Tomato/tomoto

So today I am going to be discussing a topic that, in my opinion, a lot of idiots try to weigh in on. That is the debate over whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable.

There is something you need to know when trying to determine the classification of a tomato, and that is the fruit is both a scientific term and a culinary term, while vegetable is only a culinary term. The definition of the word “vegetable” is any part of any plant that is used for food (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vegetable), so by this definition a tomato is a in fact a vegetable, but so is every fruit. The scientific definition of “fruit” the developed ovary of a plant, so basically anything with a seed (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fruit?s=t). The culinary definition is any sweet tasting plant part. This is what throws people off. A tomato is not sweet, but is does have seeds so it fits both definitions. So now we have to look at the definition of vegetable, and according to that the tomato is a fruit. I have considered the evidence and while both definitions make a good argument it is my professional opinion that the tomato is a vegetable.

So naturally upon learning this my t question was “then how the @#$% is a banana a fruit if it doesn’t have any seeds in it?” I was able to determine that the bananas we eat have been selectively bread to produce smaller and smaller seeds because that’s what the consumers want. When you take a bite into a banana you can see small black dots organized in a circle around the center, those are the seeds.

One thing that I am still unsure about is how seedless watermelon is considered a fruit. I have always thought of it as a fruit, but according to the dictionary definition it is not. I did some fairly extensive research trying to find the answer to this question, but with no success. Perhaps it is because the parent plant is a fruit, then they just add a chromosome to make it infertile. So if anyone knows anything about this topic and would like to enlighten me, please feel free to. ( 370words)

Wild

I am going to talk about a category of food that doesn’t get nearly as much love as it deserves, the stuff you catch or kill your self. My once told me something after I had killed a deer with him the really stuck with me, he said “that’s more organic and healthy than any of that ‘organic’ sh*t you can get at the store” and he is right. Nothing beats a deer that you shot that has only eaten grass all of its life and that has never been given steroids like most cattle. This isn’t as true about fish because they are only as healthy as the water that they live in, and unfortunately in many cases that water isn’t very good. But that is all made up for by the great taste of a fish that was caught and cleaned only a couple of hours ago. Another great part is the fun of catching or killing it. One of the best things in the world, in my opinion, is to fall asleep shirtless in a lawn chair in the sun with a pole in your hand and being woken up be a fish tugging on the line. Sure I may regret it in the shower the next day (because of the terrible sun burns it tend to get) but its all worth it.

School Lunches

There is a problem with our lunch system. Because of all of the obesity in this country people like Michel Obama felt like they should "help". One way that she thinks that she is helping is by ruining school lunches and making them healthier (which I can see why) but also reducing the serving sizes so that seventh through twelfth graders do not exceed 850 calories per day. I have a problem with this because not everyone is overweight or obese, in fact the minority are, only one third. I don’t understand why if two thirds of the country’s children are a healthy weight we should cater to third, and that third, based on what I have seen, don’t like those changes either.

I am alright with trying to add more nutrients to school meals, but I think that the idea of reducing calories is stupid. I especially don’t like it after I get done lifting (everyday) or when I have an intense practice or game after school. Based on a reliable looking online calorie calculator (http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html?ctype=standard&cage=17&csex=m&cheightfeet=6&cheightinch=2&cpound=170&cheightmeter=180&ckg=60&cactivity=1.725&x=78&y=11) I need over thirty two thousand calories a day to maintain my weight and over four thousand calories to increase it, which I am trying to do. If we assume that for breakfast you eat one sixth of our calories, for lunch one third and for dinner one half. That’s means for lunch I need to get about thirteen hundred thousand calories (and I think that guess is low). That means that I need to buy two lunches daily, and that doesn’t make my mom very happy.

I have an idea that I think could help this problem. We shouldn’t pretend like all students are the same because even Helen Keller could have seen that they are not. Some people have higher metabolisms than others, some people are bigger or taller, and many people have different weight loss goals than others. I think that part of the decision should be up to the student, if the want to eat unhealthy or more calories that their bodies need we should just let them. We should also have a line that is dedicated to active students, this line would serve meals that are very high in calories and carbs and help to give the athletes that fuel they need and are some times not getting with the current system.

Another idea that I have that I think is pretty darn smart is one where coaches and gym teachers rate how hard the kid is going on some sort of scale that has yet to be created (perhaps color coded) and you can only get the meals that correspond to your color and up. Some may say that this would make the kids with salads feel bad when they sit down and see all of there friends eating a juicy hamburger, but to that I would say first of all quit being so sensitive and second, that is just motivation for them to try harder in there gym class or sporting event.

Fishing

A hobby of mine that takes advantage of things wanting to eat is fishing.

As you may know to catch a fish by presenting it with something to eat, something that looks like something to eat, or something that seems to be threatening. When the fish attempts to eat of attack what ever it is that you are dangling in front of it you set the hook and hope that the hook(s) sang him in the lip and doesn’t get swallowed. Once the hook is in the fish, as you may expect, you reel it in and get a net if it feels like a big one.

So you have your fish…now what?

Now you finish up the food chain and eat the little thing along with all of his friends. You put it out of the cooler that you placed it in and clamp its tail onto the clippie part of your filleting board and try not to feel bad about what happens next if it’s still flopping around. You start at the tail and cut under the side meat being very careful not to go to deep and pop the guts you cut all of the way up until right under the side fin. Then out just cut up and separate the piece of meat from the rest of the fish. If you are not stupid, you should get two filets off of each fish. Next you can either remove the skin with your knife or leave it on and eat the fish off of it. I prefer to take the skin off and fry the fish in a mixture that my grandma has perfected. The last step is to eat all of the fish you caught with all of the people you caught them with. This meal is, in my opinion, best enjoyed outside and near the body of water where the fish were caught possibly around a fire. (322 words)

Cannibalism?

If you are anything like myself you have probably wondered what a person would taste like, and then been called "weird" or "disturbed" for even thinking that.

The first thing you need to know is that is would not be even close to eating a nice juicy steak because the area of the cow that steaks come from is the lower back. Because cows walk on all fours this muscle doesn’t get worked very much, however in people these muscles are used to keep us standing up strait so they get used more meaning that a human sirloin would be much tougher than a cow sirloin.

Another thing that would make me hesitate to eat human is the health risks. In the 1950s a tribes from Papua New Guinea routinely ate there dead. A favorite part of the person to eat was the brain, this was bad because of a type of pathogen called a prion.  Prions are misfiled proteins that typically occur in the brain, this is the thing that caused mad cow disease and also Kuru. Kuru is the prion that ravaged the tribes in Papua New Guinea until officials banned and punished those who partook in the eating of the deceased. Kuru was nicked named the laughing sickness and was only one mutation away from CDJ, CDJ is the human equivalent of mad cow disease.

The reason that scientist think cannibalism isn't more common in nature is because typically pathogens are only affect one species, so if you eat a dead thing of your same species and it died of a pathogen there is a pretty good chance that you are going to die as well. Thanks to natural selection, this quickly eliminated individuals who wanted to eat there own species, for the most part.

So basically the whole point of this article is don’t eat a person. Not only is it dangerous, but it would not even taste good enough to make the risk worth the reward. Also, beware of searching for facts about cannibalism on any cannibalism forums, there are some really messed up people on them. (352 words)

Ship Wreck Murder

I heard a story recently that I would like to give me input on. It was about these three men who were ship wrecked and they were quickly running out of food, so they decoded to play a game. They all agreed to the terms and those terms were that the loser would let the other two men eat him so that they could survive. They were going to draw sticks (because straw are a pretty scares thing on a deserted island) and who ever got the short one got eaten. The problem arose when the man who lost decided that he didn’t really wanted to be eaten, so the two men killed him and ate him against his will. The man who was killed sustained the other two men long enough to be rescued, but unfortunately for the ones rescued they were convicted of first degree murder. Some people didn't agree with the conviction, and I would like to make my argument in favor of the conviction.

I think that the situation really sucks for the two guys, but I have to say that I agree with the conviction. Sure the killing of the man kept the other two alive long enough for help to arrive, and it may have been the only way for then to survive, and he may have agreed initially to the conditions to the game, but that still does not change the definition of murder: “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/murder?q=murder), which is exactly what happened. If we begin to bend laws depending on the circumstances, the question has to be asked “where does it end?” If they were not convicted it would open the flood gates for all sorts of loop holes, for example, let us say that you do not like someone so much so that you want to kill them. You and a buddy could just recreate what happened, kill the person you do not like, and then arrange for someone to ‘find” you. I know that that is a far fetched example, but it was the best that I could think of. Some people might argue that none of the men would have survived if the one man had not given his life (even if it was involuntary), so rather than one person all three people dying only one had to die. To that I would say you are absolutely right. However, no set of laws can account for every single situation and if we have the laws, even if they are flawed, we need to abide by them. Like I said before, you need to ask yourself, where will the exceptions end and how dishonest people take will advantage of it. Another important question that needs to be asked is was there even consent in the first place? For all we know the two surviving men could have killed the man, and then just completely made up the consent and just have strait up murdered him. As much as I hate to say it, I think that I would have made up a story like that is a friend and I killed someone on an island. (535 words)