Food

I reviewed the lecture on food almost as instantly as I had completed reading Endurance; I simply cannot imagine the struggle that the men faced in regards to their hunger and the food that they had no choice but to eat. I would honestly probably eat anything in sight if my survival depended upon it; even if I had to, I would eat the dog meat if it was offered to me and my situation was desperate. Recently, I was watching an episode of Naked and Afraid on the National Geographic channel. A woman, who was vegetarian, made it seventeen days in a rainforest without eating a substantial amount of protein or enough clean drinking water. Finally, she gave into her hunger the next day when her partner offered her a piece of the lizard that he had hunted. The examples set forth through reading the book and watching this particular episode of a television show remind me much of a conditioned food preference. It clearly did not matter to the men or that woman what he or she was eating, just the fact that they were eating was an appreciated luxury.

Some of my beliefs about food were altered through reading the slides; some slides made me think of my reactions to food in a totally different light. For instance, I was taught that if a woman eats an abundant amount of one food in particular while she is pregnant, the child would ultimately develop some type of allergy to that food. My own mother swears that this belief is true. Because of her constant craving for peanut butter during her pregnancy with my little brother, he is severely allergic to nuts. I always thought that this was a coincidence; I believe more so that if a mother eats something religiously while pregnant, the child will enjoy the taste of that particular food. On the other hand, the slide regarding taste aversion instantly brought the idea of canned tuna to my head.