Food Log

Food log assignment I am asking everyone to keep a food [this includes drinks] log for three consecutive days. I want you to keep a record of the five W’s: what you eat, when you eat, where you eat, with whom you eat, and why you eat. For the last ‘W’, WHY, it is not enough to say that you ate or drank something because you were hungry. One of the things that distinguishes humans from animals is that eating is complex. It is always about more than hunger even when we are hungry. People almost never eat just anything, even when they are hungry. Starving is another matter, but even then, there are some things that people never consider eating, even when it is physiologically possible for us to digest. You want to be as organized and as clear as possible in recording your data. Record the data in a chart – with columns for each of the W’s. You want to provide details that will allow you and me to make an assessment of your log. This means be descriptive. For example, don’t just say ‘hamburger’ but give some details about the type of hamburger – a mayonnaise burger from Sonic [$2.40]. And try to be as socially descriptive about the people you eat with.Anything and everything that you ingest (so food and drink) should be part of your log.After you have completed your log, you then want to assess it – as a sociologist would. This is the second part of the assignment.John Macionis says, to think like a sociologist, you need to be willing to look for general social patterns in the behavior of particular individuals; to look at the individual always in a social context [and all individuals are always influenced by social forces]; and to look at the strange in the familiar. You want to answer the following questions:1. What patterns do you notice about how, what, when, where, with whom and why you actually eat and drink?2. What is driving you socially to eat and drink the way that you do? What is going on socially to promote such behavior?3. What did you find that you did not expect?Your log should be one or two pages long. Your assessment should be three full pages.