For our monday wellness presentation, we chose to talk about the habit of unhealthy snacking in American society and its health implications, and also propose a healthier lifestyle by teaching the class how to make their own healthy snack. We chose to do snacking because we felt like it was a really overlooked problem within the American culture. People always talk about how important it is to eat healthy, with heavy emphasis on meals and post workout foods, as we have clearly seen in our prior monday wellness presentations. However, if people eat unhealthy snacks excessively, they undo all the other work that they do in their workouts and healthy meals. It is imperative that people understand how to snack properly. The most interesting thing I learned through this project was how unhealthy snacking, because it is high in LDL cholesterol and simple sugars and modified carbohydrates, can lead to atherosclerosis, as well as hypertension. This was a really direct implication and demonstration of a combined set of concepts that we learned in class, and I thought that our project really connected both health unit and the circulatory system well. As mentioned previously, this topic is very important for maintaining health and wellness because in our culture, people snack so often that it is unhealthy, on top of all the detrimental ingredients in the food that they eat. If people eat healthy meals and get enough sleep and exercise but consume too many unhealthy snacks, then they undo all the other work that they do and become unfit and unhealthy. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being good, I would give myself a 10 because I worked really well with Simrun and we both did a lot of research for the presentation, and also spent hours formatting the presentation. We also had to invent our own version of a healthy snack, which took trial and error. Even though we went over time, I don't think that points should be docked because a large chunk of our time was spent waiting for the class to finish their blog posts, gather the ingredients from the back of the room, and generally transition from activity to activity. If you do not account for the time spent doing these events, then we are well within the time limit. Something else that I find interesting about the topic of snacking that we were not able to explore fully due to the time constraint was how other countries snack. America is notorious for their unhealthy snacking culture, and although we were able to integrate another culture's perspective through the buzz feed video, it would have been even better if we could have Americans commenting on Italian snacks. I would bet that Italian snacks are healthier because I know that Italians have a really huge respect for fresh and natural food, so they would be much more motivated to consume and buy snacks that are much healthier with less faulty labels and harmful ingredients. It would also be interesting to compare the life expectancies of Italians and Americans from the perspective of their snacking. Assuming Italians eat healthier snacks, then technically they should live longer. Americans have a pretty short life expectancy compared to many other countries, especially Asian countries. This is likely because Asian countries eat a lot healthier foods. When you go to an Asian restaurant, majority of the menu items are not excessively oily, fatty, or salty, which are all trademark characteristics of American food. (587 words)
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