DEC 9

26: DEC 9

Advice for putting together your "My Philosophy of Food" papers

• Once you have reviewed the course content and made selections of significant themes, ideas, argument, and knowledge, you need to find a way to connection them in a unified paper. Some ideas for doing this....

CIS

• This has been a Core Integration Seminar. We should take a few moments to think about the goals of the CIS class and, hopefully, how we have met them.

• 2. Core Learning Outcomes

1 Integrate the principles of a Jesuit education, prior components of the Core, and their disciplinary expertise (knowledge).

• from Canisius College: "A Jesuit education forms well-rounded students with a passion for knowledge and personal growth. This is one of the main philosophies of Jesuit teaching: cura personalis, or the care for the whole person."

• prior components of the core (hits and misses), integration of your disciplinary knowledge (a bit optional for me).

2 Clearly and persuasively communicate with an audience of diverse educational backgrounds, personal experiences, and value commitments using ideas and arguments based on evidence, logic, and critical thinking (skill).

3 Assess the ways in which the Core has transformed the commitments and perspectives that will inform their future endeavors (attitude).

• For me, more about "being engaged intellectuals" going forward. The Core is really great, in my opinion, but it is what it is.

Assessing major course hypotheses

• Philosophy_of_Food_Course_Research_Questions

Where do we go from here?

• Where we've been: A slow scroll and commentary on our wiki notes TOC. pulling out themes.

• 14. How do I use all of this knowledge to become a healthier and more satisfied person?

• Make sure your food philosophy values food consistently with the lessons you have taken from the course. For me, those lessons are embodied in some of the major slogans in the course (ex. "You are what you eat eats."). But also:

• You aren't just eating for you. Even beyond your microbes, your food choices maintain the systems that produce them. Slaughterhouses, industrial ag, fast food workers, high and low food value supply chains.
• Industrial food processes do some things very well, but are deeply problematic for health and justice. Industrial food corporations exert undue and often unhealth influence on everything from consumer health to soil health.
• Because we have many choices about food, the choices we do make carry a kind of moral responsibility or "complicity" that we should think about. (Analogy to other issues, like climate.)
• Traditional and humble cuisines have something to teach us. They are typically sustainable, satisfying (using high value foods with low energy density), nutritionally dense. Herb and spicing patterns in traditional cuisines are part of the flavor satisfaction of traditional foods. Their approaches to palette training and feeding babies are being born out by research.

• Develop your Culinary Practice and Cuisine - Practical Gastronomy.

• Set goals and "engineer" or "design" your diet to meet them.
• NSP as an analytic tool. Design a diet that satisfies NSP and your immediate lifestyle.
• "Trade ups" - Meet your goals through specific small victories. A new dish, a strategy for avoiding the drive-through lane, less industrial food from the supermarket, new culinary and gastronomic skills.
• Pay attention to your supply chain. Trade up to higher value foods. The 50cent egg.
• Move from science to habit. Once you have studied food and your diet enough, you can move to more intuitive approaches to thinking about food. Knowing food nutritional values and consensus dietary goals helps.
• Beyond a healthy and satisfying diet -- More values, more seasonal and local foods, more ways of using ingredients, more ways of creating choices and flexibility while maintaining high standards.