Personal Essay Ideas

I've thought about what I wanted to incorporate in my paper.  I think it will look a little like my first blog post.  Some ideas I had in mind:

- Growing up and eating with family

- Healthier choices i've made to lose weight and get in shape

- The positive aspects of eating healthy

- Food that I eat while i'm in college

- The reason of trying to live a healthier lifestyle 

I feel like I could write about all of these topics in my paper because it just has to be about how food relates to me.  I haven't really thought about the style or format that i'm going to use.  I guess i'll just start writing then I can format it after I have all my thoughts down.  

Inside: McDonalds

Did you know that McDonalds buys:
- 43 million pounds of tomatoes?
- 102 million pounds of lettuce?
- 231million pounds of cheese?
- 60 million pounds of apples?

a year.

While watching this documentary, I found it fascinating that there are more McDonald's employees than the amount of soldiers in the the Army, Marines and US Air Forces combined.  27 pounds in the past year by eating McDonalds every day.  I don't know why but I find that hard to believe.  He had a hard time listing the foods he ate and said he exercised with it.  I mean if it worked, then it worked.

The CEO, Don Thompson says that he hires employees because "we're about providing opportunity and can rise to the system to gain greater wealth"...whatever that means.  The journalist asked the CEO many questions about America's obesity problem and blaming it on McDonald's.  Don simply answered by saying that it's not the fault of fast food restaurant's but the choice of food that the customers pick to eat.  He said he lost

Don Thompson stated that he visits every company that produces the products that McDonald's uses.  He makes sure the products are fresh which include 100% ground beef and 100% white breast meat.  Hearing this and watching Super Size Me a few years ago seems to contradict my thoughts about the meat of McDonald's.  I saw that the Chicken McNuggets are made from processed, and different parts of the chicken and in this documentary they said the McNuggets were made from 100% white breast meat.  Even when I eat the nuggets from McDonald's, I can tell that it's not white breast meat.  The whole time the journalist was asking him questions about McDonald's, he was trying to make his fast food restaurant sound better than it actually is.

The documentary shows a scene at Hamburger University where the professors train student's to become successful CEO'S, managers and employees.  The student's that attend this university can get college credit for taking classes there.  They train on customer service, in and out restaurant training and situational  to prepare employees to work at fast food restaurants.  Over 300,00 students' have graduated from Hamburger University.

Even though this documentary was quite short, it was helpful and I found out a lot of information about McDonald's.  I still question the things that the CEO said about his restaurant.  Either way, comparing facts from this documentary and Fast Food Nation doesn't match up.  Fast food restaurants will always find a way to buy food for cheap to sell for cheap but use ingredients that aren't the healthiest for people.

Injuries & Potatoes

Injuries

Something that I didn't mention in the previous blog post was the amount of injury that happens to teenage workers in the United States.  These injuries doesn't just happen at fast food restaurants, but all jobs that teenagers work at.  "Teenagers are far more likely to be untrained, and every year, about 200,000 are injured on the job" (83).  The high incidence injuries are from slipping, falling, strains and burns.  These weren't the only ways that teenagers would get hurt.  A lot of male workers would bring a handgun to work if they had to work the later shifts in case they got robbed or someone broke in after hours.

Robberies would occur either early in the morning or close to closing time.  Since the automobile industry boomed in the 1940's, more highways were built resulting in fast food restaurants being open near the highways.  Thus, a higher rate of robberies which made it dangerous for teenage workers to work late at night and during the day.  It is crazy to think that you have to protect yourself at work when you're trying to make a living.

Potatoes

Why do you think the french fries taste so good at McDonalds? Well, there is a whole process involved starting with the Idaho potato industry to the dehydrating company.  

J.R Simplot started his career by working at a potato warehouse then later became a potato farmer.  He started leasing acres of land to grow potatoes.  On the side, he also shipped onions and wondered why the company was buying so many onions.  He soon found out that they have been using a prune dryer to dehydrate the onions.  Simplot bought one of these machines and started drying potatoes.

Later on, frozen foods became popular to America, so Simplot created a way to make frozen fries that would taste just as fresh as freshly fried french fries.  World War I veterans enjoyed french fries while they were stationed in Europe then started becoming popular in the states.  Simplot built a new factory to make his french fries to be sold at McDonald's because that was the number one place where people ate their fries.  He created a system that made frozen fries and the employees would just have to deep fry the potatoes a few times to become the yummy, golden-crispy fry.  While the success for J.R Simplot was going up, half of the potato farmers in Idaho lost their farms.  The corporate potato farms were taking over land and took jobs from many farmers in Idaho.  Hearing about this and reading about it are totally two different things.  When you hear about it, it's not a big deal.  But when you read about this, it's very sad to know that farmers are losing their jobs to big companies.  This is their life and how they make a living to support their family.  When companies take away jobs, they are taking away so much more than just a job.  

Reading this book reveals all the dirty little secrets about fast food restaurants.  Fast food employees and customers will never know how these restaurants came to be.  How the food is processed and which families are suffering because of the selfish business owners.  

Can I get a side of fries with that?

Started From the Bottom

I chose to read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.

The title pretty much gives away what the book is about.  So far it is really interesting to see all these people become so successful in the fast food business.  People like William Rosenberg (Dunkin' Donuts), Glen W. Bell, Jr. (Taco Bell), Keith G. Cramer (Burger King), Dave Thomas (Wendy's), Thomas S. Monaghan (Domino's), Harland Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken) either dropped out of school, never made it to high school or used to be in the army, marines.  They founded these fast food restaurants by getting ideas from each Mcdonald's, which was founded by the McDonald Brother's.

Now each of these men are successful along with their fast food restaurant's.

Drive-Thrus

The key component that made fast food restaurants successful were the cars.  In the city of Los Angeles in 1940, there was an estimate of one million cars.  This meant that people got lazier and didn't want to get out of there cars to get food so they went through drive-thrus.  The owners of these restaurants thought of ways to make their food known so they built chain restaurants right next to the highways.  This way the cars passing by would see the signs and stop by to grab a burger.  The creation of cars and highways in this era was such an important factor for fast food restaurants.  

The fast food restaurant owners tried to make more money by advertising to children.  They also tried to get the cheapest ingredients and supplies to save money.  After reading 100 pages of this book, it changed my mind about fast food.  I usually don't eat a lot of fast food, but next time I crave it, I will choose a different option.  Im looking forward to reading the rest of this book because I want to know more about the secrets behind fast food.  

Sriracha saves the day. (Food and You)

I come from a big, traditional, asian family.

Food was always something that brought my family together at holidays and many family gatherings.  Our  meals consisted of hot white rice, kimchi, a huge pot of spicy soup, A LOT of veggie side dishes, fish, and different meats.  Whoever made the meal for the night would make sure to make more than enough food to feed my family, plus an army.  Everything was also spicy, if it wasn't spicy enough, it was too bland.  If we were sweaty and panting for air by the end of the meal, the amount of spiciness was perfect!

When my siblings and I were younger, we always set the table with a pair of chopsticks and a spoon.

 We always ate lunch and dinner together as a family.  My mom would almost always prepare a Korean meal but sometimes we got lucky with American dishes.  Eating American food was a treat to my siblings and I.  Then that so called treat turned into dread when I started college.  Living in the dorms caused me to eat dorm food.  It was exciting at first but slowly I started dreading the food.  It wasn't spicy enough and everything was just so bland!  I craved Korean food more and more so when I went home for the weekends, my mom would send me back with Korean food.

Once I moved out of the dorms and into my own house, I discovered Sriracha.  This hot sauce saved my life because I put it on EVERYTHING!

 Which includes: pasta, rice, soup, popcorn, quinoa, stir fry, salad, chicken and just about anything that you can think of.  I got my roommates and friends to start using Sriracha.  They can only handle a little bit though because it's too spicy for them.  From the five months that we've been living in our house, we went through about 8 bottles.  This means we bought two bottles every month. About a month ago, I heard some devastating news about the Sriracha factory closing down for the harsh odors.  After watching and reading the news, I thought about stocking up on bottles of Sriracha to hold me over for the year.  Luckily, I heard the factory was going to re-open in a different location.  I'm crossing my fingers for the factory to be located in Kalamazoo! Because I can not live without spice in my life.

(Some of my Sriracha obsessions: water bottle, cookbook, and halloween costume)