The ted talk is called “Teach every child about food” and it’s by Jamie Oliver. The speaker is a British chef and an individual who values a healthy society and generation. The occasion is the announcement of how unhealthy foods are harmful to the newer generation. The primary audience is parents who value the safety and health of their children. The purpose of the ted talk is to educate parents on what junk food contains and how it is harmful for their children. The subject is obesity and how the obesity rate has grown in the last 10 years. I think this video is very interesting and I think it’s very important for parents to be educated on this topic, because they are the main reason for the obesity that is being raised in their homes. If they were educated on junk foods, they would pick healthier items and their children would not have been obese children. The story that Jamie shared that really struck me was about Stacy and how her son who is in 2nd grade is 350 pounds and how her daughter is obese even before she goes to primary school. It’s scary to think that a small boy is 350 pounds and if junk food continues, the boy will be around 1,000 pounds by the age of 25. I feel that Americans are better educated now a days and I feel that they know what is wrong and what is right.

The video I watched is from Insider and the video is about how this restaurant smokes a watermelon and how it resembles a smoked ham. It has all the brownings and marks just like the smoked ham, and the process is the same. The speaker is Herrine Ro who is a producer for Insider and she values weird foods and trends. The occasion is that it is a popular trend which she saw on Instagram , Duck’s Eatery serves this watermelon. The primary audience is those individuals who wondered if the smoked watermelon actually tasted like the real smoked ham. The secondary audience is those individuals who love food trends. The purpose of the video was to see if the taste of the smoked watermelon resembled the taste of a smoked ham. The subject of the video is smoked watermelon. In terms of the taste of the watermelon, the watermelon is smoky, savory and salty. Herrine said that the smoked watermelon didn’t taste like watermelon nor did it taste like country ham. It sounded cool and I wondered how it tasted. I thought that the price for the smoked watermelon was a bit high, a smoked watermelon for 75 dollars. I also thought the thinking behind the smoked watermelon was interesting and thoughtful because the restaurant is a meat house and they wanted something that vegans could also eat.

When I was researching about intermittent fasting for my research paper, I wondered if keto and paleo diets were worth it or were the outcomes of these diets the same as those of intermittent fasting. In terms of what each is, the paleo diet is based on the thought that eating foods that were available to early humans will promote optimal health. The keto diet is somewhat similar to intermittent fasting as the body uses calories from fat, instead of carbs, to create energy needed for our daily activities. The fat that should be used in the keto and paleo diet should consist of healthy fats such as olive oil, avocado oil, nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds look very dry and most people don’t even know that nuts and seeds contain fat. Keto and Paleo diets are similar as they both eliminate any carbohydrates and sugars from the diet and focus on eating more fat based meals. Many Americans tend to think that fat is bad and often stay away from fat based meals due to the thought of weight gain. The thought that eliminating carbohydrates and sugar from the diet is the most difficult thing for most Americans as everything has carbohydrates and sugars. For example, breads, vegetables, and even fruit. Most people tend to start a diet due to the benefit of weight loss; however, the paleo diet only had short term benefits as it showed a 9% weight loss after six months, but then after 24 months there was no significant change in weight, as stated in a study that was conducted on postmenopausal, obese woman who followed the paleo diet.

What happens when you donate your stuff? This year during some of weekends, I volunteered at Helping Hands with my mom and our mission was to sort through donations to see which items could be sent to people in need. Countries from the African subcontinent, Syria, and Venezuela were some of the counties that Helping Hands sends to. What is Helping Hands? Helping hands is a non-profit service organization that provides clothes to people in poor countries. They also provide food to people in our community who are refugees or just don’t have enough to feed their families. When I first walked into the place, there were bags and bags of clothes. We sorted the clothes into two categories; usable and throwable. Helping hands requires clothes to be in a good condition, items that do not pass this condition, are thrown away. The experience is very satisfying and at the end when everything is in the right compartment. You feel proud that these clothes are going to a good place and how it will help the individuals. The process took about 3 hours; however, it is very calm and relaxing. I have helped before in other organizations, so it wasn’t as exhausting as my first time and I was used to the process. Helping hands is somewhat like Goodwill but instead of placing our clothes on display and making money, they send it to people in actual need. Their system is very organized and I would definitely recommend this organization to anyone who is looking for volunteering options.

Should Parents Stop Making School Lunches? Buying lunch from school or bringing lunch from home have the same results; it gets thrown away. Parents make their kids’ lunches because they know that the stuff they sell at school is unhealthy. From personal experiences in elementary school, I have seen many of my friends throw away leftover apples and carrots. The quality of school lunches is very unsatisfactory; apples are mushy and the lunch itself is filled with grease and sugar. In school, it is weird because most items that kids consume are heavily dozed in sugar, even though the school has to meet certain guidelines. Many schools keep a choice between regular milk and chocolate milk, almost everyone picks the chocolate milk. Switching gears, parents hate the job of making lunch, some kids are picky and parents have to be careful of what they are making or it will result with a return. Another reason why parents pack lunches is because it is environmentally healthy because you are using reusable containers and at school more plastic is used. I personally like taking lunch from home because the quality of food at school is poor and the lines are long. I have lunch 7th period, so by the time I get till 7th period, I am hungry and I don’t want to waste my time standing in a line while picking stuff that I know is unhealthy. Ultimately, parents should not stop making lunches because at the end of all the hard work comes a healthy kid.

Link:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/opinion/letters/school-lunch.html

Science VS Ketogenic Diet… Is Fat Good For You? – This episode discussed whether the ketogenic diet can improve your brain and whether this diet is actually worth it. The ketogenic diet is a diet where you are supposed to eat a surplus amount of fat and no carbs. However, carbs are essential in most American diets. The research was conducted and according to Dom D’ Agostino personal experiences, a researcher at the University of South Florida, ketogenic diets helped him lose fat and increased his concentration on his work. Going on the ketogenic diet is difficult because when we think about carbs, we tend to think about bread and chips; however, even fruits contain carbohydrates. The host, Kaitlyn Sawrey, found out that ketogenic diets were created to treat children with epilepsy. It is crazy to think that a diet that treated epilepsy is now a leading weight loss method. When you are on the ketogenic diet, the brain will use ketones, fat gets turned into ketones when it goes through the liver, instead of glucose. A study was conducted to find out if the ketogenic diet improved the memory of his little mice and it was proven that the mice that were on the ketogenic diet had better memory than the mice that were given the regular diet. However, this was contradicted by many researchers because a human’s brain is different than a mouse’s brain. The topic switches to whether the ketogenic diet can actually aid in losing weight and turns out that it is possible to lose weight because once you start reducing the number of things to eat, you run out of snacks that you can eat and in the end, you lose weight. In conclusion, there still needs to be more research conducted on this diet to fully highlight the benefits and that the outcomes of the ketogenic diet are similar to other methods. 

I personally think that textbooks are no longer needed in schools, as most of the information is found on Google. At my school, everyone has access to textbooks as provided by the school; however, most teachers and students prefer Google and other search bases because you don’t have to go hunting for information that you could find with a click of a button. For me, it is very frustrating to go through pages and pages and still not find information. It is even more frustrating when the text is more advanced than what you are used to using digital bases. Switching gears, textbooks are beneficial to those who don’t have time to verify if a source is credible or not. Furthermore, textbooks help fill in information that teachers might not discuss or when a student is absent, it helps gives background information. In comparison between digital and traditional textbooks, more students prefer digital textbooks because it is easier to search up key-terms. Most teachers know why students hate using textbooks, so when given an assignment, they give a few pages to look at when answering questions. Other negatives of textbooks are that there may be differences between two different textbooks as authors interpret information differently. Textbooks might not have the most relevant information, as the world is progressing and there are more discoveries that cause the information to change. By eliminating textbooks from schools, the money can be put towards things that are needed at schools and for schools that don’t have the proper funding. Schools spend up to 250 dollars for each person for each textbook. Imagine what things can be improved!

In the article, “A California high school found students’ cellphones too distracting, so they’re locking the devices up,” written by Safia Samee Ali, emphasizes the outcomes of an electronic-free education. The article talks about San Mateo High School in California, who has locked students’ smartphones by forcing them to place their phones in a pouch which disconnects their use of technology in school, their phones are opened up at the end of the day. Students have no other choice to use these pouches, those who lose these pouches either accidentally or intentionally have to pay a replacement fee of twenty-five dollars. Locking students’ phones has positive effects such as students who “have cell phones or laptops during lessons scored five percent… lower on exams rather than students who weren’t using electronics”. Also, many students value talking to each other in reality rather than virtually talking.

I feel that this is too harsh and in the long term, it will not be beneficial. I believe this would not work at Glenbard West as technology is a major factor in our learning and most of our material is on Schoology. Most students use their Ipads instead of taking out their phones because they provide the same posts as provided by Instagram or Snapchat, everything can be accessed on an iPad. However, I do think that technology should not be completely taken away because students will feel “more anxious and depressed” when their most important thing is taken away, and students will pay more attention to the messages and posts they are missing, rather than what the teacher is teaching.

https://samiahiqbal.law.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/7895f-aow1920_02schoolcellphoneban.pdf