I have never had much of a palate for watermelon. Growing up every Sunday in the summer was spent at my uncle’s house because he had a pool. Fortunately too, he grew his own watermelon. All of us kids would grab the pieces of watermelon with the most seeds so that we could see who could spit their seeds the furthest. I’m competitive by nature, so I would eat the watermelon just in order to beat my family members in a game as dumb as spitting seeds. In this situation the food choice was healthy and homegrown. If there weren’t any watermelon of my uncles we would go to a local home owned market with all locally grown produce. The food choice came from our parents wanting us to eat healthier but also, the competition that can with consuming the watermelon.
The social norm I mentioned above deals directly with nutrition. A major societal issue that I feel connects to this social norm is the lack eating healthy or choosing to eat healthy snacks. Junk foods and sugar filled snacks are more readily available now more than ever before. Everywhere you look you see kids grabbing candy instead of fruit and pop instead of water. In the previous paragraph I stated how we would choose watermelon as competition. Now, kids will have a competition of who can consume the most sugary sweets. Part of the problem is parents providing an abundant amount of sweets and allowing children to make their own decisions. I think more healthy snacks should be provided regardless of whether or not you are at a party.
Hey Ian my name is Kyle and you can see my post here: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/04/kyle-hoke-food-choices/
Your post is very similar to mine! However, unlike you, watermelon is one of my favorite foods of all time. I would have loved home-grown watermelons when I was younger, and still would! My grandmother would always try to get us the freshest fruits during the summer, so she often went to farmer’s markets as well. It is very unfortunate that parents choose to give their children the sugary and unhealthy junk foods when there are better tasting and better for you options with fruits like watermelon.
Hi Ian, my name is Victoria and I’m a sophomore here at PSU. Your post attracted my attention because you used a method of comparing and contrasting with your social norm and societal issue. I think it was clever to write about how the social norm is that we want to eat healthy but this doesn’t work with society that eats unhealthy food. The food around us is unfortunately unhealthy and what’s around us definitely highly influences our food choice. I also want to eat healthy, but it’s sometimes a struggle for me when I’m out with my friends and all they want to eat is pizza and McDonalds.The real question is how can we make food that tastes really good, is healthy, and also not harmful to the environment. Check out my post! http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/02/chicken-from-animal-to-food-choice-to-lifestyle/
Hi Ian my name is Josh, I found your post interesting and a little funny at the same time. The whole watermelon competition sounds like it was a great time. I grew up with my grandparents as farmers and so I had fresh produce always readily available to me like you had with watermelon. Without this produce available i agree that people are resorting to junk food to eat. This is a large problem as it relates to nutrition and obesity. My blog is at: http://sites.psu.edu/geog30/2016/03/03/social-norm-and-food-diagram/