Food Project Essay
The Impossible Dream
Who doesn’t like T.V.? With all the sit-coms, reality shows, and cartoons, why wouldn’t you want to get lost in the sugarcoated world of the tube? That’s what the kids of the US are thinking as the average child spends 1,680 minutes a week with their eyes glued to the screen. In that time, 417 advertisements will play across the screen and of these ads, fast food is ranked number 1(“Television & Health”). Scenes of unhealthy food (such as salty fries, greasy hamburgers, and mouth-watering cola’s) mixed with “picture perfect” actors and actresses constantly assault their minds. The psychological impacts of fast food advertisements are very dangerous to the youth of this nation.
Television is the most common place to find fast food ads. Lets look into a good example, the Carls Jr. commercials. Every one of their advertisements involves a super-model type celebrity eating a big juicy burger in a nearly illegally seductive way. This promotes false mental images for teen’s, both female and male. Young men think that every women should look “that good” which leads women to believe they should too. Another good example of this is a Burger King commercial starring David Beckham. The special effects artists do a great job of making him look “kingly” while the waitress sits there drooling over herself, just adding to the idea of his gloriousness. This is the same idea for teens, though the genders are flipped.
These commercials are a teen’s worst enemy. They use celebrities that are easily recognizable, and show what the media considers beautiful and then tricks them by showing the celeb’s eating this crappy junk food. They are setting people up to want to be like a certain person, and then showing them that they will still be able to be like that person after consuming all these bad foods. This is a system that I’ve started to call, “The Impossible Dream.” The rules of the Impossible Dream are simple. Everyone who lives by this system is entitled to three things. Life, lust, and the pursuit of false-image.
You may be thinking, “What is false self-image?” Well, false self-image is an idea that is produced in someone’s mind that makes her or him think that they need to make themselves better. Many things such as teasing and bullying can cause this, though it seems that all of these side reasons lead back to what the fast food media is enveloping us in. This is shown in a study that was actually taken on a whole, innocent, culture. One with no need for our ideas of beauty.
The Fijian islands were lovely little slabs of paradise out in the South Pacific Ocean with beautiful natives. The Fijian people believed that a more round figure was a gorgeous one because it showed a supportive/wealthy family and a good background. So of all the 768,000 people (1995 consensus) only one person on the islands showed signs of the health case known as anorexia. Up until the introduction of television that is. After three years of tube-influence dieting rates skyrocketed up to 69% and teens and young adults said that celebrities that constantly appeared in their shows were the reason the wanted to look skinnier.(“Jennifer L. Derenne”)
So even a little bit of television can have a massive effect. Unfortunately, it took a whole country’s culture to prove that. Currently, Fiji has a “thriving” televisionized culture, twisted and mangled from its original state to where it now stands. A digitalized, fake idea of reality, much like our own. It is hard to not see the similarities in our and their ways, even in our eating habits.
The poor self-image these ads cause can lead to a number of unhealthy behaviors. These behaviors can consist of starting a simple diet to developing anorexia nervosa, a serious eating disorder that can be very dangerous and even deadly. Anorexia is a practice in which people deliberately starve themselves over the obsession of being thin. Many people are tricked into believing that anorexia is a quick, easy way to lose weight, though it can become a serious addiction. Take example Laura Willmott, a young girl from Bristol, England. After attempting to cope with anorexia for five years she died from attaining serious brain injury after a heart attack. The heart attack was said to be cause from starvation. Sadly, this occurred just after her 18th birthday. That means that she developed her addiction just after she turned 13(“Harding”). This may seem surprising but it is actually around the time when the case develops in most people. Recent studies have shown that anorexia nervosa mostly starts around the age of 15 to 23, though a younger group is popping up at a astoundingly fast rate.(Anorexia facts)
So what are some ways of stopping and controlling these issues? Health nutritionists Jeanne Segal and Melinda Smith suggest that someone trying to get over an eating disorder should first ask for help. Asking for help can seem awkward and stressful but it will help teach the person to start speaking out more then bottling up their emotions. The next thing that should be done is contacting a specialist. This will be helpful for stopping the ways that the patients body may have developed such as relying on unhealthy amounts of food, being used to being tired and skipping menstrual cycles. This leads us to step three, getting a check up at a medical care center. People with anorexia or bulimia may be drastically under-weight, some only weighing 75 pounds. Getting a check up will allow the doctors to understand the condition of ones body, and thus help them with the next part of the treatment stage; finding a long-term treatment plan. This plan is specialized for each patient but can include anything from family therapy to medicinal monitoring. That’s only for the really serious patients. For people that seem like they could be developing one of these problems, even a simple complement can go a long way. Making them feel confortable is the best way to help them.
Another way to stop the Impossible Dream from coming true is just to avoid anything relating to the entertainment media. The entertainment industry is full of journalist complementing and then dissing celebrities for their bodies. But its not just the way the media portrays these celebrities, its also the way the celebrities portray themselves. Most of them are going through tough times with their own Impossible Dream, trying to live up to the bar that the people around them have set. A few that admit to this are Portia de Rossi, Richard Simmons, and Oprah Winfrey. Everything in this system is really messed up as you can see. So what they are saying is messed up too.
The Impossible Dream is a constant threat to the children of the world, toying with their minds and their innocence. We need to keep our kids away from the medias influence. We need to stop it right in its tracks. Keep to your own dreams and know right from wrong. Make sure your kids do to and together, we will build a Possible Dream.
Who doesn’t like T.V.? With all the sit-coms, reality shows, and cartoons, why wouldn’t you want to get lost in the sugarcoated world of the tube? That’s what the kids of the US are thinking as the average child spends 1,680 minutes a week with their eyes glued to the screen. In that time, 417 advertisements will play across the screen and of these ads, fast food is ranked number 1(“Television & Health”). Scenes of unhealthy food (such as salty fries, greasy hamburgers, and mouth-watering cola’s) mixed with “picture perfect” actors and actresses constantly assault their minds. The psychological impacts of fast food advertisements are very dangerous to the youth of this nation.
Television is the most common place to find fast food ads. Lets look into a good example, the Carls Jr. commercials. Every one of their advertisements involves a super-model type celebrity eating a big juicy burger in a nearly illegally seductive way. This promotes false mental images for teen’s, both female and male. Young men think that every women should look “that good” which leads women to believe they should too. Another good example of this is a Burger King commercial starring David Beckham. The special effects artists do a great job of making him look “kingly” while the waitress sits there drooling over herself, just adding to the idea of his gloriousness. This is the same idea for teens, though the genders are flipped.
These commercials are a teen’s worst enemy. They use celebrities that are easily recognizable, and show what the media considers beautiful and then tricks them by showing the celeb’s eating this crappy junk food. They are setting people up to want to be like a certain person, and then showing them that they will still be able to be like that person after consuming all these bad foods. This is a system that I’ve started to call, “The Impossible Dream.” The rules of the Impossible Dream are simple. Everyone who lives by this system is entitled to three things. Life, lust, and the pursuit of false-image.
You may be thinking, “What is false self-image?” Well, false self-image is an idea that is produced in someone’s mind that makes her or him think that they need to make themselves better. Many things such as teasing and bullying can cause this, though it seems that all of these side reasons lead back to what the fast food media is enveloping us in. This is shown in a study that was actually taken on a whole, innocent, culture. One with no need for our ideas of beauty.
The Fijian islands were lovely little slabs of paradise out in the South Pacific Ocean with beautiful natives. The Fijian people believed that a more round figure was a gorgeous one because it showed a supportive/wealthy family and a good background. So of all the 768,000 people (1995 consensus) only one person on the islands showed signs of the health case known as anorexia. Up until the introduction of television that is. After three years of tube-influence dieting rates skyrocketed up to 69% and teens and young adults said that celebrities that constantly appeared in their shows were the reason the wanted to look skinnier.(“Jennifer L. Derenne”)
So even a little bit of television can have a massive effect. Unfortunately, it took a whole country’s culture to prove that. Currently, Fiji has a “thriving” televisionized culture, twisted and mangled from its original state to where it now stands. A digitalized, fake idea of reality, much like our own. It is hard to not see the similarities in our and their ways, even in our eating habits.
The poor self-image these ads cause can lead to a number of unhealthy behaviors. These behaviors can consist of starting a simple diet to developing anorexia nervosa, a serious eating disorder that can be very dangerous and even deadly. Anorexia is a practice in which people deliberately starve themselves over the obsession of being thin. Many people are tricked into believing that anorexia is a quick, easy way to lose weight, though it can become a serious addiction. Take example Laura Willmott, a young girl from Bristol, England. After attempting to cope with anorexia for five years she died from attaining serious brain injury after a heart attack. The heart attack was said to be cause from starvation. Sadly, this occurred just after her 18th birthday. That means that she developed her addiction just after she turned 13(“Harding”). This may seem surprising but it is actually around the time when the case develops in most people. Recent studies have shown that anorexia nervosa mostly starts around the age of 15 to 23, though a younger group is popping up at a astoundingly fast rate.(Anorexia facts)
So what are some ways of stopping and controlling these issues? Health nutritionists Jeanne Segal and Melinda Smith suggest that someone trying to get over an eating disorder should first ask for help. Asking for help can seem awkward and stressful but it will help teach the person to start speaking out more then bottling up their emotions. The next thing that should be done is contacting a specialist. This will be helpful for stopping the ways that the patients body may have developed such as relying on unhealthy amounts of food, being used to being tired and skipping menstrual cycles. This leads us to step three, getting a check up at a medical care center. People with anorexia or bulimia may be drastically under-weight, some only weighing 75 pounds. Getting a check up will allow the doctors to understand the condition of ones body, and thus help them with the next part of the treatment stage; finding a long-term treatment plan. This plan is specialized for each patient but can include anything from family therapy to medicinal monitoring. That’s only for the really serious patients. For people that seem like they could be developing one of these problems, even a simple complement can go a long way. Making them feel confortable is the best way to help them.
Another way to stop the Impossible Dream from coming true is just to avoid anything relating to the entertainment media. The entertainment industry is full of journalist complementing and then dissing celebrities for their bodies. But its not just the way the media portrays these celebrities, its also the way the celebrities portray themselves. Most of them are going through tough times with their own Impossible Dream, trying to live up to the bar that the people around them have set. A few that admit to this are Portia de Rossi, Richard Simmons, and Oprah Winfrey. Everything in this system is really messed up as you can see. So what they are saying is messed up too.
The Impossible Dream is a constant threat to the children of the world, toying with their minds and their innocence. We need to keep our kids away from the medias influence. We need to stop it right in its tracks. Keep to your own dreams and know right from wrong. Make sure your kids do to and together, we will build a Possible Dream.
Reflection!
Our most recent project, the food project, was based on finding out about our food sources, such as where it came from, what ingredients are in it, and how these products affected us through the Omnivores Dilemma. We then decided on a topic relating to these subjects and wrote a research paper on it. My paper was on how fast food advertisements control and corrupt the planets youth, making them suffer mentally.
I connected with this project really well. This is probably because of my background knowledge on food health from my parents influence. But I learned a lot about different things that are affected by our food culture. I learned about cause and effect relationships consuming certain foods, and about our food culture and the current situation it is in (which sadly, isn’t very good). From these experiences, I plan to help people with eating disabilities, maybe even become a coach.
This project wasn’t too hard, though it was very stressful. I think the reason for it being so stressful was because we had quite a bit of work to do in a very small amount of time. And also, we had two or three other projects going on at the same time, which was hard, but I guess it’s what can be expected in high school. The only writing piece that I found difficult was getting my research organized and keeping to the point in my paper. I had to review the paper many times on my own to make sure I was giving off the right idea and information to support it.
Looking back on my research paper, I would definitely have tried to find more information on my topics. I changed my thesis statement a few times while in the middle of writing the paper itself, which ended up confusing me more then actually perfecting my paper. Newt time I’m writing a research paper, I will take some time out to plan my thesis and how my paper will revolve around it to make it more smooth.
Now that I have completed my study on food and our current food culture, answering our original question of how does one navigate their own omnivore’s dilemma is quite easy to me; eat what you want to eat and involve yourself in what you want to, but understand what you are getting yourself into and how it will effect you. If you don’t understand what something that you are eating is, research it. Experiment with what makes you feel good, and what doesn’t. This will help you recognize what foods are good for your body and mind, and which aren’t. That is how I will live through my own omnivores dilemma.
I connected with this project really well. This is probably because of my background knowledge on food health from my parents influence. But I learned a lot about different things that are affected by our food culture. I learned about cause and effect relationships consuming certain foods, and about our food culture and the current situation it is in (which sadly, isn’t very good). From these experiences, I plan to help people with eating disabilities, maybe even become a coach.
This project wasn’t too hard, though it was very stressful. I think the reason for it being so stressful was because we had quite a bit of work to do in a very small amount of time. And also, we had two or three other projects going on at the same time, which was hard, but I guess it’s what can be expected in high school. The only writing piece that I found difficult was getting my research organized and keeping to the point in my paper. I had to review the paper many times on my own to make sure I was giving off the right idea and information to support it.
Looking back on my research paper, I would definitely have tried to find more information on my topics. I changed my thesis statement a few times while in the middle of writing the paper itself, which ended up confusing me more then actually perfecting my paper. Newt time I’m writing a research paper, I will take some time out to plan my thesis and how my paper will revolve around it to make it more smooth.
Now that I have completed my study on food and our current food culture, answering our original question of how does one navigate their own omnivore’s dilemma is quite easy to me; eat what you want to eat and involve yourself in what you want to, but understand what you are getting yourself into and how it will effect you. If you don’t understand what something that you are eating is, research it. Experiment with what makes you feel good, and what doesn’t. This will help you recognize what foods are good for your body and mind, and which aren’t. That is how I will live through my own omnivores dilemma.