The Cooking animal free essay sample

Michael Pollan’s article The Cooking Animal, describes the decline of home cooked meals and its effects. Cooking, he says, is what separates us from animals. It’s how we became civilized. By making us come together and share food, we learn about each other and ourselves. Although its importance, cooking is rapidly declining in modern times. What was once a daily ritual is now becoming a special occasion. Replacing cooking is convenient, yet horribly unhealthy, processed foods thus worsening the already increasing obesity problem. †The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity† (Pollan 583). Pollan explains the importance of home cooked meals and it’s correlation with obesity and how we have fallen in the trap of the corporations. He explains how the mass producers made hard to make meals cheap, processed, and convenient leaving us to be forever doomed unless we made dire changes. We will write a custom essay sample on The Cooking animal or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Pollen raises many thoughts and facts about the importance of home cooked meals, all of which I completely agree with. Cooking is what separates us from animals. When our ancestors learned the ability to cook the new nutrients allowed them to evolve differently. Cooking not only provided us with much better nutrients but provided us with the means of creating our culture. When we gather with other people and eat together, we share ourselves (Pollan 582). When I first read this article the above statements just clicked with me, it all just made so much sense. I knew that cooking is important but crediting it for mankind’s evolution was new to me. When I read this part of the article I couldn’t help but to imagine a group of Neanderthals eating around a fire, slowly creating their own culture. Cooking is very important to many great cultures and can tell us much about said cultures. My family are big advocates of our Mexican culture so food is definitely very important to us. I’ve eaten with American, Indian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, and Egyptian families all of which had their distinct differences in how they ate and how they interacted with each other on the dinner table. Home cooked meals are being neglected by America causing obesity to become more prominent. The iconic image of the American family gathered around the dinner table is becoming a rare one. Today’s American would much rather pick up a large order of fries than actually get the potatoes and make them yourself, and why not? The restaurants and super markets make it so cheap and easy that you would be a time wasting fool if you cooked it yourself at home. Pollen says that as the preparation time has gone down, calorie consumption has gone up. â€Å"As the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed; since 1977, we’ve added approximately half a meal to our daily intake† (583). That’s no surprise considering what goes into the fast food and mass produced foods. I remember I saw a video on what McDonalds chicken nuggets look like before they fry them and I never wanted to eat one ever again. If the chicken looks like pink silly putty, maybe we shouldn’t be eat it regularly. Thankfully I grew up on my mothers cooking. She has a full time job, three kids, and manages to make the best food everyday. I’ve always believed that all my physical and athletic achievements have been greatly attributed by my diet. Apart from home cooked meals being generally far better nutritiously, they generally taste way better. Perhaps they taste better because theyre made with love? That’s up to the consumer to decide. Corporations that mass produce food have one motivation, profit. It’s their job to mass produce food the quickest and cheapest way to earn the most profit so obviously nutrition is going to be neglected. The marketing revolves around habits. If we form the habits of just relying on them for food we will not go back thus more profit for them. It makes me think of an evil villain who’s bent on destroying the human race or at least making us all fat and lazy because that’s what’s happening. We’re becoming lazy which means our children will be lazy and the ability to cook will vanish and it will all go downhill from there. In Pollen’s article, he asked Harry Balzer what we can one do to fix this problem and he said â€Å"Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself† (584). Cooking is something that has been around since the beginning and something that we cannot afford to loose. Cooking is what makes us human, what provides us with the right nutrients and what keeps us from falling into the industries trap. Michael Pollan’s The Cooking Animal reinforced my belief on the importance of home cooked meals and also expands it.

Psychodynamic Theory Rooted In Freud Essay

Psychodynamic Theory Rooted In Freud Essay Psychodynamic Theory Rooted In Freud Essay Psychodynamic theory rooted in Freud’s theory of personality, he suggested that the ego acts as mediate to strike a balance between the primitive desires represented by the id and the moral and social constrains represented by the superego. (Siegel, 2005) The extreme guilt resulting from harsh superego is a source of crime, since the behaviour aiming at being caught to decrease the feeling of guilt. A weak superego reflected in inability to delay immediate gratification. The deviant superego, for example, will make a son raised by a criminal father feel acceptable and perform the criminal acts that father would engaging in, since the internalization of same sex parent as a moral regulator is a critical role of superego. (Newburn, 2007)And then Bowlby(1944) developed the idea about early separation of a child from its mother, suggested that the maternal separation will lead to difficulties in an inability to form functional social relationship, since the attachment bond as th e is the prototype for all future relationship. When apply to crime, basing on the research showing that almost 39% of the group of juvenile delinquency has the disruption of maternal relationship, Bowlby suggests that impaired ability to relate to other could result in both affectionless psychopathy and psychologically immature characterised by inability to delay gratification which are related to later criminal behaviour, specifically the Oedipus complex can result in a number of unconscious criminal acts. (Bowlby, 1951) Moreover, Glueck and Glueck (1950)largely developed psychodynamic theory of delinquency and crime, which is he tentative causal formula reflecting Freudian ther and their empirical findings including the 500 delinquent research. They suggests that the poor parenting practices and parental modelling, and the pursuit of self-interest are the core factors leading to the weak internal controls regarded as a weak superego. Psychodynamic theory has pointed out the importance of early life experiences, especially parenting. However, it fails to test empirically while it focuses on internal conflicts and unconscious processes. (Howitt, 2011) The major critic, Wotton (1959) argued that the quality of the relationship is important, and the possibility of the reverse of separation should be considered. While Rutter (1972) argued that the psychodynamic theory is not easily tested while it bases on the unconscious mind. First of all, the psychodynamic theory is reductionist approach, since while psychodynamic theory simplifies complex human behaviour to the mechanics of the mind; for example, the ego strength is used to measure a person’s ability to control itself. Secondly, the psychodynamic theory is determinist while it suggests that people have no free will to decide how they behave. Thirdly, the Freud’s theory it is difficult to falsify, and a good theory can be tested to see if it is wrong (Popper, 1935), while Freud’s assumption focuses on unconscious mind. Next, move to learning theory. ‘It is widely accepted that children and adult may learn effectively from the actions of another person through a process of imitation.’ (Howitt, 2011). Behaviour theory views that human behaviour is developed through learning experience. And this kind of imitation is first regarded as a form of vicarious learning as Miller and Dollard (1941) suggested. When apply learning theory to criminology, it can be seen that the family and socio-economic, peer, school and community are the core risk factors increasing the probability of offending, which are the objects being modelled after. (Kazdin et al. 1997) Sutherland (1939) put forward the differential association learning theory, suggesting that the learning of the attitudes supporting crime and the specific behaviour for committing crimes are the two prerequisites within he family and peer group for a person to develop into an offender.(Akers, 1966) Albert Bandura developed the idea into the social

Chose the topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Chose the topic - Essay Example After getting drunk, they would walk around making noise and talking immoral while others were fighting each other. This is evident when Philomena and Pelajia complaints about this and saying that she wants to go to Toronto. They later overcome this by stopping the name callings, towards themselves, and considering one another for consolation. The social conditions in the hills seemed to be harder when Pelajia complaints about men snatching away their neighbors wives. She also complains of the women snatching their neighbors husbands and sleep with them. Those involved in this have shown disrespect and caused discomfort to others, including the sisters, in the hills. Pelajia says, " †¦..Andrew Starnblanket and his brother Mathew. Drunk. Again. Or sounded like†¦." She continues saying, "†¦. Fighting over some girl. Heard what sounded like a baseball bat landing on somebodys back. My lawn looks like the shit this morning" (Tomson 59). This condition has made the sisters resolve their differences and stay in peace since this is the only way to their resilience. The sisters have been staying in a state of joblessness. None of them is employed, and we even see them relying mostly on charity so that they can get some finances to better their lives. In the play, we see them being idle all the day and having nothing to do so as to improve their living conditions. This is evident when Pelajia says, " †¦ I will tell him there will be more jobs because the people have paved more roads to drive to work on†¦" (Tomson 59). The sisters are living in poor housing conditions. There houses roofs are poor and in bad condition relatively their neighborhoods. Comparing to the other houses they saw in Toronto and Espanol, they live in poor living conditions, and thats why Pelajia is planning to leave the hills and go to Toronto. They are forced to repair the roofs