Food In My Life
Food Autobiography
9/15/21
Growing up my family never really cared for the importance of good food. We mostly prioritized convenience and cost over health. When I was younger, I didn’t really have a good relationship with food, I didn’t care what was going in my body or where it came from. More recently as I’m becoming aware and am in more control of my body, I’ve been changing my habits. However, we have to start from the beginning.
As a child I lived in a small trailer with my parents, my older brother, and a close family friend. We weren’t well off, but we weren’t poor either. My parents’ jobs paid well enough to put food on the table but not well enough for luxurious items, so growing up my family really valued meat. For as long as I can remember it was always the main character in our meals because it helped my parents feel a sense of pride that we could afford it. However, in my house, dinner wasn’t such a big thing. We didn’t eat at a certain time or at the table for that matter, sometimes we wouldn’t even have a whole ‘dinner’ and we would just make something simple. When we did have meat, the whole meal would be catered around it, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember. We also never had any set foods we could or couldn’t eat in my house. We aren’t a religious family so that never limited any kind of meat or food we ate and the only thing that did limit what we ate was preference. However, the other kind of food that loitered in my house growing up was always processed.
Sugary breakfast cereals, chips, fries, chicken nuggets, pop, mac n’ cheese, and just about anything else you can name that’s processed lived in our kitchen. I like to believe we relied on these because our money situation wasn’t great. My parents had my brother and I at a really young age, they didn’t have college degrees and we lived in a town with not many great job opportunities. Like I mentioned previously we had enough money to live but I can only imagine that when my mom went grocery shopping, she chose the less expensive things which just so happen to be the more processed things. At that time however, I was completely fine eating all this junk food because I didn’t know any better. All that mattered to me was the ‘mouth feel,’ which according to Michael Moss helped me crave for these foods which in turn made me eat more of them. Nevertheless, I was a very picky eater (still am!) which I think is because I had these sugary, crunchy snacks in front of me. My parents also never kept introducing foods to me that I didn’t like so I never learned to like them. Eventually I made a big change to the way I ate.
At around the age of twelve I started learning where meat really came from, which Americans don’t really want to know about. I was astonished that people were okay with the process in which meat gets on their table, so I decided to become vegetarian. This was very hard, especially since my family really valued meat. Also, at this time we had moved, and my parents got better paying jobs and we could afford to have meat more often than before. It was almost like I was fighting a war for dinner, half the time I would only get to eat the sides which were mostly carbs, and the other half of the time my parents just wouldn’t make anything I could eat for dinner. This led me to eat more processed foods because I had to fend for myself while never being taught how to cook well. When they did have dinner and I got to eat sides I was never really satisfied. Moving out on my own has been a similar yet different story.
I’ve never learned to cook but I can cook a few things that are really simple if I have to have the right ingredients for them to work. That’s why Chelsea Fagan’s article on How to Be Your Own Italian Grandmother really inspired me. She talked about using what you’ve got to experiment with cooking, and my favorite part of the article is in the Ten Commandments she mentions “[m]ake meat the guest star of your plate, not the main character." Now, meat will probably not even have a feature on my pate ever again, but it was nice to hear that meat centered dinners shouldn’t necessarily be idolized. Now living alone, I will admit there is quite a lot of processed food in my apartment, mainly because it’s cheap. Although I am slowly buying more fruits and vegetables and more whole foods. I’m also more interested in cooking and finding good vegetarian recipes to try out. I might even try recipes with foods I dislike to see if I only hated those foods because I was a child. I am genuinely trying to fix my eating habits because I want to lead a healthier life than I grew up living.
In conclusion my relationship with food growing up has been mostly processed and based around meat. However, currently I am slowly trying to change that. Eating real food with naturally occurring vitamins and minerals makes me feel good, and it will make you feel good too. Try and think about what foods you eat and why you eat them, it’s a difficult task. How do they make you feel in the long run, and would you be interested in changing that? I had all these questions and I’m on the path to finding the conclusions.
P.S.
This class has been one of the most interesting courses I’ve ever taken. Not only was the information fascinating but it changed my way of thinking and even made me want to change my actions. Now, I’ve taken nutrition classes in the past and only absorbed the information and didn’t do anything about it. With this class I absorbed the information, stored it and then started using it to educate other people. Somehow after this class I see more of the topics we covered coming up in my everyday life. For example, my coworkers were talking about the ethics of eating meat and now I was able to chime in with factual evidence rather than my own opinion.
I’ve also been genuinely interested in changing the way I eat, as I mentioned in the autobiography above, my apartment is full of mostly processed food because that’s what I grew up with and that’s what’s easiest to buy. I also mentioned how I was slowly changing my food intake and I think I have changed significantly in the way I eat. I try to eat more un-processed foods and mostly focus on foods that make me feel good and satisfy my hunger, I also enjoy buying foods from a local farmers market now and getting more variety in my meals. I don’t think I’m to the point I want to be at yet, but I can already feel the effects of eating cleaner, I feel more energetic and livelier. I feel healthy, and I know that I’m doing it in a healthy way. Just like Marion Nestle says in her book Let’s Ask Marion, I know it’s okay to have treats occasionally. I’ve trying to live more by that than my original diet which was treats all the time.
I’ve even considered changing my diet in more drastic ways, I don’t think I ever specified but I’m technically a pescatarian. I eat fish, mostly cod and shrimp but after reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer and learning about all the bycatch that’s wasted and the percentage of shrimp compared to the percentage of fish that’s caught and then wasted from the same net has really sparked an anger inside me. I want to eat cleaner, but I still eat fish. I think it would be challenging to drop meat completely to become a full vegetarian, because I mostly eat fish for protein. However, with the knowledge this class has given me I feel like I would be able to do better than I previously could. In my food autobiography I talked about how and why I became vegetarian/pescatarian, but I never mentioned why it was possible for me too.
Specifically in that time in my life I was a preteen, and I was just starting to make decisions on my own which is one of the reasons I think I pushed to become vegetarian in my meat-eater household. It was the first big decision I was making on my own. This was also in the 2010’s so it easier for me to stop eating meat because I had more accessible to me. Back in the day before animal farming became industrialized it was hard to care for animals, so it was easier to slaughter them and then eat them so they weren't wasted. I don’t have to care for the animals because nowadays meat comes from factory farms, it’s prepared and then package and then shipped to the store. I could simply choose to not buy it (not that 12-year-old me bought groceries but I’m just making a point.) I was also lucky enough to be able to be in an area where grocery stores were abundant, and I had options on what I could eat. Around this time my parents had higher paying jobs and we as a family were in our prime, so there was no question on when or what our next meal would be, unlike many of the stories we heard in class where this decision probably wouldn't have been so easy. So, for me as an adolescent in a middle-class household I was able to easily make this decision to stop eating meat.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed being in this class. I'm more interested in knowing where my food is coming from and generally eating healthier, I have never had a class make me re-think my life in such huge ways. I also really enjoyed how we tied food into major topics in the world, such as racism and poverty. Now that I'm educated on food I hope to help educate other people so this these important conversations start happening. This course has given me a wider perspective into the world and just how important food is. I plan to use this knowledge to educate those around me about food and the significance of it.
Messy Kitchen, Yummy Food
Recipe Reflection Project
9/26/21
Growing up, I never really had to help in the kitchen and I’m unsure if that was because of my lack of cooking skills or my likeliness to make a mess. After this project I’d like to think that it was because I make a mess when I cook whether I try to or not. Besides the fact that my kitchen looked like a tornado swept through it after completing this project it was still fun and interesting!
I found a lot of enjoyment in finding the recipes themselves. When we first mentioned this project, I immediately knew what family recipe I wanted to do.I can’t remember many family recipes during holidays or get togethers. This is possibly because the last time I had a big family get together I was young and wasn’t paying attention to the food or because we never really had any. As I got older, I always looked forward to one thing when a special occasion rolled around, my mom’s baked macaroni and cheese and this was the perfect project to learn how to make it. For the historical recipe was difficult to find because I needed to find something vegetarian with an easy recipe that's interesting. I looked through a lot of recipes from the websites provided for us but I ended up going with no-bake cookies from a cookbook titled “A Book of Favorite Recipes” that was compiled by women from a Catholic church, this recipe was specifically from the 1950’s. At first, I was hesitant because I wasn’t sure how hard no-bake cookies would be to make but I’ll admit I severely underestimated the process.
For me it was easy to prepare all my ingredients. For the mac and cheese, I pretty much had everything and all I needed to grab from the store was more cheese! However for the cookies the only ingredients I had were sugar and butter. While I was shopping, I was reminded of Fagan’s work on How to Be Your Own Italian Grandmother. In her work she mentions the basic ingredients any home should have and looking back I only had three things off the list. While I was shopping, I grabbed some of the things I remembered being on her list like flour and cinnamon even though I didn’t need them for my current recipes. After I got all my ingredients I got started on cooking.
The macaroni dish went extremely well, and I even found it fun to make all the different layers. Once again it was the cookies that gave me the most trouble. Reading from an old recipe is a lot harder than you’d think it’d be. A recipe is literally a set of step-by-step instructions on how to make something, but with older recipes I noticed that they don’t go into the details as much as they should. I wasn’t sure when I was supposed to take it off the heat or if I was supposed to add the oats in all at once or slowly while stirring. I found it hard to comprehend, and this could either be because of the recipe itself or my lack of cooking knowledge. This recipe was also stressful because I had to put everything together unlike the macaroni dish. With the macaroni all the components were made already like the noodles and cheese, but I had to combine all the ingredients for the cookies myself with exact measurements. I also had to carefully make sure I wasn’t burning the sugar when it was on the stove by constantly monitoring and stirring the concoction. It was fast paced and made a mess of my kitchen; I even melted a spoon in the process. I ended up substituting some ingredients to fit my taste, instead of cow’s milk I used soy milk and I didn’t include any nuts in the cookie recipe. I would like to agree with the ladies from Something from the Oven by Laura Shapiro, I felt a big sense of pride by making my own food. I felt accomplished and I think that made me enjoy the outcome more than if I had bought these items from the store.
Overall, I think cooking has been pushed aside significantly. At first, I was okay with that because I felt like I was always running out of time and couldn’t spare any to make actual meals for myself but this project has opened my eyes. I thought this was going to take me hours to make two things but it only took an hour and a half to make both dishes. I understand that it feels like the working days have become longer and the traditions of being able to come home from work to eat have changed and that it is harder to find time, but our days are just as long as they have always been. You don’t always have to make a five-course meal for dinner, it can be something super simple that takes an hour to prepare, you just have to be wise with your time management. If you still feel like you don’t have enough time to cook for yourself every day I have another solution for you, meal prep! I think meal prepping is very beneficial and all you need to do is make a few big batches of a couple dishes when you have some time and prep them for the following week, this way you’re eating home cooked food without having to spend all the time that day cooking. Anyways, this project was very useful to me and made me realize that cooking doesn’t have to be a big thing that takes a lot of time and that I do have time to be preparing myself meals. In the future I’m going to set aside more time to cook for myself.
9/26/21
Growing up, I never really had to help in the kitchen and I’m unsure if that was because of my lack of cooking skills or my likeliness to make a mess. After this project I’d like to think that it was because I make a mess when I cook whether I try to or not. Besides the fact that my kitchen looked like a tornado swept through it after completing this project it was still fun and interesting!
I found a lot of enjoyment in finding the recipes themselves. When we first mentioned this project, I immediately knew what family recipe I wanted to do.I can’t remember many family recipes during holidays or get togethers. This is possibly because the last time I had a big family get together I was young and wasn’t paying attention to the food or because we never really had any. As I got older, I always looked forward to one thing when a special occasion rolled around, my mom’s baked macaroni and cheese and this was the perfect project to learn how to make it. For the historical recipe was difficult to find because I needed to find something vegetarian with an easy recipe that's interesting. I looked through a lot of recipes from the websites provided for us but I ended up going with no-bake cookies from a cookbook titled “A Book of Favorite Recipes” that was compiled by women from a Catholic church, this recipe was specifically from the 1950’s. At first, I was hesitant because I wasn’t sure how hard no-bake cookies would be to make but I’ll admit I severely underestimated the process.
For me it was easy to prepare all my ingredients. For the mac and cheese, I pretty much had everything and all I needed to grab from the store was more cheese! However for the cookies the only ingredients I had were sugar and butter. While I was shopping, I was reminded of Fagan’s work on How to Be Your Own Italian Grandmother. In her work she mentions the basic ingredients any home should have and looking back I only had three things off the list. While I was shopping, I grabbed some of the things I remembered being on her list like flour and cinnamon even though I didn’t need them for my current recipes. After I got all my ingredients I got started on cooking.
The macaroni dish went extremely well, and I even found it fun to make all the different layers. Once again it was the cookies that gave me the most trouble. Reading from an old recipe is a lot harder than you’d think it’d be. A recipe is literally a set of step-by-step instructions on how to make something, but with older recipes I noticed that they don’t go into the details as much as they should. I wasn’t sure when I was supposed to take it off the heat or if I was supposed to add the oats in all at once or slowly while stirring. I found it hard to comprehend, and this could either be because of the recipe itself or my lack of cooking knowledge. This recipe was also stressful because I had to put everything together unlike the macaroni dish. With the macaroni all the components were made already like the noodles and cheese, but I had to combine all the ingredients for the cookies myself with exact measurements. I also had to carefully make sure I wasn’t burning the sugar when it was on the stove by constantly monitoring and stirring the concoction. It was fast paced and made a mess of my kitchen; I even melted a spoon in the process. I ended up substituting some ingredients to fit my taste, instead of cow’s milk I used soy milk and I didn’t include any nuts in the cookie recipe. I would like to agree with the ladies from Something from the Oven by Laura Shapiro, I felt a big sense of pride by making my own food. I felt accomplished and I think that made me enjoy the outcome more than if I had bought these items from the store.
Overall, I think cooking has been pushed aside significantly. At first, I was okay with that because I felt like I was always running out of time and couldn’t spare any to make actual meals for myself but this project has opened my eyes. I thought this was going to take me hours to make two things but it only took an hour and a half to make both dishes. I understand that it feels like the working days have become longer and the traditions of being able to come home from work to eat have changed and that it is harder to find time, but our days are just as long as they have always been. You don’t always have to make a five-course meal for dinner, it can be something super simple that takes an hour to prepare, you just have to be wise with your time management. If you still feel like you don’t have enough time to cook for yourself every day I have another solution for you, meal prep! I think meal prepping is very beneficial and all you need to do is make a few big batches of a couple dishes when you have some time and prep them for the following week, this way you’re eating home cooked food without having to spend all the time that day cooking. Anyways, this project was very useful to me and made me realize that cooking doesn’t have to be a big thing that takes a lot of time and that I do have time to be preparing myself meals. In the future I’m going to set aside more time to cook for myself.
McDonaldization & Me
McDonaldization Project
10/27/2021
To say that I had a tough time with this assignment would be an understatement. Not only did I have a mental block for several days while thinking about ideas for this project, but I also just couldn’t think of everyday things that were McDonaldized. Even though according to The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer, McDonaldization “has influenced a wide range of undertakings, indeed the way of life, of a significant portion of the world” I had zero ideas. I also have some social anxiety issues so for this assignment I really had to go out of my comfort zone. Ultimately fall break came about and I still didn’t have any idea of what I should do for this project, so I used one idea from another classmate, which was to not use my phone or laptop for the entirety of fall break.
I wasn’t going home at all for break, so I knew that I was going to spend most of my time on these devices and I really wanted to just have a few relaxing days off. For me my fall break technically started on Friday because I have no classes on that day. After work I made plans to hang out with a friend of mine and before we parted ways, I asked her to take my phone until Tuesday and luckily, she agreed. So now that I was phoneless, I spent the rest of Friday finishing up homework that I would need my laptop for, which pretty much took the rest of the day. Then on Saturday I started my weekend without my phone or laptop. At first it was boring, it felt like there was nothing to do and that no time was moving at all. One of my goals when I decided to do this first step was to get things done that I had been procrastinating. It turns outs I am a pretty productive person when I have little to no distractions. First, I cleaned my entire apartment in around 5 hours. Now this may not seem like a big accomplishment but usually it takes me a minimum of two separate days to clean my apartment fully. This isn’t because my apartment is incredibly messy but because I get distracted by my devices and spend more time on them instead of cleaning.
I also put some time into doing things I enjoy but just haven’t done recently because social media is more alluring. I read quite a few chapters in a new book, and I even made some art which I hadn’t done in months. Now the problem was the personal interaction part. I went into town on Sunday to grab some groceries, and I noticed something interesting. Since I had no phone to spend my time looking at when I was walking, I noticed a lot of what was in front of me, including people. Maybe because I was noticing it now, or because I was in a good mood, I ended up giving so many strangers compliments. Whether it was their outfit, or their hair I was complimenting people a lot more than I normally do. It made me happy to see peoples’ reactions that someone was noticing them. Of course, there were people that ignored me or didn’t hear me and this almost ruined my happy mood that was helping me overcome my anxiety of talking to people but then I remembered the video we watched by Jia Jang about 100 days of rejection. Now even though it was scary to face this rejection, I came to realize that it wasn’t so bad after all. While I had this sinking feeling in my stomach, and I felt incredibly awkward the successful interactions made me feel a lot better. Not only was I giving compliments, but I also had a few conversations with people and even received some compliments myself. I may have even made someone’s day that day. I also had a nice conversation with the cashier in the grocery store. We talked about break and school, and it was enlightening to have an actual conversation with somebody I didn’t know personally.
Over the rest of the weekend, I noticed quite a lot of things about myself changing, even though some of them were changing only slightly. First, as I mentioned I was productive. I got a lot of things done, and even had time to engage in activities that I enjoyed. I also noticed that I fell asleep earlier and felt more rested when I woke up, this is probably because of the reduced amount of screentime. I had meaningful moments and conversations with strangers and even got over a little bit of my fear of rejection. McDonaldization is a very big aspect of daily life and it’s not always bad. It has increased the availability of goods and services, the variety of things, and among many others it has revolutionized food services which then lead to other services using these aspects to appeal the public as well. However, it also takes away from a lot of things. For example, socialization, quality, and the availability for change. While this project was a little harder than most, I highly recommend looking into your life and disrupting it a little bit. I can guarantee that you’ll end up with an outcome that you didn’t expect.
10/27/2021
To say that I had a tough time with this assignment would be an understatement. Not only did I have a mental block for several days while thinking about ideas for this project, but I also just couldn’t think of everyday things that were McDonaldized. Even though according to The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer, McDonaldization “has influenced a wide range of undertakings, indeed the way of life, of a significant portion of the world” I had zero ideas. I also have some social anxiety issues so for this assignment I really had to go out of my comfort zone. Ultimately fall break came about and I still didn’t have any idea of what I should do for this project, so I used one idea from another classmate, which was to not use my phone or laptop for the entirety of fall break.
I wasn’t going home at all for break, so I knew that I was going to spend most of my time on these devices and I really wanted to just have a few relaxing days off. For me my fall break technically started on Friday because I have no classes on that day. After work I made plans to hang out with a friend of mine and before we parted ways, I asked her to take my phone until Tuesday and luckily, she agreed. So now that I was phoneless, I spent the rest of Friday finishing up homework that I would need my laptop for, which pretty much took the rest of the day. Then on Saturday I started my weekend without my phone or laptop. At first it was boring, it felt like there was nothing to do and that no time was moving at all. One of my goals when I decided to do this first step was to get things done that I had been procrastinating. It turns outs I am a pretty productive person when I have little to no distractions. First, I cleaned my entire apartment in around 5 hours. Now this may not seem like a big accomplishment but usually it takes me a minimum of two separate days to clean my apartment fully. This isn’t because my apartment is incredibly messy but because I get distracted by my devices and spend more time on them instead of cleaning.
I also put some time into doing things I enjoy but just haven’t done recently because social media is more alluring. I read quite a few chapters in a new book, and I even made some art which I hadn’t done in months. Now the problem was the personal interaction part. I went into town on Sunday to grab some groceries, and I noticed something interesting. Since I had no phone to spend my time looking at when I was walking, I noticed a lot of what was in front of me, including people. Maybe because I was noticing it now, or because I was in a good mood, I ended up giving so many strangers compliments. Whether it was their outfit, or their hair I was complimenting people a lot more than I normally do. It made me happy to see peoples’ reactions that someone was noticing them. Of course, there were people that ignored me or didn’t hear me and this almost ruined my happy mood that was helping me overcome my anxiety of talking to people but then I remembered the video we watched by Jia Jang about 100 days of rejection. Now even though it was scary to face this rejection, I came to realize that it wasn’t so bad after all. While I had this sinking feeling in my stomach, and I felt incredibly awkward the successful interactions made me feel a lot better. Not only was I giving compliments, but I also had a few conversations with people and even received some compliments myself. I may have even made someone’s day that day. I also had a nice conversation with the cashier in the grocery store. We talked about break and school, and it was enlightening to have an actual conversation with somebody I didn’t know personally.
Over the rest of the weekend, I noticed quite a lot of things about myself changing, even though some of them were changing only slightly. First, as I mentioned I was productive. I got a lot of things done, and even had time to engage in activities that I enjoyed. I also noticed that I fell asleep earlier and felt more rested when I woke up, this is probably because of the reduced amount of screentime. I had meaningful moments and conversations with strangers and even got over a little bit of my fear of rejection. McDonaldization is a very big aspect of daily life and it’s not always bad. It has increased the availability of goods and services, the variety of things, and among many others it has revolutionized food services which then lead to other services using these aspects to appeal the public as well. However, it also takes away from a lot of things. For example, socialization, quality, and the availability for change. While this project was a little harder than most, I highly recommend looking into your life and disrupting it a little bit. I can guarantee that you’ll end up with an outcome that you didn’t expect.
Grocery Comparison
Grocery Ethnography Project
11/23/21
If you told me that I’d have to visit three grocery stores just to observe the atmosphere and people for a college class, I wouldn’t believe you. However, that’s exactly what I did, I went to three places that sell food all with a different level of popularity. First, a big corporation that everyone knows, Walmart. I normally go to these kinds of stores to get groceries, as do my parents and most people I know. The next place I went to was a little grocery stop in East Lansing called Fresh International Market. This one really intrigued me and I’m glad I know where it is now. Finally, I finished off my grocery tour by going to a local farmers market. This one was the hardest one to get too, mainly because winter is coming soon so the market has very limited hours, but I still managed to visit.
Firstly Walmart, since this store is a big corporation, they sell a lot of things. They even sell more than just food but I mainly focused on the food section of the store. The first thing I noticed was everyone seemed to be in a rush and there were a lot of people shopping there. It was hard to get to certain things because everyone was rushing around to get products. I noticed that they were selling mostly processed and pre-packaged foods. Throughout the store they had a wide selection of various brands, some cheaper and some more expensive, with name brands and generic brands. They did sell ‘fresh produce’ which you can bag yourself but not many of them were labeled organic. I would say that a place like Walmart is beneficial to all different kinds of socioeconomic situations. It has wide variety of prices to choose from whether you're set on saving cash or are willing to spend a little more.
Besides seeming to be in a rush there was no consistency in the shoppers. Walmart is a more casual place, there were people in pajamas, but I also saw a guy in a suit. The employees mainly seemed to be just re-stocking, I didn’t see much interaction between customers and employees. It makes sense to me why Natalie from From “Junk Food” to “Treats” is a bargain shopper. At Walmart you can get a jar of Prego Pasta Sauce for $4.97, or you can get a jar of Great Value pasta sauce for $1.28. It seems that Walmart has food for lots of socioeconomic backgrounds. The next store I went to was the Fresh International Market, the first thing I noticed was how different the atmosphere was. The inside of the store was nicely decorated, and the color scheme was more welcoming. There were fewer shopping carts and less people.
This store not only sells a variety of foods but also foods from different places in the world. It was interesting to go around and look at what kinds of food they had that I’ve never seen. The prices were a little more expensive but still in a reasonable range. I can assume that the prices are higher because these foods most likely have to be imported to the US. I saw a few people looking around curiously just like I was, but I also saw a wider variety of people in general. Most of the people in Walmart were white, but in this market I saw more diversity among the shoppers. The atmosphere was warmer and calmer here. That might be because of the decoration or the lower amount of people. The employees also seemed nicer, however this might just be because I had more time to pay attention to the employees because this place wasn't as chaotic as Walmart. There was a lot of ‘fresh’ fish and meats here and even some more organic produce than at Walmart.
Finally, I went to the Meridian Farmers Market. This was by far my favorite place I visited for this project. Even though it was cold, everyone was so welcoming and friendly. There were many different stalls selling a variety of things. All the produce that I saw was organic. I had assumed that since it was becoming winter there wouldn’t be a lot of variety among the produce being sold but there still was. There was squash, carrots, turnips, collard greens and much more. Also sold here were homemade things like bowls, pies, and donuts. The prices were cheap for most of the stuff being organic, a lot of the time you seemed to get quite a bit of the product as well. All the people there were very warm and the vendors talked to everyone, it was like its own community. I’d like to go back to this farmers market before it closes for the winter to buy some produce because I know it helps these small farmers out. We saw in The Biggest Little Farm that for a while John and Molly profited greatly off selling their eggs and I hope I can help some of the local farmers out.
In conclusion these stores were vastly different. Walmart was very mainstream and overwhelming, the Fresh International Market was calm and intriguing, and the Meridian Farmers Market was warm and welcoming. This project has made me think about my choices of grocery stores, I would much rather go to the farmers market or the International Market than Walmart. I felt more at ease at both of those as compared to a bigger corporation. This project has really opened my eyes to convenience and Mcdonaldization as well, these big corporations are everywhere and normal for a lot of people, but it is such a better experience to go to less known places. Especially when you can support your community.
11/23/21
If you told me that I’d have to visit three grocery stores just to observe the atmosphere and people for a college class, I wouldn’t believe you. However, that’s exactly what I did, I went to three places that sell food all with a different level of popularity. First, a big corporation that everyone knows, Walmart. I normally go to these kinds of stores to get groceries, as do my parents and most people I know. The next place I went to was a little grocery stop in East Lansing called Fresh International Market. This one really intrigued me and I’m glad I know where it is now. Finally, I finished off my grocery tour by going to a local farmers market. This one was the hardest one to get too, mainly because winter is coming soon so the market has very limited hours, but I still managed to visit.
Firstly Walmart, since this store is a big corporation, they sell a lot of things. They even sell more than just food but I mainly focused on the food section of the store. The first thing I noticed was everyone seemed to be in a rush and there were a lot of people shopping there. It was hard to get to certain things because everyone was rushing around to get products. I noticed that they were selling mostly processed and pre-packaged foods. Throughout the store they had a wide selection of various brands, some cheaper and some more expensive, with name brands and generic brands. They did sell ‘fresh produce’ which you can bag yourself but not many of them were labeled organic. I would say that a place like Walmart is beneficial to all different kinds of socioeconomic situations. It has wide variety of prices to choose from whether you're set on saving cash or are willing to spend a little more.
Besides seeming to be in a rush there was no consistency in the shoppers. Walmart is a more casual place, there were people in pajamas, but I also saw a guy in a suit. The employees mainly seemed to be just re-stocking, I didn’t see much interaction between customers and employees. It makes sense to me why Natalie from From “Junk Food” to “Treats” is a bargain shopper. At Walmart you can get a jar of Prego Pasta Sauce for $4.97, or you can get a jar of Great Value pasta sauce for $1.28. It seems that Walmart has food for lots of socioeconomic backgrounds. The next store I went to was the Fresh International Market, the first thing I noticed was how different the atmosphere was. The inside of the store was nicely decorated, and the color scheme was more welcoming. There were fewer shopping carts and less people.
This store not only sells a variety of foods but also foods from different places in the world. It was interesting to go around and look at what kinds of food they had that I’ve never seen. The prices were a little more expensive but still in a reasonable range. I can assume that the prices are higher because these foods most likely have to be imported to the US. I saw a few people looking around curiously just like I was, but I also saw a wider variety of people in general. Most of the people in Walmart were white, but in this market I saw more diversity among the shoppers. The atmosphere was warmer and calmer here. That might be because of the decoration or the lower amount of people. The employees also seemed nicer, however this might just be because I had more time to pay attention to the employees because this place wasn't as chaotic as Walmart. There was a lot of ‘fresh’ fish and meats here and even some more organic produce than at Walmart.
Finally, I went to the Meridian Farmers Market. This was by far my favorite place I visited for this project. Even though it was cold, everyone was so welcoming and friendly. There were many different stalls selling a variety of things. All the produce that I saw was organic. I had assumed that since it was becoming winter there wouldn’t be a lot of variety among the produce being sold but there still was. There was squash, carrots, turnips, collard greens and much more. Also sold here were homemade things like bowls, pies, and donuts. The prices were cheap for most of the stuff being organic, a lot of the time you seemed to get quite a bit of the product as well. All the people there were very warm and the vendors talked to everyone, it was like its own community. I’d like to go back to this farmers market before it closes for the winter to buy some produce because I know it helps these small farmers out. We saw in The Biggest Little Farm that for a while John and Molly profited greatly off selling their eggs and I hope I can help some of the local farmers out.
In conclusion these stores were vastly different. Walmart was very mainstream and overwhelming, the Fresh International Market was calm and intriguing, and the Meridian Farmers Market was warm and welcoming. This project has made me think about my choices of grocery stores, I would much rather go to the farmers market or the International Market than Walmart. I felt more at ease at both of those as compared to a bigger corporation. This project has really opened my eyes to convenience and Mcdonaldization as well, these big corporations are everywhere and normal for a lot of people, but it is such a better experience to go to less known places. Especially when you can support your community.