Considerations on Food and Consumption: An Essay

Reflecting on Our Relationship with Food

This essay asks that you consider the inner (and outer) workings of the world around you in terms of your food and other consumptions. We manipulate the planet and all its creatures. We create, we consume, we build, and we destroy, but how often do we consider the processes and people that provide unceasingly for our unquenchable appetites? How often do we consider the consequences?

 

During this project we might ask ourselves: where do our food and our “stuff” come from, and at what cost? How have our foods and other goods been processed, conceived, even constructed, and then shipped and stored? How do we treat the animals we eat? How should we treat them? How are they killed? How do they live? Where does all of our “stuff” come from? How is it made? How does its production effect the planet? How conscious are we of the world we are taking from every single day? Where do we fit in? What do we have to say?

For this essay we are most interested in how we give and how we take from the planet, from plants, from animals, from the earth, and from the people who share in the spaces we occupy.

 

During this essay block you will be asked to take part in conversations, readings, and writing activities which will require you to look closely at how we might have lived in the past, and how we currently live in and interact with the world around us, particularly when it comes to what we eat, the planet we exhaust and renew in order to build and flourish, and how our consumption of all things living and nonliving shapes the world, in both positive and negative ways.

 

You will need to choose a topic (although it must be related to the main theme of this essay block by considering your relationship with food and consumption and the consequences of your living and eating habits, on yourself, other individuals, societies, and the planet that we share) which you will then think about independently so that you might share your story in order to convince your reader that your experience is one worth considering (we want a moral, a lesson, a warning, or maybe just something to consider). You must have
some exigency (a reason for writing, a “necessity”) before beginning this essay.

In other words, this essay is a personal literacy narrative in which you discuss your own relationship with food and/or consumption and reflect upon the various factors (communal, cultural, political, familial, academic, etc.) that contribute to it. In this way, you are becoming literate in regards to your understanding of the ways in which these outside forces have played a role in shaping your thoughts and your ability to be an active, selfaware member of your various communities and beyond. 

To achieve this, you will write a “narrative essay” about how you might have acquired behaviors and attitudes related to food and consumption (things like how your behaviors and actions contribute to the manufacturing of goods, pollution, and the manipulation of the environment so that you might live a more comfortable life) and what you learned from your experiences. In addition, you are encouraged to consider not only how these
behaviors and/or experiences may have affected you, but how they affect society, as well.

You may wish to consider some or a few of the following as you draft your essay:
• Your educational background as well as that of those closest to you and how this relationship might have influenced your decisions when it comes to eating and living.
• Your attitude towards the “food cultures,” and/or “environmental activism” within any communities you might belong.
• The ideas and themes that circle around food/consumption in the essays we have read.
• Any transformative experiences that pertain to your ideas of food and consumption.
• Your feelings in general towards your own concept of moral and ethical eating and living habits.
You are not being graded on the ideas you hold, but rather on your ability to convey them in an effectual way. Additionally, I will be looking to see that you are able to demonstrate a clear understanding of the ways in which your chosen experience has influenced your own eating habits and lifestyle.