December 2007 Archives

I worked twice at Keystone this week for the first time. Also, I continued with some food research at the grocery store, meaning I went to the store and checked out the ingredients/nutrition facts on several popular items at the food shelf. Other than that, I reflected on my project thorough writing my essay for the final.

Working at Keystone on a different day was an interesting experience. Wednesday was more relaxed than Fridays typically are. Also, I learned more about the problems facing a food shelf, since on Wednesday, there was hardly any food left in the back room. By Friday, the shelf had renewed resources, but I learned that its supply could be erratic. This makes incorporating nutrition even more difficult when resources are limited.

I began formulating the next steps of my project this week, so I think I am ready to accomplish the objectives of the project in the upcoming weeks. What I need to do is to communicate more with the leaders at the food shelf so that they are clear about what I am doing. At the moment, my next steps seem only theoretical, but once I communicate with people at the shelf, I will be able to implement them and thus accomplish the objectives.

From the research I did for Chapter 2, I learned a lot about my project. I learned that people who live in poverty can basically only get healthy foods if they are given to them, but food shelves often do not provide healthy, nutrient rich foods. This means that the nutrition grant in this project will be able to give the shelf the resources to provide nutrition. Also, this makes the project important and relatively unique to its issue, since not much has been done to improve nutrition in food shelves as of yet.

Ideally, I wish I would have done more work during Thanksgiving break as opposed to having most of Chapter 2 pile up this weekend. However, I feel I understood Chapter 2 and learned a lot about my project while completing it, so I am pleased with my work over these two weeks. The research has made my project feel a lot more focused and official, and I feel that the rest of the project will be carried out better because of what I have learned. I am excited to help with the nutrition grant and come up with ways to help the shelf with nutrition!