The Ethics and Chemistry of Food and Cooking
The Ethics and Chemistry of Food and Cooking Project ReflectionIn this project in the humanities portion, we began by reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, various topics were brought to our attention about our current food system and the ethics behind it. We also read several articles and watched a few documentaries about farming and the ethics of food. After we found the many perspectives surrounding the ethics of food through background research. We went and formulated our own personal ethics surrounding food, and incorporated them into a several page explanation of these ethics and the reasoning behind them. Chemistry class was incorporated into this project when we made experiments surrounding the food that reflected our food ethics that we came up with in Humanities class. The goal of the experiments which we performed in the chemistry was to find a project that addressed an independent and dependent variable and our food ethic. I made brie for this project and my independent variable was making the cheese from raw milk and pasteurized milk. My first dependent variable was a qualitative test for taste preference and flavor profile. My second dependent variable was a quantitative test for proteolysis penetration into the cheeses.
Both of these projects after the initial research and background knowledge portion were largely open for interpretation. This is what we called the interdisciplinary component of this project. I enjoy when projects such as these give you a lot of choice in what the project entails. More creativity and variability in the difficulty that you pick for the project is created when you allow for this open ended-ness in the project. In the humanities project, I was able to write with more passion and truth because of the more open-ended requirements for our personal food ethics essay. I was able to write about my personal and unique perspective growing up in a smaller sector in the food industry. The impacts of the industrial food system on the planet, our country's citizens, and the morals and ethics behind what drives the system has been very interesting to learn about. For me personally, I found it very interesting from the perspective of someone who grew up in agriculture to address the topics that surround me every day in a classroom setting. I grew up surrounded by the names that we were studying in class. I knew a lot of the content from my parents and growing up on a ranch modeling sustainability. To make sure I got a more complete picture of the food system than what my parents had portrayed to me my whole life. I went and made sure that I dove into the various components of the industrial agriculture system. My main take away from this project is that I still do not know all of the complexities that make up our current food system. I do not know how or what food system our country would transition to help improve our current one. Most of my beliefs surrounding food have either stayed the same or been reinforced throughout this project. The one component that I have been blind to that was brought to my attention in this project is just the actual finance and education balance that it takes to have the public prioritize eating sustainably. |