Gary’s article Cultures of Habitat revealed the facts that the health status among the Native American community is spoiled by the modern society fast-paced lifestyle and the way of eating. The way of Native American dietary intake is mostly depend on the “wild foods” and value family and community. Sadly, a lack of social support and the separation within the indigenous community nowadays contributed to their undesirable health outcomes. This article reminds me the event I had been to at the Native American Museum called The Living Earth Festival and the symposium Creating A Healthy Food Future. The Native American community put a lot of emphasize on the nature and the surroundings who nourish people and provide the food sources to help us thrive. Human beings come from nature and thus our lifestyles should adapt to the pace of the nature without undermining the health of the planet. In other words, living sustainably means we shall live in harmony with the nature through the lens of sharing and giving back. Essentially, what is healthful for the earth and what is healthy for us is the same thing. Native American communities held the belief that foods is people, this means foods share the identities with the people. How you treat foods in terms of growing, processing, and consuming is how you treat your body as well. The respectfulness to the nature shows upon on our environment outcomes. According to Dr Vandana Shiva, humans are part of the nature so protecting nature is not a luxury. Everything is interconnected to one another, and that’s way the native American communities value the “cycle” and thus the concept of circle symbolizes their value through a sense of sharing and in search of communal truth.

Storytelling is another way for human beings to convey the respectfulness to our landscape from generations to generations. A lot of times we feel hungry not only because of our biologically desires but also we are hungry for the relationships. We eat for creating and maintaining relationships. Especially in this fast-paced era, people living their lives with a lot of stress and sometimes tend to turn to comfort foods to ease the feelings and emotions. Reflect on my own experiences, sometimes I use food to eat away the fears and the sense of insecurities. Foods then become my comfort zone. I certainly not only learn to be aware of my own thoughts and feelings but also learn to communicate and face the “insecurities”. It turned out that storytelling helps me to get through my own obstacles.

Knowing the history of the foods is beneficial to our health and environment. We tend to focus on the short term and do not care about the original knowledge that has been cultivate and sustain our lives. Joining the gardening volunteer is a way of knowing the “history” of our foods. Because gardening involves beyond the food works itself but the relationship people build through the feelings they shared with one another. The declining agriculture practices also decreases the physical health and social health of people. Moreover, according to the article “the curative quality of the native foods is a customary component of their diets.” This resonated with me that traditional foods play functional role in public nutrition or culture. Back to home in China, my parents always instilled me the knowledge of using foods as natural medicine to adjust the body function. Whenever I feel kind of sick I usually first cut down the amount of my food intake, and I choose wisely based on my symptoms. For example, if I have a burning throat I would increase my consumptions of fruits and vegetables and be very careful the way I cook and eat them as well. For example, I would like to keep the original flavor of the foods during the cooking process, which means controlling the amount of additional flavorings input. That’s helps me a lot with controlling and reducing  my symptoms and overall health conditions.

When comes to food systems, we tend to think “big.” We also tend to think the impact of the environment on our food system is out of our control, so we shrug off the responsibility and rely on others to do things for us. For many of us city dwellers, we can’t deny we have been disconnected from nature, where our food comes from, and have spent less time interacting with the environment.
According to the World Health Organization, the urban population in 2014 accounted for 54 percent of the total global population, up from 34 percent in 1960, and continues to grow. Is this good news for us? Who will take the responsibility to feed us then? And how would they help provide for the estimated 9 billion people on the planet by 2050?
If you reflect upon humans’ past experiences, history has told us that civilization was built through hard labor. This labor meant people worked together and celebrated the time they were together based on their collaborations. No one was isolated and we needed that social support to communicate and help one another. In other words, food was a pathway to bind people, and people were driven by the sense of belonging to lead their lives in a sustainable way. Therefore, people shared not only their food but also their food experiences. This is where culture comes from: food connecting people.
Food goes hand-in-hand with collaboration. If you trace back either through history or examine your own daily practices, you will find what food means in terms of relationships. From my own perspective, there are two layers of meaning in this context. First, I think of the relationship between the land and humans. The second is the relationship among people. The two layers are not parallel to each other but connected and intertwined.
With the rapid development of technology in this era, we are relying more on mass production of food to meet the needs of our fast-paced lifestyles. As technology helps us to increase our work efficiency and shorten the geographical distance between people, it also creates a gap that drags people away from manual labor and nature, while also shifting our attitudes toward convenience.
The convenience of accessing and consuming foods can have both positive and negative effects on both our health and our surroundings. Essentially, people who have the purchasing power to acquire high-quality food sometimes do not appreciate what they eat and take it for granted. The lack of appreciation and thought about what we eat and how we eat either blocks or cuts off the “relationship” we are trying to build with our environment and the people who nourish us, serve us and eat with us. Instead, we rely on mass manufacturing operations to feed us. When buying these convenience foods, we rarely ask ourselves, “Where did this food come from? Who grew it? And how the food get here?”
As food generates dialogue and creates the opportunities to help us connect to one another and the environment we live in, it also defines who we are. Like the clothes we wear, food reflects our culture and personality. We eat different food at different places; our choices are changing as we move from one place to another. Food preference is a pathway that conveys messages rooted deep in our identities.
While, as they say, “you are what you eat,” we also should recognize that our social environment shapes our diets and eating behaviors. It goes beyond individual preferences, but includes community influences, education and childhood experiences. That old saying isn’t inclusive of the various situations that help shape our food choices.
As we focus on the big picture of food systems, we should reflect on and ask ourselves those important questions, like, where is my food from? Why do I eat it? In what way can I prepare and cook my food to maximize the nutritional value? How can I preserve food and/or avoid food waste?
The point here is by simply being more aware of and taking positive action on what we can change can make a big difference regarding our surroundings — and eventually the food system as a whole. If we “think big” in terms of being aware of our environment and community, but “act small,” starting with our own daily practices, this is the key to help our planet move forward.

Based on this week’s readings, I have gained a deeper understanding of the US food system through the lens of food justice. All of the reading materials revealed the embedded structural and racial problems within our society. It is necessary for people to be aware of the invisible roots of the food insecure by digging into the surface of the “symptom” unjust access to food. Lack of cultural understandings and effective coordination grounded the potential dangers to our food system. This is not refers to just one party who has the privilege, but mutual respects from both entities regardless of race, age, education, income, social standings, etc. It is hard to do than tell once the privileged group dominate the conversation and do not listen to the other party. In essence, there is no true equity in our society. Yet, we can make the change to minimize the gap for people who are underserved and use the complementary strengths to give back. Cultural understanding is the basis of alleviating the conflicts among different interests group of people in this increasing globalization world. This includes empowering, compassion and effective leadership to bring a diverse background people work together. We all can take actions and influence the people who surrounded by us in our daily lives. From the food system perspective, food producers might consider how to embrace people from different backgrounds engage in the farm work and treat people with dignity; food scientists might think about how to market the food products through a socially and culturally appropriate way; food distributors might consider not only the effective way of delivering food, but also considering how to build and maintain the trusting relationships through a culturally appropriateness support.

Food system goes hand in hand with the economic structure, and collaborative efforts from different partner relations. It is based on both social network and local communities. Yet, the challenges we face ahead are based on global markets so we shall deepen cooperation globally and empower the people who work for us. As the more work we have done on revealing our own privileges, the more we could done to help others and ourselves. Everyone plays a role in building a healthier and more sustainable food system in our society. While seeing food is a system of communications, we will need community collective efforts to face the challenges together by inclusion the voices and commitment to

I have learned a lot from the Fast Food Nation article. I was shocked by the fact that over the past 40 years, American society “contributed” a huge amount of money in “supporting” the fast food industry. I think this is a critical issue for people who want to make an impact on the local food system to think about, because the implications of the author seeing the fast food industry “both as a commodity and as a metaphor” play a great role in dominating the public mindset and social customs nowadays. It is true that fast food as a commodity catering the public pleasure of taste, and people have a great demand on that because of the low-price and convenience. However, as a commodity in the circular flow model, fast food indeed transformed the public’s diets behavior, labor, land and eventually cultures. The history told us that the growing fast food industry connected to the changing of workforce after the 1970s. At the same time, since more women entered into the workforce, it also shifted the American restaurant business methods and foods economy. However, the prosperous of fast food didn’t benefit the industrial workers, and even worse, according to the author “the restaurant industry is now America’s largest private employer and it pays some of the lowest wages.” This shows that fast food workers have become the alternative “modern slaveries”. The migrant farm workers take up the majority of the fast food labors market, which is being said that lack of cultural understanding and coordination is still embedded in our society. Thus, the mass production reformulated not only the foods but also the way of people seeing and consuming foods. Fast foods trends also catalyzed the United Sates became a nation of snackers. And once people take for granted and get used to the fast foods cultural environment, they will not easily step out of their “comfort zone” in search of real foods and disconnect with cooking and farming. The disconnection between consumers and producers has been deeply shaped our food system and American society. Inevitably, people no long appreciate the foods they have had. While some of them greatly satisfied with the boundless resources, there are also lots of people who struggle with accessing foods sources to sustain their lives. Food waste and food insecure are the results from the disconnection of our food system.
New technologies and applications of science fertilized the food system for abundance. While the food companies transform the raw materials of agriculture into higher volumes of frozen, canned, dehydrated, and processed foods, they also transform the way of people live their lives. All things connected. Human behaviors, external environment, and our internal health outcomes are all interdependent. Foods serve as the bridge between our external environment and internal environment, they provide us energy physically and spiritually. And it is all about balance. The exchange of energy between people and nature is mysterious but profound. As the large corporations achieve high yields and low food prices, the hidden costs and long-term effects of mass production on our environment and health are tremendous.
To be a responsible eater means to take care of body as well as the planet we live in. It means to use a holistic approach to understand our land, labor and resources. It is an agricultural, ecological, and political act. “You are what you eat”, in other words, implied that foods shape our identities. It also influences on the American cultural and economic landscape.

Food is the gift from our mother nature. It is also the product of history and culture. What we eat and how we eat shapes our life-stage identities and the quality of lives. When I was little, I hate eating garlic, green leek, ginger and cilantro which are the very common ingredients and seasonings for Chinese cuisine. I could not stand how they taste like even eat with my favorite dish. This made my parents worried and since then they instilled me a lot of foods-related health benefits and how they act upon on the bodies. Reflected on my past experiences, what I have gained is that food is culture. This means food connects people and people create the food cultural environment from production to digestion. I grow up with a family that emphasizes on family reunion and sharing food together. We value collective action and seeing food as a medium to bring people and families closer together. Most of the knowledge can trace back to the ancient Chinese history and also applies to the modern world. There are a lot of proverbs and cultural beliefs that guides Chinese people what to eat and how to eat. For example, how to cook appropriately in terms of heating, combinations, temperature, orders, and the role of ingredient in different dishes etc. Cooking is a process not only based on the wisdom from the ancestors but also involved the scientific studies on nutritional value. However, scientific research on food studies are always changing, sometimes even misleading. I learned from my nutrition class about how nutrients work in human bodies through the digestion, absorption and transportation. However, what embedded in my mind and guide me through all the time is the food cultural environment I used to live in. This includes the school and family education I received and my travelling experiences in China. Nowadays, I still keep track of reading the food and health related sections on Beijing evening newspaper. And I not only without trouble eating garlic, leek or ginger but also enjoy cooking them combine with different dishes. I do not remember the reason of my changing appetite from avoiding garlic to embrace it, but I am guessing it comes from the pleasure of cultural practices and the increasing of knowledge.

Michael Pollan’s perspectives mostly are based on the cultural appropriateness. My take away from his reading is to obey the rule of the food, which means to respect the nature and respect ourselves. There is no doubt that understanding nutrition facts of food is important, however, I do not think it is a culturally appropriate way to take the nutrient out of the context of food and use them as a tool in marketing.I totally understand Michael Pollan’s insights and I agree with his points. He helped me to take a step back and reflect on myself and my past experiences. His interesting point on “don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food” waked me up from my foods-hunting dilemma. What his trying to convey is to be a mindful eater. I felt connected. A lot of times I was struggling with what food product to choose when I was in the supermarket. I always come up with the questions regard to the food labeled such that “heart-healthy protein”, “low-fat”, “naturally gluten-free”…are those health claims necessarily benefits to our own health, in particular works for each individual’s health situation? It always took me a while to choose among the similar food products, especially for the processed food when I was bewildered by the tempting health claims juggles. The majority of time, I assume foods who wear the health slogan have better qualities than those do not and I know what I invested most of the time also comfort me as if paying another form of health insurance. I also developed a habit of checking nutrition facts like sugar, sodium, trans fat or fiber content through the dilemmas. Ironically, fresh produce do not have health claims, and they certainly do not have to advertise themselves. Foods are so important though our lives, and they also link to our next generations health and the communities we belong to. Michael Pollan’s insights are very thought-provoking to me and I think he pointed out a direction for Americans to lean in. Food culture is the way of thinking food as a whole system with the understanding of history and custom. What I would perceive throughout my life is that understanding a balanced meal (not just food group balance but) regards to the balance of refined or coarse food, meat or vegetable, processed or fresh food is the key to lead a healthier and happier life.