Reminder: To receive credit for attending each activity, you must: (1) Check in with a Peer Mentor at the start and conclusion of the co-curricular experience and have them initial twice next to the activity you are attending. (2) You must post a written reflection to the course blog of at least 150 words briefly describing the event or activity as well as things you learned from the experience. This written reflection is due within 24 hours of the event’s conclusion. You will turn in this form on the last day of class.
Please post your reflection as a comment below.
I actually enjoyed the Global Peace Film Festival presentation on Wednesday, September 22, 2011. We viewed two movies, Lunch & Off the Menu. The movie Lunch was a documentary that took an inside look on the health problems of children’s meals in school. It uncovered that many school’s lunches are basically “fast food” and that many communities and programs are searching for better and healthier alternatives in order to provide nutritious food to students. The documentary discussed programs such as farms in Baltimore, Maryland that are providing quality produce to local schools and restaurants. At these farms, schools can take field trips to teach students where they’re food comes from, how it grows, and how to even start a garden themselves. This movie also motivated me to make healthy choices in the lunch cafeteria. The movie Off the Menu was a movie by a student from the University of Central Florida that uncovered how many restaurants, hotels, and banquet services throw out pounds and pounds of usable food on a daily basis. He discussed that this food could be used to feed the hungry. The movie took and inside look among many services who take this leftover food and give it to people in need. This movie made me realize how much food really goes to waste and the many programs that are fixing these problems.
ReplyDeleteOur experience at the Global Peace Film Festival consisted of the viewing of two documentaries. The first documentary, "Lunch", was about the unhealthy foods we are feeding the children of our society at school. Such foods regularly conists of pizza, processed chicken nuggets, hot dogs, french fries, and other unhealthy items of food. These food choices exhibit fast food-like characteristics and encourage our children that such tyoes of food are ok to eat. In actuality, these foods are the cause of our country's obesity and majority of our helath problems.. This documentary served to open our eyes to reality. Nutrition needs to be taken more seriously throughout of schools. The second film was directed at showing us how much food is wasted in our country. A fact that really stuck out to me was that cruises waste up to 25,000 meals a day. The majority of our planet is suffering from poverty and starvation, but we can afford to just waste food like that? I found that horrifying and it really hit me as disturbing. I found these films highly educational, yet interesting to watch at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThe Off the Menu films presented ideas that I had already learned about in high school on my own time either from hearing about school’s unhealthy foods on the news or in other documentaries. It was still interesting to watch because the film showed workers in schools either talking about ways they were trying to change the menu at schools to feed their children less processed and more healthier, fresh foods. There are mini farms that are on some school’s campuses and ones that are close by that teach the kids about growing plants, which is nice to see because if their parents don’t do it they wouldn’t know how to grow their own plants! The second film was about how many restaurants in the central florida area throw food away and don’t save it to give to food banks or homeless people. I felt like the second one was more educational because no one would know about their practices unless they’ve worked in a restaurant.
ReplyDeleteThe film we saw about food in schools was very similar to lots of films I watched in High School. The message is the same, but people have to start doing things to improve the system. The movie was interesting that it focused on one main school and what they are doing to improve the nutrition of the lunch food. The fact that they have their own garden that the kids help produce the food they eat, helps them learn more about what they are eating. The movie also posed the fact that kids are "cultivated" to eat the fast food type food for lunch, and that is very true. We all weren't born craving hamburgers and fries, the market puts those foods in ads so the kids will want to eat them everyday. The second film was a bit dramatic for my liking, and didn't really inform me as much as the first one did. I did like his main message, and how it was a local film. It was a shock to me to see how much food the 4500 restaurants waste. Also, I didn't know there was a company that takes the leftovers and reuses them.
ReplyDeleteThe Global Peace Film Festival was a very interesting event to attend. We viewed two films one called Lunch and the other was titled Off the Menu. The first film we watched was about the food served in schools during lunch. The film showed us a typical meal that was served to the students and then talked about how this meal doesn’t benefit the students in any way. It also showed interviews with multiple schoolteachers and principles as well as parents. The second film showed the audience how much food people waste on a daily basis. The film gave multiple examples of how people waste food without even realizing that it is going to waste. It showed how people also fail to realize that there are people in need of that food and they should appreciate the food they are given instead of just wasting it. Both films were very moving and really made the audience think about topics which most people overlook.
ReplyDeleteThe films we watched were repeated information from what I had learned over the years in health class. The movies reminded me of a movie I have seen every year since the fourth grade, “Super Size Me.” The movie is a documentary of how unhealthy fast food restaurants are to people. The task was for a man to eat McDonald’s for every meal and specialists would calculate how much damage he was doing to his body. Like this documentary, the movies we watched as part of the Global Peace Film Festival talked about the importance of a healthy eating style both in our community and in our economy. In our community, these movies talked about the importance of changing our current lunch foods in order to create more healthy choices for our children. Experts are hoping that this will eventually deplete the rising number of obese children. Regarding our economy, one movie pointed out the amount of food wasted at restaurants while there are people starving around the world. Both movies made interesting points on how easy it should be to change these daily occurrences. I kept asking myself during the movies that if it is so easy to change these events, which are hurting our economy and community, how come no one is advocating for this change more radically?
ReplyDeleteBecause I was promoting the Global Peace Film Festival and the film Off the Menu, I already knew a lot about it. I was interested in going to see it because of many other movies that have been made about the food industry and the negative effects it has on children. This film focused on finding a solution by finding ways to provide young children access to healthier food so they would have the option to eat it. While some argued that children would never choose to eat healthy food when they had the option to eat cheeseburgers, chicken fingers, etc. others said that children who grew their own healthy food were much more likely to eat it and promote healthy eating to other members of their family. While this was an interesting film it wasn’t the best quality, there were many parts that were blurry and there were some instances where you hear what the person was saying.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the Global Peace Film Festival. I thought it was really interesting to see where the foods in school lunch programs come from. I can’t believe how disgusting some of the items were and how unhealthy they were for you. The man in the movie even said that when he ate the lunch food it actually made him vomit. I was shocked because that clearly means we shouldn’t be feeding the children that and the fact that the children’s stomachs are used to that kind of food is really sad. Also, the amount of childhood obesity really surprised me especially when they said kids as young as 6 years old are developing diseases that normally only adults get. I really liked that some of the schools were starting to grow their own vegetables and teach the kids about healthy ways of eating. I never thought about it before but one of the people in the movie said kids aren’t born with a natural craving for hamburgers and pizza that’s just how they are raised and if they were raised with a natural craving for vegetables and fruit they would be a lot better off. Overall I thought the films were very informative.
ReplyDeleteThe film festival movie that we watched was pretty interesting. Taking inner city students to a farm to learn where their food comes from is a nice idea to get them excited about vegetables. One aspect that I didn’t like is that no one seemed to realize the effects of completely changing the menus at public schools. Since they are government funded and the government gets its money from taxes, a higher food budget for healthier options could only come from one place. Unless they gave up their budgets for other programs which I don’t see happening. I do like the idea of healthier options but I think it is going to be harder to accomplish on a large national scale then they make it out to be. And to me, as long as u exercise daily and are fed healthy at home, there won’t be a problem with over weight kids. I’m also not convinced that what you eat as a kid is what you’ll eat as an adult all the time. If you are a freethinking person you can decide not to go to McDonalds and get five cheeseburgers.
ReplyDeleteThis movie was very interesting. I didn't realize how much food people waste everyday. It made me want to try and stop people from throwing away food they don't eat because there are people who are starving for the food that we waste. It also made me more conscious of the amount of food I get. I try not to get more than I'll eat so that I won't waste much, if anything. It opened my eyes to how much we need to change our actions and think about the things we do.
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