different types of food and why they are healthy or why they are damaging to our health. Michael Pollan wrote “Escape from the Western Diet” and David Freedman wrote “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”. Imagine Pollan’s idea of a perfect world. Everything is organic. McDonald’s is serving spinach smoothies and Walmart is supplying consumers with raw milk. The vast majority of food in this world consists of plants grown locally, because almost everyone is a farmer in order to keep up with supply and demand. How much does all this cost? What happened to all the food that is loved just because it tastes good?
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
Mark Bittman is a cookbook author, a journalist and has appeared on television. The experience from these projects has given Bittman the knowledge and credibility to argue his point on the matter of America’s diet in his Ted talk segment. In this Ted talk, Bittman discusses the effect of livestock production on the environment and how the way they are treated makes even natural food sources have unnatural ingredients. He mentions how over the few decades the children from the past ate differently at home than the way they do now. He promotes the idea of eating more organic foods such as fruits and vegetables than to continue the mass consumption of meat and junk foods. Bittman talks about the way that modern day America is eating and how it is not only causing harm to the bodies of people, but the state of the environment in the world.
The necessity of food has created one of the most powerful diseases in the health of today’s nation. According to the resent documentary (Silverbush 2012) it shows how obesity and hunger are closely related to one another. Obesity today has over taken what we know of most of the United States population. This phenomenon of unhealthy eating starts in children even before they start going to school. A large amount of today’s population is found living in the middle to lower class, creating complications when trying to support family’s with insufficient funds. When it becomes comes time to buy healthy foods for their family it becomes overlooked due to the high prices of fruits and vegetables. Times of scarcity lead the average American to buy cheap, unhealthy, quick and easy food products due to government subsidies. With food being an essential aspect to living it makes eating a necessity one cannot live without. Americans with low budgets are forced to buy products that are mass-produced. The high demand for food has caused a process in which food production has become degrading to the environment, the animals, the quality product itself, and the consumers. Large livestock farms create large amounts of animal waste that in turn producing noxious air emissions, water pollution, and potentially spreads risk of infections to humans. Billions of tons of polluting pesticides and fertilizers have destroyed waterways, are responsible for causing cancer, food-born illnesses and obesity, and are one of the many causes of global warming (Kallen, 2006). Many Americans are forced to go against the functional aspect of sociology and conform to eating products that are in turn dangerous for them resulting in multiple health issues. Due to t...
Genetically modified food’s, or GMOs, goal is to feed the world's malnourished and undernourished population. Exploring the positive side to GMOs paints a wondrous picture for our planet’s future, although careful steps must be taken to ensure that destruction of our ecosystems do not occur. When GMOs were first introduced into the consumer market they claimed that they would help eliminate the world’s food crisis by providing plants that produced more and were resistant to elemental impacts like droughts and bacterial contaminants, however, production isn’t the only cause for the world’s food crisis. Which is a cause for concern because the population on the earth is growing and our land and ways of agriculture will not be enough to feed everyone sufficiently. No simple solutions can be found or applied when there are so many lives involved. Those who are hungry and those who are over fed, alike, have to consider the consequences of Genetically Modified Organisms. Food should not be treated like a commodity it is a human necessity on the most basic of levels. When egos, hidden agendas, and personal gains are folded into people's food sources no one wins. As in many things of life, there is no true right way or wrong way to handle either of the arguments and so many factors are involved that a ‘simple’ solution is simply not an option.
Starting when Goodall was a young girl, there were several important events that led to her success with chimps. Ever since Goodall was a young girl, she has loved animals and the outdoors. When Goodall was only two years old she became upset and started crying when a man killed a dragonfly that was buzzing around her baby carriage. Throughtout her childhood her favorite toy was a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee. Ever since then, she knew that she wanted to work with chimps. In 1957, Goodall first set foot into Africa when Dr. Louis Leak...
Genetically modified (GM) foods have become omnipresent over the past decade. They are a technological breakthrough that allows humans to manipulate and add foreign genes to crops to enhance desired traits, but they have also evolved into a controversial issue, especially for Third World countries. Some people believe that GM foods not only provide larger yields to feed hungry citizens in Third World countries, but they can also be a source of great nutritional value. For example, researchers have developed a strain of golden rice containing high amounts of vitamin A and numerous other vitamins and minerals. Additionally, GM crops are laced with herbicides and pesticides, and therefore reduce the need for chemical consumption. Opponents of GM foods claim that they pose a threat to the health of consumers and that these crops could eventually cross-pollinate in an unregulated fashion or lead to the growth of superweeds and superbugs resistant to the herbicides and pesticides woven into the genetic fiber of the crops. Developed nations should promote research and monitoring from an ethical point of view and financial assistance through philanthropic ventures in order to limit environmental and health risks. They should also make sure that limited cultural displacement will result from the introduction of GM crops and that instead, a better livelihood and well-being through collaboration will emerge. Hence, GM crops should be introduced only provided that the developed nations assume the ethical and financial responsibilities for the environmental, health, and social consequences that attend this new innovation.
Mindfulness unlocks your senses. It is the practice of being fully aware of what is happening within and around you in the moment. This is not easy to do! Practicing mindfulness helps people make better choices in regards to what and how they eat. There is a lot to learn here, but taking simple steps like noticing the smells, temperatures, textures and tastes of the foods in your meal is a good place to start. Mindful eating also requires you to reduce distractions such as physical, mental, social and emotional ones. People often find that they enjoy their food much more once beginning more mindful approaches to eating. Mindful eating also seems to improve food choices, in both what and how people eat. It essentially reshapes your relationship with food and makes eating more enjoyable because you learn your reactions to food preferences, habits and tastes.