Food means a lot in our world

Hello, we are Staf and Jesse. We are both 16 years old. I live in Hamont, Jesse lives in Pelt. The name of our school is Wico Campus Salvator. We created this blog to tell you about the differents functions of food in our world.

Thanksgiving

November 29, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

Thanksgiving Day is a day where  everyone has ever heard of. It is a national holiday in the U.S.A. and Canada. In the U.S.A. they celebrate it on the last Thursday of November. In Canada they celebrate it on the second Monday of October. Thanksgiving is a day where people say thanks for the harvest and all sorts of other good things. But what is also very typical for Thanksgiving is the food. Families come together to eat things such as turkey (Turkey Day), potatoes, green beans and more. 

But Thanksgiving is not as positive as it seems. The first thanksgiving of the harvest was in 1621 between Pilgrims and Indians. But today there is a little difference between them.  According to the Indians, Thanksgiving is a day to mourn the massive deaths of people. But according to the Pilgrims it is a celebration between them and the Indians.

Christmas

November 30, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

Everyone knows the Christmas season, the days where everyone is busy buying presents. Although it is actually a very religious day for Christians, it seems that most of them no longer care. For us it is just a holiday in which we come together with family / friends and give each other presents. What is also very important on these days is the food. On Christmas we eat lots of delicious things such as chicken, croquettes … Especially the fact that we eat a lot is true. We try to eat as much as possible, usually until we get a stomach ache. This is therefore a big difference between us and other religions. While other religions such as the muslims commit themselves not to eat anything, we are eating ourselves full until we can no longer. Of course we have the period before Easter when we don’t eat anything sweet, but most Christians don’t care about that.

Halloween

December 01, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

Halloween is a holiday that falls on October 31. Halloween is traditionally celebrated in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. In the meantime the party has also gained a lot of popularity in other parts of the world.

On 31 October, children dress up and ring or knock at houses in the neighborhood that are decorated. The kids say a special sentence: ‘trick or treat’. The sentence comes from: where a choice is made between becoming a victim of a tease (trick) or something tasty (treat, usually candy).  Most of the people also makes some meals with a twist of Halloween.  People often make pumpkin soup, sausages that are looking like fingers of a witch  and a lot more. There’s even candy in the shape of eyeballs!!!

Sugar festival

December 04, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

The sugar festival is an Islamic holiday on which the end of the fasting month of Ramadan is celebrated. The Ramadan (9th month of the Islamic calendar) is the period in which muslims only eat something after sunset. They starve themselves for their religion. We referred to this in the article about Christmas. After a long and hard month the sugar festival finally comes. On this day the muslims first go to the mosque for a special pray. Then they celebrate the day with family and lots of food. The muslims usually eat special dishes such as lokum …  on that day. They also give each other and the poor little presents. This is therefore again one of the many feasts where food plays an important role.

Why do we eat food?

December 07, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

Everyone knows that we eat food to stay alive. Food gives you energy, it protects you from diseases, it offers material for tissue building, growth and repair… This is the biological function of food. But food has more functions than that. It has also a social-cultural influence on yourself. Just think about the status symbol showing class divide, expression of cultural identity (Eg Jews who do not eat a pig) and more. Food stimulate also the relationship between you and your family/friends (Eg eating all together is better for the relationship). In addition, there are also people who eat when they are sad or angry, and people who just eat for the delicious taste. This means that eating also has an emotional function. So now you know why we eat, and it’s not just because we have to.

Can food transform apes into humans?

December 08, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

Why is it that we have evolved into humans? 

The cause of this has something to do with food. Around 1990 a Harvard University professor discovered that the brain of the Homo Erectus started to grow in contrast to that of great apes. The theory about this was that the first modern humans learned to make fire and began with roasting meat and vegetables. 

The roasting and cooking of food makes that we can predigest the food better. So this makes it more easy for our guts to absorb the calories. That’s the reason why we are growing bigger and faster. And our brains grew and evolved also further, which made us smarter. All of this leads of course to our beautiful world with numerous inventions. We even could say that cooking food makes us human.

The paradox of Cooking Shows

December 14, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

What is so tempting about cooking shows, because different researches shown that we spend more time watching cooking shows than actually cooking by ourselves. Isn’t it strange that so many cooking programs, cookery books … exist today, but that we still cook less than ever before. In fact, it has become so little that on average we only cook for half an hour a day. And that is very little compared to the past. People even say that we are replacing actual cooking with vicarious cooking. But why do we do that? People say because we find it easier to see someone cooking than actually doing it ourselves. And also that we have a busy life today plays a role in the time we spend in cooking. 

But do you remember what we said about cooking, that it makes us human. Wouldn’t it be bad if we let this beautiful characteristic of human disappear just because we don’t have the time …

The strongest weapon

December 16, 2019 by Staf and Jesse

If you think about weapons that are used in a war you will probably think about guns, (atom) bombs and vehicles such as tanks and planes. But the weapon that was the most devastating is food, this was already in the Roman period. A Roman writer once said: ‘Starvation destroys an army more often than battle does, and hunger is more savage than a sword.’ This is because you had to give food to the armies so they had enough energy to hold and fight with their weapons.

Food is actually the same as fuel. It’s the ammunition of the army that powers them. The generals that didn’t give enough food to their army would stand no chance in a war. There are also a lot of wars that started because there was not enough food. Food often decides which side would win.