View source for Excerpts from 2019 Food Biographies

I usually just ate whatever sounded good at the time without thinking about the meal in relation to others.

so the majority of my meals are frozen foods from Trader Joe’s that you can heat up within five minutes.

I prefer to eat foods that have little preparation time and require minimal clean up. I also go in phases and cycles of liking a certain food and then hating it. For example, sometimes I will eat a banana with breakfast every day, but right now I cannot stand them. 

My relationship with food is a love hate relationship

Growing up, I was not introduced to a wide variety of food which has led me to be kind of picky. 

I try to buy local, cruelty free foods that align with my values regarding ethical, environmental and health implications. 

Currently, I eat 99% plant-based foods with occasional exceptions of consuming small quantities of dairy via baked goods.

I associate food with love.

When it comes to cooking, I have great memories of my parents making meals and trying to teach me skills or recipes, and while I retained the basics of cooking, I know I was mostly focused on the eating rather than the creating.

I would consider myself a fairly clean eater. 

My current diet is based around avoiding carbs as much as I can while eating a great deal of healthy fats.

Generally, I would describe my diet as fairly unhealthy, simply because “healthy” type foods seem to take too long to make. 

Although I like to make “healthy” foods, I know little about nutrition, macro and micro nutrients, or any food value statistics.  

For instance, I will eat a Wendy’s four for 4$ meal for dinner one night and end up having grilled chicken, rice, and a salad the next night

I always dance when I am making bacon. 

I would describe my relationship with food as both a chore and an enjoyable interest depending on the situation. The majority of the time I see food as a chore because I have been trying to attain a healthier diet and lose weight, but this doesn’t necessarily satisfy my cravings.

. I try to eat food, which I would consider to be ‘healthy,’ but as of now my meals consist of frozen foods from the freezer section at Trader Joes. 

Food has always and will always play an important role in my life, I just don’t feel like I have the time that I would want in order to cook and prepare meals like I would like to when I am at school.

I grew up with an unfortunately confused relationship with food. My impoverished family struggled to have food in the house where multiple sequential days without food was not uncommon. When there was food in the house it was usually in the form of fast food or cheap processed foods that one could find at the dollar store. 

At school, I end up with more pasta than I would prefer last semester. This occurred because I just did not have time to make a more complex meal and pasta did not need constant attention. 

Having grown up in a small town in Alaska, all of our food at home we make and process ourselves.  At school on the other hand, it is the exact opposite. I mostly purchase premade frozen food from Costco. I rarely get the time to cook more than a single meal a day, and most days have little to no fruits in them. 

Also, I enjoy playing music while cooking and I have caught myself dancing often. 

From then on, I was the pickiest eater that most people had ever met. Two foods that I liked touched? Not eating it. Anything covered in a sauce? Not eating it. What confused people the most was that I hated sweets. No chocolate, no candy, no ice cream. I simply don’t like it. 

The importance of a good home cooked meal was ingrained in me during my childhood.  My mom would cook for our family every day, and she would always encourage me to help out in the kitchen  We ate all kinds of foods and in my house, it was mandatory to try everything on your plate, which forced me to get over any “picky eating” habits.  

Although my mom has many great recipes that she would love to pass down to me, I have yet to get in to cooking more complex meals. I stick to the basics of meat and a frozen bag of vegetables with salad. 

If I had the finances, I would transition into vegetarianism, towards veganism because plant proteins are a lot easier on my stomach.

My diet is currently pescatarian, which means the only meat I eat is fish and other types of seafood. However, I only eat fish about twice a month, so my diet is mainly vegetarian. This diet is more a result of my dislike for the texture of meat than my moral principles about meat. 

As I grew older, however, I began to have a deep fascination with food. I often watched the food network for fun with my mom and dad, viewing shows with foods that ranged from back yard barbeque to cake baking competitions. This obsession with the food network was in part what spurred my passion for cooking. 

Even though I have not cooked very much for myself alone, I do enjoy cooking and exploring different types of food. If I do choose to cook for myself or a small group, I like to try new recipes, put on music and dance while I cook. 

My family tends to eat restaurants a lot. It’s not that my family doesn’t like cooking, it is more that we don’t plan meals well, and end up just picking a place to go instead last minute. 

At this particular point in my life, I mainly eat food as a means of survival. As a student attending an extremely overpriced university with an ungodly amount of student loans (and a decent amount of grants/scholarships), eating, honestly, is not always my first priority.

In college when I started to cook for myself, I realized the time and effort that goes into creating diverse, healthful meals. Furthermore, I realized that I lacked personal experience in making various dishes.

I didn’t give my diet very much thought until about two years ago, around the time of the 2016 Presidential election, when I decided to become a vegetarian. My thought process was that even though the most powerful individual in the country didn’t believe in climate change, cutting meat out of my diet was one small way that I could do my part in helping our environment.

I’d like to think I’m a good cook, but at least no one’s died yet. When I try a new recipe I’ll taste as I go but will generally follow the recipe the first time through. Recently I made a Lebanese-style falafel for the first time; by some higher power they turned out really well. 

I try to make the healthiest meals that I can with the budget I have.  I pay for all my own groceries so I cut corners where I can. I usually do not buy organic ingredients and try to buy products from cheaper generic brands. I still try to include fresh ingredients. 

I have never tried a vegan or vegetarian diet, and I don’t see any need to really. I respect people for doing them, but that is not for me. I love burgers, steaks, fried things and particularly unhealthy things it seems.

I believe that I am a well-rounded, usually-found-eating-frequently-in-smaller-amounts consumer of food. I am very interested in finding food combinations to eat that I enjoy and help me to feel energized. I am very active everyday as an athlete, so I need to eat a lot to replace calories lost. 

Unfortunately I really do feel the difficulties associated with adjusting my diet as the people around me are less inclined to choose healthier options. The social pressure is definitely the biggest obstacle to my health journey to date. 

I have been a pescatarian for roughly 11 years – over half of my life. I don’t eat meat (with the exception of seafood) on a matter of principle. I am almost full vegetarian, as I don’t eat much seafood anyways – mostly shrimp and salmon hand caught by my dad in the Puget Sound. 

I wouldn’t say that I’m a good cook, but I can prepare meals that are edible. I think I don’t really like cooking because of the time it takes. I do enjoy baking though. 

My relationship to food is mostly practical than anything else. I eat a lot of fruits and nuts, bread, potato chips, drink a lot of milk, eat a lot of chicken and other poultry. I eat with good form, with my elbows off the table and back straight, and I don’t need to apply too much force to cut my meal, because of adequate wrist and forearm strength. 

When I was younger, I remember being very picky about all types of food. If two different foods touched, I wasn’t going to eat it. If there was anything creamy, I would not eat it. When I went over to friends’ houses, I was always nervous about what would be made and how I would like it. 

As I continue to learn more about food and nutrition, I hope to continue to explore different cuisines and work on my own, currently nonexistent, cooking skills in order to enhance my personal diet choices in the future.