What San Diego Eats - Interview Questions

General Demographic Questions:

How many people live in the home?

Four people and a cat.

What are the professions of the adults in the home (ex: teacher, food service, lab technician, unemployed)?

My mom is a controller for Kontron and my dad is a retired dentist. 

Where does the family live (what part of San Diego)?

Northeastern San Diego.

Food specific questions:

How often does your family eat out? Where do you usually go?

2-4 times a week. Rubio’s, In N’ Out, Mario’s Pizza, Subway, Pick Up Stix, Luna’s Grill, Wendy’s. 

Do you typically buy food based on price, health, or something else?

Health and price. 

Do you usually cook more from scratch or buy pre-made foods?

More pre-made foods. Lots of frozen meals. 

If time/money/etc. were not an issue, what would you change about your eating habits?

Definitely we would eat more healthy. My whole family needs to eat healthy. 

How many meals per week does your family typically eat together? Which meal do you eat together (ie: dinner)?

Maybe 1 or 2. Either dinner or breakfast on the weekends.

Do you buy any organic foods? Why or why not? Are there any other constraints or requirements for the food you buy?

We don’t buy organic. Its too expensive. We usually go for bargain and how healthy it is.

Does culture or ethnicity have any influence on what you eat? How? (give examples)

During Christmas we revive some Swedish food like pepparkakor and rosettes. 

Do you feel like you spend too much money on food?

I don’t feel that we spend too much money on food. I think we get our money’s worth.

What food tradition do you think Americans value?

Speed and traditional American food like the hamburger.

What San Diego Eats—interview questions

Where do you buy your food?

Albertson’s and Costco. Also fast food restaurants for dinner.

Who shops? Who cooks?

My sister and I shop with one of my parents. My mom cooks sometimes. 

Does your family eat more fresh produce or processed foods?

Totally more processed food.

What San Diego Eats - Article

Childhood Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes

By: Cassandra Olson

Childhood obesity and Type 2 Diabetes in recent years have been soaring in developed countries. The question is: Why? Why are children younger and younger getting larger and larger and why for the first time is this generation predicted to not outlive their parents?

Childhood obesity had more than tripled in the past 30 years and we can’t just necessarily blame McDonald’s as the sole creator of the problem. Combined social, behavioral and environmental factors have all contributed. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%. 

Food

Healthy food is becoming both less scarce and more abundant at the same time.  Processed food is both cheaper and faster. Its convenient, whereas our natural organic fruits and veggies are harder to get and cost significantly more. There is a higher fat count, calorie count, sugar count, in just about everything. 

Caloric Intake

Obesity is the result of an imbalanced caloric intake with too many calories being taken in and not enough being burnt off. The average caloric intake for children are all different but all the processed foods are pushing children off the edge.

Age	Calories per day
	Boys	Girls
1–3	1,230	1,165
4–6	1,715	1,545
7–10	1,970	1,740
11–14	2,220	1,845
15–18	2,755	2,110
Adults	2,550	1,940

Brain Chemistry

Our brains are programmed to seek high fat, high sugar, high carb foods. Its leftover from an age where we were hunter gatherers so that we could survive. But, now when we don’t have the need to scavenge food the instinct, so to speak, still there. So when we go to the supermarket we seek out the high fats, the high sugars, the high carbs and when we eat those things on top of what we normally eat we exceed the daily amount of calories that we should be getting.

Exercise

Children are getting less and less exercise. Who burns more calories? A child in Africa who walks five miles to get water or a kid who walks a couple blocks to the liqueur store for an ice cream cone? Busier and busier lives also play a part. How do we find time to do 60 minutes of exercise everyday?

Overall, the fact that the country is developed is the answer. Undeveloped countries don’t have McD’s or Starbucks or whatever other restaurant you want to name. They don’t have wall to wall concrete. Our social, behavioral and environmental factors in our developed country have all contributed to the unleashing of this beast. But now we have to contain it and that’s not as easy as releasing it. 

What San Diego Eats - Family Description

Cassie and Kristin Olson wake up to the sound of their alarms and rush downstairs. Mom and Dad, Susan and Bob, are already up. Breakfast is already out and bagels and waffles are snatched up, goodbyes are said and they rush out the door to the car.  They split ways, one to work, and the other three to school. This is a day in the life of the Olson’s. They hardly eat breakfast, lunch is packed for Cassie and Kristin, Dad eats whatever he can find, and Mom has perhaps an orange and a protein bar. Dinner is the most guessed upon meal. Mom gets home late so Dad and the kids go to Rubio’s, or Pick Up Stix, or Mario’s Pizza. They usually pick up something for Mom and bring it home. On the weekends they sometimes have a sit down together meal with Mom making the meal. It usually is some sort of pasta because its pretty easy to make. They usually shop every two weeks at Albertson’s and less occasionally Costco for bulk items. 

The Olson’s are people whose busy lives trump eating healthy and convenience is more  important than creating whole well balanced meals. Eating healthy is important them but unfortunately its a little hard to accomplish with such busy lives. 

What San Diego Eats - Recipe

Swedish Pancakes

Ingredients

1. 4 eggs
2. 2 cups milk
3. 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4. 1 tablespoon sugar
5. 1 pinch salt
6. 2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions

1. In a large bowl, beat eggs with a wire whisk. Mix in milk, flour, sugar, salt, and melted butter.
2. Preheat a non-stick electric skillet to medium heat. Pour a thin layer of batter on skillet, and spread to edges. Cook until top surface appears dry. Flip with a spatula. Cook for another 2 minutes, or until golden brown. Roll each pancake up, and serve.

Clean Coal? New Technology Buries Greenhouse Emissions

"Researchers at the plant aim to develop new types of solvents that can be used to trap CO2 and convert it into solid form as carbon. "


Can you reuse carbon for anything?


"The Esbjerg project is only the latest venture aimed at addressing the European Union's pledge to cut carbon emissions under the 1992 international agreement known as the Kyoto Protocol. "


Its been that long? Wow. I didn't know that the Kyoto Protocol was signed that long ago. Maybe they should everybody to reconvene as a sort of catching up.


"These technologies include coal gasification, in which steam and oxygen are used to turn coal into a synthetic gas that primarily consists of hydrogen. The gas is then combusted to generate electricity. This gas burns hotter and cleaner than coal, so it is seen as a more efficient fuel. It also gives off greater concentrations of CO2 than combusted coal, which makes the emitted gas easier to trap. The captured CO2 will be stored deep underground in saline reservoirs and unmineable coal seams. The CO2 can also be pumped into oil and gas formations to help push the fuel to the surface."


Seems like a good plan. The question is: How much does it cost?


"The demand comes in large part from the fact that coal is cheaper and more abundant than oil or natural gas, which estimates suggest are set to run out in 40 years and 60 years, respectively."


The poles are so going to be gone by then. Much help that's going to do.


Is there any more recent articles that explore green coal tech? This seems a little old seeing as it came out four years ago...

Nuclear Power: Risking a Comeback

"So is it time to embrace the atom again? There's a "nuclear renaissance" buzz emitting from engineers who design and operate reactors, think-tank academics who worry about long-range energy and environmental strategies, utility company executives, top members of the Bush Administration, and members of Congress."


I think that nuclear energy is the way of the future. Its relatively clean and only a small amount of waste is produced. Take Europe for example. They recycle their uranium over and over again and and use it over and over again until they can't get anything out of it anymore. But, by then, its such a small amount of waste that we can tolerate it. There is also talk about fission plants. The technology is not quite there yet but if we were to use fission to power our plants it would be so much safer.  If the reaction leaves the chamber it dies because it needs continuous heat. Though there is the downside.


"The amount of free energy contained in nuclear fuel is millions of times the amount of free energy contained in a similar mass of chemical fuel such as gasoline, making nuclear fission a very tempting source of energy. The products of nuclear fission, however, are on average far more radioactive than the heavy elements which are normally fissioned as fuel, and remain so for significant amounts of time, giving rise to a nuclear waste problem. Concerns over nuclear waste accumulation and over the destructive potential of nuclear weapons may counterbalance the desirable qualities of fission as an energy source, and give rise to ongoing political debate over nuclear power." - Wikipedia


"France gets 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is considering replacing its older plants with new ones."


Go France! If we switched to nuclear we could get so much more energy and with that energy we could go electric and cut down even more on CO2 emissions. 


""We can't go back, we can only go forward," said Swapnesh Malhotra, a spokesman for India's atomic energy department. "Life depends on energy, and I ask, where do we get it? We will get it somewhere.""


Coal = Back --> Nuclear = Future


What would we do if we had a Chernobyl? How can we downsize nuclear plants? They're so huge that they're like windmills they produce energy but they block the view.


"That's if there's money. Congress last year passed an energy bill that guarantees loans made by investors and includes a subsidy of up to six billion dollars for running the first new plants. But the industry insists that it can't get private financing for construction of the plants without government loan guarantees. "


Its money we don't have probably. 


"Environmentalists like Speth consider the nuclear industry mature enough to sink or swim without federal assistance—and with vigilant regulation."


If anybody hasn't noticed by now, the government has the loosest regulation sectors ever.


"In two or three decades the industry could see generation-IV machines that run more efficiently at much higher temperatures, thus getting far more energy from their starting load of uranium. The intense nuclear reactions at such temperatures would leave waste that, compared to today's, is less toxic and lasts for a shorter period of time. Advanced reactors would have simpler safety features and require less sophisticated backup systems. They could cool themselves down in the event of an accident with little human intervention, making them less tempting targets for terrorists."


We can do it. Technology replaces itself every two years and with waves of new engineers it'll come faster than we think.