Food Paths Project

Overall, the Food Paths Project allowed me to map out the path of a chicken salad from production to consumption. I was also able to identify the factors that influence this process and analyze the implications of it. More so, through the work on the Food Paths Project I was able to develop a better depth of knowledge on the Effective Communication, Critical Thinking and Ethical Reasoning learning outcomes.

The multiple strategies utilized in the process of doing this project demonstrated Effective Communication. For example, a chicken salad is a very broad meal with a lot of different ingredients. These ingredients have a lot of information on them online and in order to decide which information to include, I had to be aware of the context, audience and purpose the ingredients had on our project. For grilled chicken we decided to use Tyson chicken which narrowed down the information that was available. We ended up having to condense the information and give a brief presentation outlining the different components to our project. With that being said, making active choices and organizing my information allowed me to have a successful project and thus demonstrate my development in effective communication.

The multiple strategies utilized in the process of doing this project also demonstrated Critical Thinking. I think the most relevant example to this is through all of the mini assignments leading up to the project. Focusing on one component at a time allowed for more thinking to be done on one topic. Specifically, the assignment on breaking down the food labels of each ingredient was beneficial because it helped me to be able to interpret and evaluate information in order to ultimately develop a conclusion. In doing this for eggs, I stated how they have a specific way of grading and labelling the eggs to be either AA, A or B and the explanation and implication of each. In order to develop this conclusion, I had to decide which sources to use and make sure they were relevant to the project. Overall, I developed a presentation that took time to formulate and thus demonstrating my development in critical thinking.

Lastly, the multiple strategies utilized in the process of doing this project demonstrated Ethical Reasoning. For example, as I mentioned earlier, we used Tyson chicken and in doing so I was able to learn about the process of this chicken and how the chickens are raised. Personally, I felt that the chickens were treated horribly and that the ethical dilemmas of this situation were being overlooked. The process consists of chicks being sent to boiler farms where they are fed scientifically formulated foods to promote faster growing with less feed. Finally, they are slaughtered and feathers, heads, legs, etc. are removed to prepare chicken for sale. It is evident for this project we recognized ethical issues and thus demonstrated my development in Ethical Reasoning.

Through the Effective Communication, Critical Thinking and Ethical Reasoning learning outcomes, they can be directly applied to the Food Paths Project. Overall, the Food Paths Project was a good learning experience that was engaging and essentially got me interesting in looking into what I am eating outside of class.

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