Today I went to the supermarket to buy tea for myself and my boyfriend who is coming down with a cold. He requested echinacea(harvested from the purple coneflower at right) tea, to help boost his immune system. While looking for the tea in the organic isle of the store, I noticed another tea called kombucha. Immediatly I had a flashback to when I used to live at home, and my mother made kombucha tea from the mushroom. Kombucha aids the immune and digestive system. It also detoxifies the body and fights fatigue.All of a sudden as I am standing in the organic isle of the store looking at these teas, I realized that we have to buy vitamins and dietary supplements because the food that we eat doesn't provide enough of these things for us anymore. I recently had to start taking an iron (increases red blood cell count and aids on carrying oxygen through the body) supplement because there was none left in my systsem. I personally think I eat plenty of green, leafy vegetables (an excellent source of iron), but why then was there not any in my system?
It used to be that when you walked into a helath food store, it was more common to see elderly people standing in the supplement isle possibly looking for calcium supplements to offset osteopetrosis. But now people of all ages are seen in these stores looking for health supplements to "keep their bodies happy". I suppose that because we are in college and eating preprocessed food that there are no more vitamins left in the food. Thank goodness they feed us some local organic food, otherwise our bodies wouldn't know how to ingest the vitamins and minerals we need to stay healthy. Of course, going to an environmental college, we tend to be more aware of what our bodies need to stay healthy than someone who is studying to be a lawyer at Harvard, and eats fast food along with the cafeteria food.
Is this information accurate? Some of it is, some of it isn't. Like the clip we watched in class last night of Glenn Beck's derogatory, sarcastic comments towards the earth poster teachers have put in their classrooms. This poster reads "I pledge allegiance to the earth and all life it supports." One of the students in class last night mentioned how allegiance could simply relate to respect. Therefore this poster could be interepreted to mean "I respect the earth and all life it supports."
Well, couldn't teachers put up posters that read "I pledge allegiance to a healthy body and mind, and understand the potential I have to be beautiful..." ? Because this poster would simply be intrepreted as saying "I respect my body and mind, and understand that it could have the potential to be healthy....". It's all in the underlying message and "reading between the lines". We all interpret things differently as they apply individualy to us. It only takes a little analyzation from different views to find the true meaning of things.
P.S. Keep yourselves healthy!
Posts
First, thank you for educating me about the echinacea. I had never heard of the plant (my knowledge of medicinal plants is extremely limited!), but I will be sure to read up more on its health benefits.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, onto the main point: I agree with you. There are many ways to interpret one thing, even if it is a mere sentence. It comes from unconscious bias due to how we were raised, our values, our geographic locations, and numerous other factors. It seems to me that all of our peers agreed that Glenn Beck was outrageous and completely misinterpreted the meaning behind "I pledge allegiance to the Earth." However, I cannot help but wonder if there are certain reasons to our thoughts, such as:
1) We are all enrolled at an environmental college. In other words, we care about the Earth more so than most other people do in the first place.
2) Unity College is in the Northeast, which (along with the Pacific states, I'd say) is the liberal/left-wing hotspot of America. Working off of that, most of the students at Unity were born/raised in the Northeast.
3) We are from a different generation, the "Green Generation". We grew up being aware of environmental issues and thus have been implanted with the desire (obligation?) to aid the planet.
I wonder if our views would be different under other circumstances. What if we were all Wall Street executives in our 40s, sipping Starbucks lattes as we discussed our shares of oil refineries and coal mines? What if we were cowboys raised in the rugged terrain of Montana, appreciating nature from a truly different perspective? Or what if we were factory farm workers sweating away for minimum wage (or less!) just to get by? These are all "criminals" of environmental causes, yet in the end they are people like us; they simply are following an alternative path.
I know I'm rambling... too much coffee this morning... I hope I'm making sense?
In any case, excellent points made, Phoebe. I am always intrigued by what you offer on this blog. Good work.
Wow Val, I was not expecting to see an essay as a comment, especially under one of my posts! But I am super excited to read what you shared and think you make excellent sense.
ReplyDeleteMy main point in writing this blog was to simply cement what we discussed in class the other night. I just used the food issue as an example like John did with Glenn Beck. I hope it made sense in that way also.
But I am glad that you picked up on the different view point.