Food

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One of the successful myths generated by the processed food industry is the idea that eating healthy is a privilege only available to the wealthy. According to this logic, healthier whole foods are more expensive, and processed foods become a necessity for anyone grocery shopping on a budget. This myth erases the cultural food practices of recent immigrants–who tend to eat fewer processed foods even on a very tight budget.

Your assignment this week is to choose one frequently purchased processed food that appeared on your food purchase log, or that you have purchased in the past, and make this food at home using only whole ingredients. While cooking at home, do the best that you can to use only ingredients that are not processed (beware of sauces and dressings!). If the food you choose is  eaten frequently, then make a point to eat the homemade version for an entire week.(For example, if you regularly buy coffee at work, try bringing your homemade coffee to work for the whole week).

As you conduct research to make your chosen food at home, pay careful attention to the cost and volume of the necessary ingredients. When you are finished, compare the cost of eating the processed version of the food for one week with the cost of the homemade version of the food. Pay attention to volume so that your analysis is accurate.

when calculating the cost of the processed food, take a careful look at the ingredients, and pay attention to how many of them are actually food, and not industrial biproducts added for texture (lecithin, soy protein isolate, etc), or chemicals added for flavor (“spices”, natural flavors, etc (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.).

Finally, in a 500 word post, reflect on your experience. Be sure to use Nieto’s concept of agent skills to analyze the skills you have used in relation to this food and to our food system as a whole.