My Attitude Towards Food

Food gives our bodies the energy we need to function whether it is healthy or not. I consider my self a healthy eater because everyday I cook my traditional food. I grew up in culture where everything I eat is always fresh and organic. I always shop at the African stores where my cultural food is available. I always buy organic meat but the fruit and veggies are always conventional. I do eat conventional food sometimes but that's  because I don't have time to cook or running late for work. After watching the video, "what is wrong with what we eat," by Mark Bittman, I realized that some of the foods I eat have been processed with chemicals, I am changing the way I  shop and consider shopping more  organic and reading labels carefully.
 
Eating organic food is better than conventional food. There is no doubt in mind that organic food is better than conventional foods because they are better, healthier and free from hormones and chemicals. Organics are little bit expensive, which is why some people tend to buy processed food because that is  what they can afford. even though organic seems to be more expensive, it is  better for you than processed food because of health issues behind it. It is better to buy organic food which is expensive than processed food because of the health issues you may be facing in the long run. According to Birke Baehr  in TEDx Next Generation Asheville (Pay the farmer or the hospital,  "you either pay the farmer or you pay the hospital." I totally agree with the above quote because you either eat organic and stay healthy, or you eat processed food and end up in hospital because of health issues like diabetes and  heart diseases, etc.

Fatoumata's Journal

The Value of Friendship: Why is Jamal and Forrester’s friendship significant in the film?

Friendship is a huge part of everyone’s life, whether they know it or not. In Finding Forrester, a movie that takes place in the Bronx, has two main characters - William Forrester and Jamal Wallace who become friends in an unlikely way because of their passion for reading and writing. Though both are very different from each other, they are drawn together by similar interests.

The characters are different in many ways, Forrester is a male in his mid-seventies who lives by himself. He confines himself to his apartment for years. His only way to the outside world is when he leans out the window to clean off the grimes. Forrester is non-confrontational. He would rather handle a problem behind closed doors than confront the person face to face. For example, when Jamal’s professor thinks he used a tittle from another author’s writing without permission, he demands Jamal to write a letter of apology and read it in front of the class.

Jamal is an ambitious young black teenager, who grows up in a poor neighborhood and wants to become something in the future. He is a pacesetter, a hardworking kid who dismantles stereotypes by doing well in school.

The friendship between Jamal Wallace and William Forrester has some good moral lessons. First, William Forrester is helped to overcome his reclusiveness by going out with Jamal to the basketball stadium. For Jamal, however, the friendship helps him overcome the racial prejudice against him and pursue his dream of becoming a great writer.

One of the scenes I like most is inside the classroom, when Mr. Crawford calls on a student to answer a question, and Jamal jumps into the conversation. Jamal tells the student to say his name. The student’s last name is the answer to the question. Mr. Crawford becomes clearly upset that Jamal knows the answer to the question he asked of the other student. Mr. Crawford tries to say some quotes that he thinks Jamal doesn’t know, but Jamal finishes the quotes for Mr. Crawford. This upsets Mr. Crawford so much so that he orders Jamal to leave the classroom immediately because he is embarrassed by the young boy’s intelligence.

Jamal does not have a good relationship with his teacher, Mr. Crawford because he does not like Jamal being smart as a black kid.

“My name is William Forrester. Excuse me. I’m that one. Losing family. Losing family obliges us to find our family. Not always the family that is our blood, but the family that can become our blood. Should we have the wisdom to open our door to this new family, we will find that the wishes we had for the father, who once guided us, for the brother, who once inspired us…The only thing left to say will be: “I wish I had seen this, or I wish I had done that, or I wish…” Most of you are too young to know what those wishes will be. But when I read these words…words of hope, dreams…I realize that the one wish that was granted to me, so late in life was the gift of friendship”.

The above quote shows how William Forrester values his friendship with Jamal Wallace. The quote also shows how important friendship plays in the film, because it is through the friendship that Jamal becomes the writer he has always wanted.