Nailah Adam: Whole Wheat Pasta Salad

2 packs of whole-wheat pasta

3 cups of grape tomatoes

1 cucumber

1 ½ bottles of Balsamic Vinegar

2 cups of Olive Oil

How-To

1. Boil Pasta
2. Chop cucumbers into dime size triangles
3. Cut tomatoes into halves
4. After Pasta is boiled, Drain
5. Add all Ingredients into a large bowl
6. Add 1 ½ bottles of Balsamic Vinegar and 2 cups of Olive Oil into mixture
7. Mix
8. Refrigerate overnight and Serve!

Analysis

            Pasta salad is one of the healthiest meals that is entirely organic and a part of the Whole Food category. Pasta salad can be served as a side or a meal. According to the nutritional facts of all the ingredients, two-three cups of pasta salad totals to a minor four hundred calories. Not only is it nutritional, but fulfilling. The carbs, or pasta, in the pasta salad serves as two of our six daily grains/per day needed for our body to function healthily. Carbohydrates provide energy throughout the day and help your metabolism speed up. The vegetables used in the pasta salad are used to fulfill some of your daily servings of vegetables and fruits. Vegetables are needed in a daily diet because it provides cardiovascular health, gastrointestinal health, strong vision, and other life long advantages. However, some health issues that could arise if you ate nothing but pasta salad everyday are hair/skin effects, lack of growth of muscles and blood and hormonal disorders, that are caused by lack of enough proteins in diet.

            My ingredients come from the United States and Italy. The tomatoes and cucumber comes from Florida, while the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pasta come from Italy. The olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pasta (all organically grown) have traveled the farthest at steep four-thousand-four-hundred-and-thirteen miles.

The cost of all the ingredients was ten dollars, for a serving of twenty. Compared to fast food, the average double cheese burger and French fries cost two dollars and fifty cents.; resulting to a total of fifty dollars for twenty people. Overall, you come out cheaper preparing pasta salad. The Food and Drug Administration regulate the food items used in pasta salad.

There are some social ramifications of preparing pasta salad. The price of a regular bag of pasta can cost about one dollar. However, the price of a whole-wheat organic pasta bag cost about one dollar and thirty-nine cents. While some may not see a big difference, a lot of people are always focusing on the bottom dollar, where that extra thirty-nine cents can go towards other needs. Tracing where the vegetables came from was not hard. The tomatoes and cucumber were harvest on a farm where they grew these crops. The whole-wheat pasta derived from the form of unleavened wheat dough of buckwheat flour. The balsamic dressing and oil came from a reduction of cooked white Trebbiano grape juice and olives. All of my ingredients are organic; therefore, there wasn’t a lot of processing. The ingredients were purchased from my local Supermarket, Brown’s ShopRite. Needless to say, Pasta salad can be categorized as one of the healthiest, tasteful and fulfilling meal.

In this unit, I have learned a massive amount of information about the food industry, food itself and how I am a prime factor in it. What I found most intriguing while learning about the unit, was that I can contribute to the wrong doings of the industry by buying its products. Essentially, I learned that by supporting the non-organic food industry, I am supporting the mistreatment of animals, people's health and my health.

The biggest problem in our food system is the lack of organic food resources in urban areas for cheap prices. I believe the majority of the people who are malnutrition from non-organic food suffer because the lack of organic food resources in urban communities. In order to change the statistics and change the health of suffering citizens, we have to change our unhealthy diet to a healthy diet. In order to change the statistics, we have to change the resources.

A change I can make to my food choices is  taking out the fattening, greasy and sugary foods and replacing them with vegetables, healthy proteins, grains and fruits. The impact of these changes will be a longer, healthier life. I am willing to make these changes if the food industry agrees to cheapen the cost of organic food and increase organic food resources in my area particularly.