Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

Friday, August 13, 2010

Peanuts and Obesity


Not only am I earning peanuts (read: low wages) at my job, I am eating them too.

Lunch on my first day of the Foodstamp Challenge:




My lunch with a friend at Subway was canceled, so I stuck with my peanut stash for sustanance.   And when I say stash, I truly mean that I keep baggies of peanuts and wheat thins in my desk drawer for my snacks.  I feel like one of the older ladies from church when I was growing up, they always had a drawer in their house with some hidden stash of goodies.

So now my snacks have become my meals, which I think is also a relevant concept for those trying to buy food cheaply.  Some people may see a disconnect between obesity and hunger, but I believe (and bet you can find many more reports on) they are linked.  Compare the price of a gallon of milk and a liter of soda.  If you were strapped for cash and had thirsty children, what would you do?  Some people would consider pop, junk food and fast food special treats, but to others it becomes a regular diet.

With this challenge, we are limited to one dollar per meal.  Where would you go to get a meal for one dollar?

How many of you thought of the McDonald's Dollar Menu as your solution?  When I worked at the Boys and Girls Club in Hamilton, parents (strapped for cash and time) would send their children with McDonald's takeout for lunch.  While I grew up with my mother packing chipchop ham sandwiches, carrots, a Little Debbie snack, and a thermos of chocolate milk, some kids' bodies have to deal with processing McDonalds, pop, and other foods that can be very filling but very unhealthy.  Hence hunger + no money = obesity.  Kind of strange, but it looks like the reality of the situation.

I am making the decision to truncate this train of thought on hunger.  It's cruel to record and analyze food in society when I am hungry.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Mid-Ohio Foodbank Tour

Considering my last post was so long, I'll make this one short and sweet.  And include pictures!  Above is front view of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, affectionalty abbreviated as MOFB from here on out.

First, check out their impressive website: www.midohiofoodbank.org

It was truly a fantastic facility in every way.  It is one of the 12 member foodbanks that my organization heads up, so it acts like a distribution center to smaller food pantries and soup kitchens across mid-Ohio.  They just moved in to this facility in the past year, it was previously a matress factory.  Think of a huge warehouse of matresses, now full of bulk food!

As soon as you walk in you can actually see in to the warehouse, through three story high bay windows in the lobby.  Cool!

The best part is that they are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified Gold.  See here for more information on that distinction.

THIS is the overview from the MOFB site on how their facility is designed.

Our favorite college football team, the Ohio State Buckeyes, loves the MOFB too!

Friday, July 16, 2010

Visualization!

I love data visualization and using media/art to understand concepts. Check out this Wordle (word cloud) I created from OASHF's About Us webpage: