Read 'n' Seed 2: First quarter of "Don't Eat this Book, Fast Food and the Super Sizing of America"

Chapters and Pages 

I started my book this week called, "Don't Eat this Book, Fast Food and the SUPER Sizing of America." I am extremely happy with the book I chose to read, so far it has been very interesting. I read chapters one through five (pages 1-74) for the first quarter of read 'n' seed.

Main Topics 

The main topics of my book were facts about most American's eating habits. Within this it was talked about the how 65% of American adults are overweight, while 30% are obese (See bellow for definition). Childhood obesity is also a huge issue in America, and causes growing health concerns. Type II diabetes is the kind you can develop through bad diet and excess weight. Type II diabetes is just one of the health issues children are likely to face if their weight is not within healthy averages. One fact that really stuck out at me was that in 1970 there were about 70,000 fast food establishments in America, 186,000 in 2001. McDonald's alone has 14,000 in America, and 31,000 worldwide. In 1986 in reaction to the opening of the first McDonald's in Rome, started the "Slow Food" movement. According to the book "Slow Food" means old-fashioned cooking,with real, fresh ingredients grown and raised in environmentally sound ways. This movement has surprisingly even moved in to the United States, among 45 other counties (when this book was wrote, now to 132 countries).

Terminology

I learned the difference between overweight and obesity. Overweight is when your weight is 10% over the healthy weight for your height. Obese is when you are 30% over the health weight for your height. I was unaware of the "Slow Food" movement before reading about it in my book, and found it to be very interesting.

Implications
I think that as long as a person cares about their health they should care about obesity in America and what they are putting into their mouth. I don't think obesity is anything new in America, most have known that if you don't exercise and eat well you will probably gain weight. To address this issue I think more can be done to teach children when they are younger about proper nutrition and forms of exercise. Yes we all had gym and recess in elementary school and were able to get out running around in then, but now some school are cutting these two things from their programs. Granted it is not many school but it is one way we are only going to dig ourselves in a deeper hole. The book also implied that people need to change no just for them but for their kids because more learn by watching. I agree with this idea, some kids simply follow in their families footsteps of eating habits.

Share & Voice: 10 ways to Go Green and Save Green

As part of Blog Action Day 2009, I am posting about 10 ways to Go Green and Save Green. Blog Action Day 2009 is all about climate change. People all over the world are blogging about food, travel, events, business, politics, among other topics. I think this is such a cool idea that every year on October 15th people blog about a topic that impacts everyone across the world.

10 ways to Go Green and Save Green:
1. Save energy to save money
2. Save water to save money
3. Less gas = more money (and better health!)
4. Eat smart
5. Skip the bottled water
6. Think before you buy
7. Borrow instead of buying
8. Buy smart
9. Keep electronics out of the trash
10. Make your own cleaning supplies (by using vinegar, baking soda, lemon, and soap)

It is so cool that a lot of these things we are already doing in class. I was so interested to read about making your own cleaning supplies! I think that is so awesome, I think I will have to try it myself. Another interesting fact I read was that you should wash clothes in cold water whenever possible, as much as 85% of the energy used to machine wash clothes goes to heating the water. There are a lot of things on this list that can help everyone save time and money for yourself and packaging and other wasteful components of new products. Hope everyone learned something new from my blog, I know I did.

Go Bulldogs!

Amanda

Share & Voice: Kill a Newspaper, Save a Tree?

This week a found an article from Business Week. The title of this article is Kill a Newspaper, Save a Tree? Not Quite, this caught my attention. This article talked a little bit about how there are less newspaper subscribers now. In 1984 there were 63.3 million subscribers, and in 2008 it was recorded there was only 48.6 million, and still it is decreasing. The article also states that it may not be that environmentally friendly to read newspapers online because they want you to take into account what it takes to make a computer. Who knows which choice is really best, I guess we will just have to wait and see whats in the news about newspapers.

At home we recently canceled our newspaper, not specifically to save money or a tree but simply because none of us read it enough to feel it was worth all that paper. I tend to read articles in the newspaper only occasionally and am a big fan of the Sunday advertisements. At first I was slightly disappointed because I do enjoy reading the newspaper and how would I know what was on sale. I soon was okay with it because it is free to subscribe to the newspaper online, by signing up you can go on the website and look at all your favorite articles. I also began to realize that most companies put their weekly advertisements on their web-site. Now every Sunday I simply go to my favorite web-site (Target and others) and look at their advertisement and sale items online. Whether or not this is actually saving on paper, I am not sure.

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 2: Weekly Update

1. My SMART goal is to use a reusable water bottle instead of a plastic water bottle everyday for the rest of the semester and hopefully the rest of my life.I was able to achieve my smart goal because last week my plan was to finish the 12 water bottles I currently had. I was able to get rid of all but two of those plastic water bottles. My plan with these water bottles was to drink them within the first week and to switch off between plastic and reusable water bottles to get use to the switch. I also stated that I wanted to give a few plastic water bottles away and encourage others to use a reusable water bottle. I was able to give away three plastic water bottles. One of my friends told me they currently leave a reusable water bottle at work and go to the drinking fountain and refill it when it gets low. I thought that was a great idea! I felt I was able to achieve my goals for last week.

2. I felt that I was successful in getting others to consider switching to reusable water bottles. I also felt that I was successful in using a reusable water bottle every other day. I decided that one reason I don't like to use a reusable water bottle was because I can't always leave it in the fridge like plastic water bottles. A struggle therefore is that I like it cold, and thus I try to remember to put my water bottle in the fridge every night before I go to bed. I felt a challenge one day when I forgot a water bottle at home and was forced to decide if I wanted to go to the vending machine and purchase and plastic water bottle or just use the drinking fountain. That decision was pretty much made for me when I realized I didn't have any cash, I could have gone to the store but I decided I would be alright until I got home. Sure enough I was.

3. I felt that I wasn't challenged as much this week as I only used a reusable for part of the week and was still phasing out plastic water bottles. I think this week will be a little more challenging to use only a reusable water bottle.


4. I learned that changes don't just happen over night and this is a goal that I will need to work on. I also learned about how much more water I seem to drink when I use a reusable water bottle. I am a typical eight glasses of water or more each day and I still feel I am drinking more water. I think I felt restricted because I only had so much water in a plastic water bottle. While in class I don't like to get up to refill my water bottle so by having a larger reusable water bottle I drink more water.I also learned by looking at my recycling bin how many water bottles I actually go through. Oh man am I glad I am switching.

5. For next week I want to have those last two water bottles gone and to be using a reusable water bottle everyday from now on. I would like to keep things with just using a reusable water bottle for this week. If I am able to do this, I want to think of some way to modify this challenge and to make it more difficult.
I hope that I am able to use my reusable water bottle every day for the next week, I really feel that I can make the switch full time!

Blogged for the Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week hosted by Amy@Eco-Chic with Amy.

Eye Opener: CSPI

I chose to do the Score Your Diet test. I chose this one because I like to think that I eat healthy most of the time. I did not however have a very good environmental score, looks like I have a bit of work to do.
 1. My Health score was 46, environmental score of -27, animal welfare score of -19, and my grand total was 0. I scored in the "Uh-oh, you need help!" category.
2. I scored the highest on fruits and vegetables. I eat a lot of these types of foods to try to be healthy and because they taste good. I do not buy organic fruits or vegetables, I would be open to switching but I don't as I am use to non-organic fruits and vegetables.
3. I scored the lowest in milk and dairy. I tend to drink a glass of milk every other day but have milk everyday with my morning cereal. I had negative numbers across all categories of milk and dairy.
4. I need to improve in all categories. To do this I can make sure that I am more conscious about what I buy at the grocery store. Next time I go to the grocery store (which wont be for awhile considering I went right before I did this assignment) I want to buy a few organic fruits and see if I like them better or if they taste the same as non-organic fruits. I can also make sure that when I buy meat, I buy lean or extra lean as it is more healthy. I am good about buying some low-fat items like butter, yogurt, and crackers, but I should switch to low-fat cheese and a few other foods.
I don't think I would ever switch to eating no meat. One of my roommates is a vegan, I think it would be too hard for me considering how much I like meat. I respect that she does this because she eats really healthy and is inspiring to people and helps them make small changes in their life and diet. I know that I can improve in the things that I eat, as do most people but it is always the idea of changing, for me I always have to make change gradual.