1. I want to help change how we think about and interact with food. Because of this
I am pursuing a culinary nutrition major. Throughout the past decade of my life I have
found myself interested in food, and how we look at it. I have been increasingly
interested in studying nutrition while at the same time being drawn to food itself. From
being an athlete, and being involved in fitness/health I have always applied my thoughts
about food in this direction. I have increasingly realized the connection, and intimate
relationship we have with food and medicine. Every day I learn more about the idea of
food being medicinal and the key to the future health of myself and society. I realize
there is a major problem in our relationship with food that is broken like a major rough
patch of a relationship. We are complacent, and lazy about our food. We seek the easy
way to be satisfied, and we do not do the little things to continue to build a deeper
connection anymore. I also really love helping people, and teaching or explaining things
they do not know or realize that is right in front of them. Sometimes we lose sight of the
simpler things in life without help and we just need our eye to be opened to see what is
right in front of us.
I have always found myself talking about food especially eating and preparing it. I
decided one day that I needed to change my focus in school, realizing that I am always
talking about food so “why not just major in it?”. I then made the change to applied
nutrition. I worked at Chipotle one summer, and was able to witness first hand their
relationship with their food; instantly falling in love with many of their ideals. Due to this
I realized culinary nutrition was the field for me. I wanted to pursue a career in changing
things due to my passion for many topics in our food system. By working at Chipotle and
seeing the power they had in making a difference in the world by just doing, and not
talking about it. I realized that is exactly what I wanted to do “being on the side of doing
without being asked, or just talking about it” I thought to myself (just do it).
I do not know what job title I want specifically, but I know that I want to change
the relationship with food from the bottom to the top. From how we grow our food,
where our food comes from, to how we prepare our food, how we consume our food, and
how we eat our food. All of this with the mind set of sustainability for the environment
and for the health of our bodies. The way we as a society fundamentally think about our
food needs to change. We need to realize there is always something to practice, and work
on much like with any other skill we pursue or possess. I would consider to work with
different institutions both public and private. I would also like to work with farms and or
distribution of food. In any case I want to have an impact on food itself in some way.
Lastly, my long term goal one day is to possibly be able to implement all these different
practices into a restaurant. I would love to have a restaurant with high standards for their
food, the environment, a place for learning and interacting, a place that will help change
and shape the way food is viewed, with a focus on being a responsible sustainable
example for how food should be treated.