Where do hamburgers come from?

My daughter is a savvy little three year old. She is too smart for her own good and is one of those kids who never stops asking why. So I was caught of guard when she asked me "mom, where do hamburgers come from?" My family was sitting at the dinner table eating hamburgers and she was so content chomping down on that burger, until I answered her question that is. "Well Indiana, hamburger is cow, we are eating a cow right now." she dropped her burger on her plate and spit out her last bite. "Gross mom." my husband and I laughed and laughed because she is just so animated. We then went on to explain where all of our meats come from, bacon, sausage, steak, chicken nuggets, etc. She wasn't impressed or excited that this whole time she had been eating animals! However, it was nice to see as her mother, a lightbulb switch on in her head. Indiana started to name other meats/meals that we eat as a family and telling me what animal it was. when she was finished teaching me I asked her if she was going to eat her hamburger anymore. She looked at me and said, "meat is so good! I like eating animals!" I was grateful, since my husband and I like meat as well. Having a vegetarian three year old would have been a little bit difficult at dinner time.
Although this is a cute story, I remember when I realized that meat was the animals that we saw around us on the farms. I wonder if children often don't know what they are consuming because they never see meat in a raw or butchered state. I think about the meats I purchase, the chicken breasts are frozen, hotdogs look nothing like an animal, hamburger and sausage look like meat noodles. If children and the general population were able to see where our food comes from, I think we would make different food choices. That is probably why there have been so many pushes for free range, humane, and organic food choices in the past ten years. People care that the food they consume is helpful to the body and not harmful. I imagine I will have many other teaching opportunities with Indiana when it comes to farming, and hopefully I will be capable of showing her a different perspective since taking this class.

www.realcaliforniacheese.com

Ugly Kiwi Fruit

The other day my husband and I were browsing the produce section in the grocery store. There was a large bin, or let's call it extra-large, of kiwi's.  They were on sale, 10 kiwi's for $1. WOW!!! That is an incredible deal in Utah. A fruit that isn't native to our area being 10 cents a piece must mean that they are all rotten, right? So we wandered over to check it out and we were surprised. The kiwi was not rotten, but it was not perfect either. It was ugly kiwi. Think of a kiwi, a small round shape with light brown fuzzy skin. When cut open it has a perfect light green outside with small black seeds and a soft white center.  First off, this kiwi wasn't fuzzy! It was like all the fuzz had been rubbed off. Second the kiwi fruits were incredibly large! They were about as big as a baseball. Not only that! many of the kiwi fruits had grown together like a pair. So there were all of these kiwi's connected together, the size of baseballs, and no fuzzy hairs.  We could say that we had a good laugh as we pulled up kiwi after kiwi trying to find the largest or the oddest pairs. We even found 3 that had grown together.  They looked gross. Like body parts that shouldn't be talked about here. So we bought 10 kiwi's to take home and to show my 5 brothers, who we knew would get a laugh out of it.  We had no intention of eating the produce, just laughing at it. 

When we returned home we showed my brothers, everybody laughed and then the kiwi was left on the counter. A day later my youngest brother asked me to peel the kiwi for him so he could eat it. I thought he was joking but he wasn't so I went ahead and peeled a pair of kiwi's. we sliced them up and put them in a bowl. We were hesitant to try them but we finally did and to our surprise they were sweet and juicy. Not to sound cliche', but that kiwi was one of the best I have had in Utah. By the end of the day all the ugly kiwi had been eaten. 

This made me think about how much food is wasted or thrown away in grocery stores just because it is ugly.  Because there was normal looking kiwi at the store and they were marked at 2 for $1. After doing some reading I found that an estimated 40% of food does not get eaten (Beating, 2).  That was an astonishing amount to me, but I was glad to hear and find that this was too much for a lot of other people as well and that changes have started to correct this problem. 

Some of the changes are made in the home. Consumers aren't throwing away large amounts of food. They aren't buying too much that will rot before it gets used. More frequent trips to the grocery store help with this. Others are composting and recycling.  Some grocery stores have eliminated packaging so that you only have to buy what you need, and nothing extra. For example you could buy a few stems of cilantro instead of an entire bunch that will just sit in the refrigerator until it is black. I have also heard of a smoothie shop that only uses ugly fruits and veggies for its product. It is ironic how we as consumers have a difficult time eating something that doesn't look perfect.  We manipulate food all the time to make it look "pretty" to us. I bet in other areas of the world they would think that our pretty food was ugly food. 

Beating Food Waste with Bulk Bins and Ugly Produce : June 2015 : Contributoria - People Supporting Journalism. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.