Changing your Brain-food.

High school was the first time that I was ever exposed to food not being all that it seems to be. In health class throughout elementary school and middle school, they give the same spiels about your body changing, the importance of eating your fruits and veggies and following the food pyramid, and the importance of being active. It wasn't until High school that my health class being un-stereotypical and played the documentary Supersize Me which began to formulate more questions about where food comes from. At that moment, my initial reaction was that fast food is gross and my family is so heavily reliant on its availability. It was the 'cool' thing to do, to go to McDonald's late at night with friends and get food and ice cream and go down to the river to hang out when everything else was closed. My mom always worked long hours when I lived with her and moving to FL with my dad produced the same single-tired-parent result. It had never been a conversation growing up that fast food was so poisoning; I was so used to it being an option at least once a week. Supersize Me really impacted a lot of people that I knew, really created this awareness that could have been part of the political debate as it aided to a revolution of young adults becoming more aware of their habits. 

On the other hand when my mother had a stable job she was always a proponent of gardening and growing your own food. She would always grow herbs, tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, and cucumbers that she would pickle and give to the neighbors. I think that sometimes, as a highly susceptible and absorbent child, when individuals such as your family that you trust make decisions about food, you follow closely and pick up a lot of the same habits until some stronger outside source or instance intervenes. The food pyramid was always visible, was always mentioned, but really never influenced my habits. I trusted my family more than a picture on the wall and always had a packed lunch with a sandwich and some kind of unhealthy snack. It takes something much more personal to garner change, such as seeing a documentary about the food that I eat and what it did to someone and thinking about my family having the same consequences. After such an innocent gesture with a movie, I went on to remember the various good things of my past such as my mother gardening and feeding multiple families when she was able and helped to create a garden at my high school.