Ingredients

2 cups of leeks, sliced

2 cups of carrots, sliced

2 cloves of minced garlic

2 cups of green beans

2 cups of diced potatoes

1 cup of corn

4 peeled and seeded tomatoes

2 quarts of vegetable/chicken/chicken substitute stock, whichever you prefer

2-3 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup of Italian parsley

4 teaspoons of olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Recipe

1. Pour olive oil into pot and spread it around, dump theleeks and garlic in.  Also add salt.  Fry for five minutes, stir occasionally.

2. Add carrots and potatoes.  Cook for three minutes, stir occasionally.

3. Add green beans.  Cook for five minutes, stir occasionally.

4. Add whichever stock you chose, cook until it boils.

5. Add tomatoes and corn.  Simmer for thirty minutes.

6. Add lemon juice and parsley, stir.  Add more salt if so desired.

The preparation of vegetable soup is mostly a lot of sitting around, really.

Recipe Analysis

The thing about these ingredients is that it's absurdly difficult to actually research these ingredients, and that's where I hit a brick wall.  Most of the vegetables used did not come in packaging and were devoid of any labels.  The only thing I know is that, save for the tomatoes, they were picked from Wegmans' organic section.  Furthermore, it's very difficult to provide the nutritional information of soup, unless you want to analyze how many fractions of a serving of each vegetable on average goes into a serving.  That's not really something that's possible.

What I do know is that Wegmans claims its fruits, vegetables, and products in general tend to be grown locally.  If it has the Wegmans brand, it's grown (or raised) nearby.  It's impossible to verify this, but I have to trust them to some extent.  Wegmans brand has two lines of interest: the first of which is "Food You Feel Good About," and the second of which is Organic.  Wegmans has a track record of being pretty healthy.  That said, the only part of this meal that was processed was the tomatoes.  The rest of it was all organic.  

Environmentally, I'm counting on the fact that Wegmans is being honest when it says it gets its things locally, but at the same time, I have to wonder if that's not entirely true.  There are other Wegmans stores elsewhere, so do all of their products come from local farms, too?  I don't doubt that any of this food comes from anywhere besides the United States, though.

The meal was obviously more expensive than fast food: fast food doesn't have eleven ingredients.  Each ingredient costed about as much as a fast food meal as it is.  Seeing as though these organic foods are Wegmans' own, Wegmans gets the money.  The tomatoes are not organic, unfortunately.  My family grows its own tomatoes, yes, but that's not very easy to do when it's cold.  Never affected me very much since I can't stand the things, but it's always a nice thing to use ingredients you've grown.  My family tends to grow its own herbs and spices when possible, too.

Overall, it's pretty healthy seeing as this vegetable soup uses ,well, vegetables.  Organic vegetables.  Vegetables that are organic.  Organic vegetables.

Personal Reflection

I've always been vaguely aware of the things that go into food behind our backs, I just never knew for sure and I barely cared.  Can it be said that I care now?  Indeed.  For now, at least.  Hopefully I keep caring and that caring doesn't stop down the line.  At least the place I shop at tends to be pretty gosh darn organic.  That's awfully convenient since until now I barely paid attention to the stuff that I eat.  I barely have to change anything, which feels pretty good.  See, the italics mean what I just said is important.

This unit is unique in that it actually affected me on an emotional level.  Admittedly, I'm pretty apathetic about a lot of things.  Never before has a course or a unit even affected me like this.  I can safely say I am scared to eat things now, for the most part.  Wegmans is pretty organic so that's great, but it's just everything else is suddenly terrifying.  The treatment of animals is nothing new to me.  I've seen worse, like actual videos of this horrendous slaughtering.  What I'm mostly affected and disgusted by is how these corporations get away with things.  Realizing your government is even more corrupt than most people think is not a particularly fantastic thing.  This paragraph is, of course, almost entirely based on our two week watching of Food Inc.

That said, there's actually not much I have to change except maybe lock up any number of candies and sweets I have stashed away for when I get bored.  Without those, I eat pretty healthy as it is.  I didn't even know that most of the things I eat are organic, and I think I like Wegmans that much more now.

I could certainly try to spread the word like some sort of evangelist, but I would rather not.  It reminds me too much of those religion tests I had as a Catholic schoolboy, where the last question would always be "What can you do to be a good Catholic?" and the answer would always be "SPREAD THE WORD OF GOD."  While I don't necessarily agree with some people's choices, I wouldn't dare try to convince them otherwise if they're not open to the idea.

A common misconception is that diet soda is "healthy" and perfectly okay because it's diet.  Diet soda still contains a number of harmful chemicals, and though it has less calories, it's still about as bad as ordinary soda.