Have we really all become empty people who constantly commit what is considered to be one of the seven deadly sins, destined to live our lives out in gluttony?

We have hells kitchen reruns, Top Chef Marathons that happen 24/7 after marathons of project runway (another really ironic timing matter), and episodes of Iron Chef followed by all these different food network challeges.  Have we really reached a point in society where we either disregaurd food so much that we have turned it into entertainment, or have we become so consumed and fascinated by it that this is the kind of entertainment that we pusue inbetween meals as we plan what we eat next.  It’s really an intersting question to think about, but a little too perplexing that if you think about it too much, it very well make your head hurt.

Polly and another patient at the center got a pass to leave for a few hours in the day.  Even though it is against the rules, they use that pass to go get new tattoos.  They each choose to receive the symbol for recovery for eating disorders to be inked on their skin.  Despite the fact that it was obvious that Polly was making progress to better her health, the conversation she had with the artist obviously showed that she was still fighting against her eating disorder.  However, despite knowing that the two girls suffered from anorexia, the tattoo artist not only encouraged their illness with comments of “don’t get fat”, but offered advice as to how they could maintain their thin physique by eating in a way that could still speed up their metabolism.

Pardon my french, but WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!  It amazes me how many people talk about how eating disorders are serious issues, but at the same time, there are still those who reinforce the ideas of achieving a perfect physique, despite the fact if it comes borderline to death. 

It is absolutely insane to think about the values put on body image, especially when they are reinforced by some of the most unlikely characters.  It makes me wonder if I had gone to the same artist, had made a comment about my weight, and how he would have replied.  Not only do I cringe, but I think I would have walked out with an unfinished tatt.  Ironically, because of how they feel about themselves, the two girls think nothing of it, because his remarks only help them to think that their mentality behind their weight is ok in other peoples eyes.

One item of interest that I had thought about, was when we talked about how women perceive weight loss.  You loose weight, and feel better about yourself because you are taking steps to make your life better, but for some reason women don’t focus on how healthy their weight loss was, rather, they focus on how it makes them feel because of how it changes their appearance.  So because of this what happens when you gain a couple of pounds back.  Even if there was a significant total weight loss, when looking at women, there is a focus on whatever weight they gain, despite the fact that the person could have lost significant amounts of weight previously, there is a microscope on the 10 or 12 pounds that could have come back on in a couple of years.  It drives me insane because this is what happened to me.  I was incredibly overweight, and lost close to a total of 55 pounds over the course of  my high school years.  Despite the fact that I lost a ton of wight, when I got into college the only thing that loomed over me was the possibility of the freshman 15, and was crushed when I gained close to 10 pounds in 2 years.  I could only focus on that extra weight, and it seemed like the other people in my family did too.  I was constantly badgered with comments of the fact that I was “getting a little pudgy”. 

This idea of perfection, has been stretched to it’s limits so far that self reflections of beauty in women are completely distorted.

I live in a dormitory that continually claims that they are concerned with your health needs, but when I started walking around the dining hall to pick my meal, nothing seemed to fit the criteria for health food.  Everything in the place was swimming in grease and had been deep fried in corn oil, even the tiny selection of food that was deemed the vegetarian section that only included reheated, packaged veggie burgers, tofu nuggets that were deep fried so long they looked like you could kill somebody with a good arm, and what was supposed to be steamed vegetables.  I then proceeded to the salad bar, which I quickly walked away from because it was apparent that the “fresh” produce had probably been sitting there all day untouched.

I decided to quickly just head upstairs to my room where I could easily make something that was descent to eat, until I got there and realized that every single one of my food items, you guessed it, had corn.  I normally wouldn’t have been so resistant to eat the products I had casually purchased a few weeks ago, but everything I looked at just seemed to strike a chord in me as I pictured the commodity crop being chemically altered in some lab then being mixed into my food.  I can’t help but recall the guys from King Corn making High Fructose Corn Syrup and how dangerous and complicated it was as I searched for something to nourish my hunger pains.

Even though I firmly believe that knowledge about our food is a helpful tool, I can’t help but wonder if I will ever look at food the same way, as I sat down with a bottle of water eating my bag of overpriced almonds purchased from Whole Foods two weeks ago, still feeling hungry. 

It’s a little odd to think that grass is the main component that links all in the food change, but it’s true in many ways.  Even now, people who have shifted away from eating meat have often turned to drinking wheat grass juice.  It may sound like a dumb comparison, but those same people who drink it, may not have ever linked to the idea that they could be consuming the same grass that the cow sitting on their friends lunch plate as a hamburger once dined on.  You hear all of these references to the circle of life, but because we hear it so often, I think that people kind of blow off the idea and don’t even think about it.

Who thought that the stupid Disney song from the Lion King would hold true to readings assigned for a rhetoric class in college?

There’s no doubt that Whole Foods offers a wide variety of products that are all natural, organic, and healthy.  In fact, so much so that I have never in my life seen such an array of items like this, in one place, in my life.  I couldn’t help but to notice, though, that all of the products carried by Whole Foods came attatched with a hefty price tag.  For a while, I had heard people refer to it as “Whole Price,” and finally understood why.  The items that you were being pushed to buy that were supposed to be better for you, could easily dent your wallet.  Even though these products were high in price, it almost seemed as if every single product had a story attatched to it justifying a reason to buy the product so that you could ignore it’s cost. 

It sounds odd to say that the products in a supermarket utilize pathos to sell their product, but this was exactly the case at Whole Foods Market.  Almost every single product in the store had a backstory as to how it came to be, how the company rose from nothing but a smart idea, and how their goal was utimately the health of its consumers and the bettermant of mankind.  All of this back story from organic sodas, chips, toilet paper,  and even dog food, all so that you could buy their product.  By doing this the companies tried to identify with their consumer and sympethise with them in a way that you probably wouldn’t see on the mass produced products in most supermarkets.  This method is then furthered by whole foods by different stories at the ends of the isles blaring their mission statement as to how they care about their consumers, and why the merchandise that they carried was the best to buy because of how much they cared.  I realize how repetative this sounds, and the truth is, that’s what the entire store felt like, one huge repetative statement after another.  You become so focused on these stories and they establish credibility for the product that, irnically, you get sucked into to wanting to buy the product, despite the price. 

I know that for these blogs, it’s best to tie what we’ve learned from class and the book to outside elements.  However, the PSA in the book, I think tied everything together so well, and I couldn’t really get past that. Since, my brain kept coming back to this image, this is what I decided to write about.