Community Service Essay

The Race to Help the Hungry

Part I

I have decided to talk about hunger, instead of the need to provide animals with enrichment objects, since it makes up more than half of my community service hours. Right now, there are probably one billion people in hunger, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Middle East, India, and more. The main problem is not that we do not have the ability to produce enough food for all the people in the world, it’s the word called distribution. It takes time, money, and effort to send food like rice, corn, and bread to the people in need. That's why my sister, including her friends, and I decided to help distributing these food items like rice, cans of mixed fruits, and mandarin tangerines in the San Francisco Food Bank. Not also we had fun, but we made a difference by helping the homeless people and low-income families in San Francisco. Without them, we would lose jobs and the support we need to keep operating the soup kitchens and other food banks. As for the public’s opinion, some countries are doing something about food security like Costa Rica. Yes, I know it’s a communist country, but you got to give them props for having a high level of food security by taking care of the soil and reducing the usage of conventional pesticides. In addition, China is building barriers out of inexpensive material to block the fertile soil from being consumed by the wide murky rivers. However in some poor developing countries, they just want to survive, so they have to increase the speed of soil erosion by cutting down trees and not giving proper care to the soil. Remember no soil equals zero number of crops, which means no food for your family and perhaps your neighborhood and friends. Oh and don't forget, if you don't take care of the soil, another dust bowl just like the one in the Great Depression will strike back and cause severe amounts of damage. In America, about 1/6 of the people in America are facing insecure levels of food security, because of certain events or low income. That's one of the reasons why in one poll from the Pew Research Center that about half of the Americans who took the survey think that helping the poor should be Obama's top priority. People are helping them by giving them donations from cash to teddy bears to nonprofit organizations like Goodwill. Oh and relating to the strawberry farmers in Florida, people got really upset when they decided to dispose some or all of their sweet delicious strawberries. The residents in Florida thinks they should have been donated to the soup kitchens or let the strawberries be picked for free. Also their opinion on this action was probably because their greedy jerks that wanted to jack up the prices of their own fruits.

Part II

Soup kitchens, along with the help of refilling their supplies from the food banks, feed millions of people in America every year. To make food even more affordable, there are no taxes placed on groceries, well at least around this place. Otherwise, I don't think the government is doing too much about helping the poor other than making generous donations to their own people and to other nations like Haiti. Because they can't stop Monsanto from growing genetically modified soybeans or stop the slaughter houses from becoming a hazardous place for employees to work in. They’re just too powerful for the government to negotiate with them from the looks of it and they also have other gigantic issues to worry about like that 12+ trillion dollar deficit. The planet Earth can only provide so much resource for ourselves and the plants and animals around us and as the global human population approaches seven billion people; that’s why one government official said we pretty much have no choice but to continue the use of GMF (Genetically Modified Food) to sharply increase the yield of crops. Obviously, the public favors organic food as it's safer to eat in general and the parents don't want their kids to be exposed to them for safety and health reasons. Moving on, water bottles are a big part of saving Haiti from being dragged down by massive dehydration. However, the plastic in the water bottles does increase the rate of CO2 emissions and plus they are way overpriced in America.

You have noticed a lot of what I said has to do with science, data, and polls and such, but this matter of hunger around the world also has to do with economic principles. One of the illustrations of these principles would be supply and demand. Bees play a vital role in helping the flowers to pollinate and grow into fruits, while the bees gather the pollen to make honey. However with so many bees dying recently for unknown reasons at the moment, the fruit production is expected to decline. Therefore, the prices of fruits are bound to rise, which can cause people with tight finances to think twice before buying them. Of course, if the quantity of supply of this food source was to skyrocket, thanks to genetic engineering, then the price will go down because there's now less demand for this food item. That's one of the reasons why GMF cost less than their organic counterparts, but you do have to consider that organic food sticks to their true taste and nutritional value. In addition, there are several departments in the US government and one of them is the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) lead by Tom Vilsack (30th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) who has worked to conserve the forests and private working lands and help the hungry, according to their site. Plus, they also help the helpless farmers and ranchers and provided food for 1/5 of the Americans during the huge economic recession in 2009. Nonprofit organizations like food banks, soup kitchens, and kitchens also help during that recession as their goal is to help others and not themselves.

Part III

As they say, there’s always room for improvement and that definitely holds true here. There are tons of ways you can do reduce the problem of hunger. One way would be helping out the non-profit organizations along, also known as NPOs, along with your friends and family just like I did not too long ago. Some of the corn should go to making food, instead of feeding it to the cows, so that way there’s more food in our hands and the cows are healthier by feeding on natural grass. Making donations to the poor and unfortunates is also another nice way to make this problem less of a hassle. Sure, one dollar doesn’t look like a whole lot, but sometimes some NPOs can that one dollar into six dollars of food and also if you commit into spreading the word. Then the amount of donations you and the people who agree with you can really pile up. Oh and we should knock some sense into Monsanto and other big food companies that hunger/poverty should come first and not money. This reminds me, we should also be careful of what we eat, because eating more fast food promotes them to grow more crops, kill more cows and so on. So when you buy what food you want, you’re making a vote on which food should be produced and which shouldn’t.

Bibliography

Food Security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security

Hunger in the US
http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html#top

Global Warming as the Last Priority on Obama's To-Do-List According to This Poll
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/25/pew-poll-global-warming-dead-last-down-from-last-year/

USDA
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome

Uhhhhh sorry, we can no longer serve fries with that.

Yep, soon our troops in Afghanistan can no longer have their hands on those tasty fast food meals from Burger King, Pizza Hut, and T.G.I. Friday's. The general said that the fast food restaurants are consuming our water and power supply and we also have to remind them that we're in a war zone, not an amusement park. Of course, that's kind of obvious as you can tell and some soldiers think this is a bad move, because they enjoy the food they're offering. However, the mission always comes first before fast food and entertainment like movies. Plus, the soldiers can order "Chef's Short Order", if fast food is their only answer to their stomachs. I also read one comment on how the fast food is overpriced and the burger tastes like camel meat. Yuck, that sounds disgusting!

Just like locust swarms, grasshopper swarms are huge and they destroy nearly any vegetation in their path.

Except this time, the federal officers say they might produce even more than any other year since 1985. They even eat the fences that were covered with paint. Okay then, why don't you just kill them all, so this will never happen again? Well first, that's basically impossible to do and second they're an important food source to birds and other animals as well. However, they want to limit the number of these guys like pesticides, so it's not going to be nearly as destructive as it could have potentially be. However these hungry critters can travel in long distances and some areas can have as many as 1000 baby grasshoppers. Yikes!!!

Because the strawberries are now 1/4 the price they were back then in Florida. Most farmers decided to just dispose them, so their prices will.

I smell a deja vu here, this definitely reminds of the time of the Great Depression when the farmers did the exact same method as these strawberry farmers are doing in Florida. Anyways, a lot of the residents there are angry about this action and says that these strawberries should be donated to soup kitchen and other local residents if they're not going to use them. I mean, man, how could you throw away these good strawberries? Some look so good, juicy, and delectable that you want to eat them right now!

Bees sure do sting, but we should remember that they play a crucial role in the environment.

However, the bees' population have been sharply dwindling for the last four years. Not also are they dying more frequently, but their life span has been shortened due to illness caused by bacteria and viruses and those chemical pesticides that we use on our crops. This will definitely effect the number of fruits and vegetable we can get this year and it looks like it's not going to get any better. One beekeeper says that the loss was three times worse than last year; that's like getting your paycheck of $600 chopped off by two thirds and now you only have $200 left to keep. We need to reduce the usage of pesticides and think of some other green way to protect our crops like growing them indoors.



Poor honeybee. :(

In 2011, every major fast food restaurant you go to will have nutritional information both inside the restaurant and on the drive-thru.

This is part of the health care legislation that President Obama just signed yesterday. That means customers might want to think twice before eating a Big Mac that contains 540 calories, which is already more than a quarter of the 2000-calorie daily guideline from the Agricultural Department. That also counts for vending machines, so someone who wants to buy a king size Snickers Bar knows that this unhealthy snack contains 440 calories. While not all the customers will pay attention or care about these nutritional labels, it will help some of them to be aware of what are you eating. After all, more than 1/2 of the money Americans spend on food is outside of their home.



By the way, would you rather have a big fat greasy burger up there OR
a nice fresh healthy apple down here? :)



You decide.

Eating healthy food is not all about keeping you in good shape. It can also help you reduce stress and more! :D

These food items include dark chocolate? Yep, the darker the chocolate, the more healthy substances like phenethylamine(which improves your mood) are in that chocolate. Oatmeal is another great one as it helps us to make serotonin, which calms down our craving appetite. I could go on, but by now I think we now/already know that healthy food have additional benefits for our body.



Oh and one more thing, what do you prefer the orange or the "apple"?



XD!

Such an old article, but it's one of the contributing factors to obesity.

It's not just eating junk food that effects your weight, it's the number of hours of sleep that counts as well. Because less sleep tends to increase your appetite and with the food just within our reach, it's no wonder it's easy to get fat in America. The reason why as Dr. Taheri said is that when you sleep less, you produce less leptin, a hormone that helps reducing your appetite. Sure, a good rest everyday does take up more thirty percent of your day, but in return you're energized, you brain functions just fine, and you're appetite should be at normal level.



P.S. I think I heard somewhere a long while ago that if you choose to sleep less, you're bound to eat 25% more than you usually do.

Frozen conventional food can are sometimes healthier than fresh food.

The reason why is because the transportation and shipping is the main cause of the reduction of the nutritional values in the fresh food. For example, green peas lose 77% of vitamin C when stored for seven days. On the other hand, if you keep the food frozen, it retains most of its nutrition. So when you go to a grocery store, don't think frozen food are outclassed by fresh food, just because they're easier to use and costs less. Because sometimes that's not always true. :)



They maybe fresh, but the long process of getting them from the fields to the stores depleted some of their nutritional value.

Soft drinks is still the number one drink in America, but what's up with the rise of drinking more bottled water?

Do they know it's more riskier than drinking from the tap water coming out from your sink? Sure it's easily portable and has a cap and all that, but it's overpriced and it's contributing lots of CO2. When I say overpriced, I mean you're paying way too much for something that's very cheap at the moment. I mean seriously, 49 cents per year compared(tap water) to $1400 per year(bottled water). That's a HUGE difference.



In my opinion, the only time when bottled water is useful is when has to do with donations to help the poor and the unfortunates.

The food bank in San Francisco is planning to provide 36.5 million lb. of food this year.

That's more than enough to feed 78,000 meals every day, according to their site. You can make a difference by simply helping this food bank by packaging food like fruits, veggies, and rice(LOTS of them, by the way. You should see how much they had on that wooden platform. We couldn't even finish it all!) Anyways, so my sister and her friend and I went there around nine in the morning. Then we signed up through laptops; didn't expect them there, because last year we had to sign up through a form on the paper. Either way, it was quicker and more convenient for us and for the employees in food bank. Because they can count much quicker by seeing how many people signed up on the laptops. After that's done, we are reminded some safety rules like no food or drink in the working area or the warehouse, no slippers, and no running around. Which I seem to forget sometimes. :P So first came the rice where we package them through plastic bags closed by a closer(don't know what are they named as of now) and then packaged by cardboard boxes. Each box must contain 15 of them and each bag must weigh exactly one pound, which is why we have an electronic scale. Then we took a 20 minute break and then did the same thing over again. Once done, the employee said that we packaged a little over 2000 pounds, so our performance wasn't too bad. That's plenty of rice soups or cakes or any meal with rice in it to feed the poor people around San Francisco. So we thought we were heading back home, until our mom was like in downtown San Francisco spending time with her parents. Then my sister decided that we should do one more hour helping them while we wait for our mom. Eventually we agreed and we came upon giant boxes of oranges. Some were good, some were bad, and some were ugly. As you might of guessed, the oranges that were opened or feel very soft in the inside were thrown away in the bad box. The rest we keep them in the good boxes and they were put on the same wooden platforms. Once the half the shift was over, our mom was waiting for us and we head back home. In the end, I felt like we were giving the poor a lift in the spirit and body. Thanks a lot San Francisco Food Bank, looking forward to doing it again sometime soon! :D

Fish is great for your heart, because it contains omega-3 fatty acids which improves your blood flow in your ciculatory system.

Plus, it beneficial for your brain. However, you have to be cautious on how many times you have eaten a fish per week. Nutritionists recommends that you should eat at least two-three fishes a week. However they also warn on which fishes you should look out for, because some contain high levels of mercury since they are high on the food chain like swordfishes or sharks. They used to barely have any mercury, but because of modern factories, we can no longer eat them at a steady rate without facing health risks. These health risks relate to the disease called the Minamata Disease. These symptoms include but not limited to loss of hearing/seeing, the weakened muscles and nervous system and in some serious cases paralysis, coma, and death could happen if not treated.

I also would like to point out that Japan fish industry is huge and they take out lots of fishes out from the seas and oceans. If they continue at this rate, all the fishes will be gone by around 2040. Then the Japanese will lose one of their main sources of protein.



This picture was taken around 5 in the morning, for your information.

No more BigMacs in Iceland!

The three McDonals on this icy island will close down sometime this weekend. Because the BigMac is now approximately $5.29 in US currency! Very expensive indeed and now they need to raise it to about a buck. This is due to the high import tariffs and the deteriorating currency of krona.