Go Green Car!

For the Sociology aspect of our Government class, we were required to perform a Sociology Experiment.
I worked with Bryan Kelley and Aryand Macaraeg. We chose to make a car out of cardboard and walk around in public pretending to drive to see what people's reactions would be. We thought that we would get a lot of stares, but when we actually went through with the experiment we got not only stares, but comments and some purposeful ignorance. Check out our video to see how it went :)

Roles Reversed: Nutrients Eating US

Michael Pollan, author of The Omivore's Dilemma, wrote another book In Defense of Food, part of which we read for Elika's class. We were then assigned questions to answer, listed below:

1. Why do people choose to eat products that are unhealthy for them? (food stuffs)

After reading Michael Pollan's book, I think that aside from having moved to being cheaper (with the growing popularity of cheap additives and such), the issue of concern about nutrients that appeared is a huge detail in choice. When people think that foods need to be pumped with nutrients, helped by the industrialization of food, they buy the foods that are chemically altered. We've been brainwashed that "...what matters most is not the food but the 'nutrient'; that because nutrients are invisible and incomprehensible to everyone but scientists we need expert help in deciding what to eat; and that the purpose of eating is to promote a narrow concept of of physical health."

It seems we don't really govern what we eat.

2. What roles/responsibilities does the gov't have in framing your choice?

In Washington, 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs seemed to have changed the way of thinking about food from food to nutrients due to correlations they saw between certain foods and health problems. From there on the government recommended certain foods, advice that Americans took to heart. Now the ways food is marketed, which I believe is a direct product of that past influence, is all about nutrition. Eating healthy is what everyone cares about.

a. should they be responsible for educating us?

Haven't they already taken that initiative?
Needing to list the ingredients in food, and what the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs did in 1977 seem to be examples of what they do already.
I think that if anything, since the government is sure to know the deal with chemicals in foods, it should promote organics and Farmer's Markets.

b. should they be responsible for managing all products we consume?

No, because what we eat is our choice. They shouldn't take our free will of what we put in our bodies away.