Engage Her: Activating Women and MultiCultural Communities

Fast food is a term some take seriously, and some just don’t care about. To me, fast food is bad and I don’t see how people can sell it to other people: it can cause obesity, heart failure, and other serious illnesses.

Is it really hard to sell good, healthy food to the world? It’s not only the fast food restaurants but the grocery stores around you. If you live in an affluent area you have the best chances of having healthy and nutritious selections of foods in the stores. But if you live in a low income environment you’re likely to have limited selections and non-nutritious foods to choose from, which forces you to buy bad foods that can cause health problems.

I’m the type of person who craves fast food, candy and other bad foods. But in my house they’re hard to find. When my mom buys food, the meat is turkey, the noodles and bread are made with whole grains, and she buys water not soda. If this cycle were repeated in every person’s house, it would be a good start and there would be fewer obesity patients.

I know many people have so much fast food that they don’t eat anything else. All they crave is fast food if they try avoiding it. That’s a diet you have to work hard at changing if you’re overweight.

Even if you look healthy on the outside you still can be a victim of diabetes. So the best thing is to cut back on the fast food, sweets and pie! Everyone loves pie, but when it comes to your body you’re the only one who can really take care of it.

So when you walk to the store, please think twice about what you’re going to put through your body. Every wrong choice carries consequences.

Thank you for your time,
Tina Gerardo

FAST FOOD! That just calls every body’s name. Most teenagers love to eat fast food all the time. They don’t realize that it’s extremely bad for them, and that it’s killing them slowly. I think that we buy fast food because it’s really cheap and fast. A lot of times people don’t have time to make their own healthy food at home, so they decide to eat food at an unhealthy place.

Fast food effects our community because many people are now obese and that is definitely not healthy for us. Obese people are not just living an unhealthy life, but also a very sad one because they get teased all the time about their weight. When I see an obese person I feel very bad for them because sometimes they even have difficulty walking and that’s not good at all.

Even though we are provided with the nutrition facts of the fast food places, we still don’t take the time to look at them because sometimes we just don’t understand what it says on there and how much of everything we are supposed to be eating or what we are not supposed to be eating. Even if we order a salad at a fast food place I don’t think it’s healthy because of all the things that we could add to it – that’s what makes the food good. We don’t realize that they’re tricking us by saying that it’s a healthy salad when in reality it contains many things we don’t know about.

Fast food is just horrible to consume.

The dollar menu may sound like a good deal, but I doubt that people understand what fast food contains. It may be convenient to just pick up a burger meal at the nearest burger joint, but it doesn’t provide you the nutrients you need. Eating fast food can eventually lead to major causes to your health due to all the fats and unprocessed meat used to make the food. Fast foods contain so much sodium, fats, and not enough protein. I even notice that some fast food restaurants had a nutrition menu, but is was flipped around and used as a place mat. I mean, why would you make it unnoticeable? It makes it seem like they’re hiding the fact that they know the food is unhealthy. And if you haven’t noticed that low income communities also don’t have the best grocery stores and are unable to get their hands on fresh organic food. Personally, I think it’s unfair that only the wealthy communities are able to get healthy fresh organic foods, while our multicultural community are not. In other words, we’re eating trash. And if you ask any teens why they like fast food, their response is ‘it’s just so good’ but they don’t know that in a few years it can take their life and possibly lead to obesity.

I also find it wrong how meat is being cloned, and we aren’t being informed. Luckily, a law has recently made it possible for us to tell which ones are cloned and organic. But at the same time, cloned meat is unhealthy and can lead to cancer. I’m worried that one day organic meat will be too expensive and the cloned meat will be cheap. That would mean that our community would either eat cloned meat and be unhealthy or be vegetarians since we can’t afford real meat. It is very unfortunate that we aren’t able to get the healthiest foods, but we can fix that by eating home cooked meals that contain vegetables and all the nutrients we need without the excess unhealthy products. I want people to watch what they eat because it can lead to serious health problems and that can effect our communities a lot. I just hope that people will eat healthier and think about their future.

All my life I’ve wanted to go to college and graduate, get a good job and be successful. In 8th grade, a couple of students from the local high school pointed out that going to community college for two years and transferring to a university is the best and less costly path to take. It was in that moment that I decided to go to a community college and transfer to a university. Just recently, I discovered that the public university system is making it hard for low income people to transfer to a university, such as a UC or CSU. How are people who want to go to a university, but can’t pay for it, going to broaden their horizons or make strides towards the career that they are interested in?

Only 40 percent of California community college students actually transfer. Many people enroll but don’t go through with showing up and actually taking the classes. But the people who do apply to transfer must go through so much, and now that the state is making such huge budget cuts, they must go through even more.

I just don’t think this is fair. Some people who come from very little, who never got what they wanted for Christmas, who are used to hearing their mom say, “We don’t have enough money this year,” who are barely scraping by to get food or pay for rent, depend on a higher education. Some know how their life is going to turn out and want to change their destiny by going to school, getting a good job, and hoping to not make their children (if they have any) hear the same words they heard.

I think university should be more accessible for even the poorest students in California. Why is our country spending more money on sending troops to Afghanistan when they know we need it for the schools and for the youth of America to get the education they need?

When my mom was pregnant, my biological father left me; so my mom became a single mother.  She basically had to take care of my older brother and me. My mother had to support both of us by herself because our dad wasn’t there to help.  I know it was hard for her because there were days when we had nothing to eat. When I was about one year old, a new man stepped into my life. The truth is he really is my step dad. He has been with us since then. From my point of view, that’s what I call a real dad. Never once to his face have I called him step dad. I think it was hard for his family to accept the fact that he was taking care of two kids who didn’t have his blood. But I didn’t let that get to me. 

Now that I’m fifteen years old my parents gave me a Quinceanera. Everything was going fine until suddenly my biological dad decided to pop into my life.  That got me really angry because he was never in my life, so why would he care now? I already have a family and I don’t even know what he looks like.  I never want to know either. I don’t need a man in my life that can’t even support his daughter and forgot about me for fifteen years. My mom and step dad gave me everything I needed. There is nothing I wish I had.

My biological dad wanted me to go meet him. I was laughing so hard when my mom told me. Then my uncle, whom I had never met before, also tried to step into my life. He is my biological dad’s brother. I think they are out their minds if they really thought I was going to go with them. They are the dumbest guys on earth!! My mom invited my uncle to the Quinceanera and he came. He had the nerve to give me a card that my biological dad had sent. And I guess it only had two hundred dollars in it and he thought that it was going to make me happy. Well I didn’t let that get to me. But to tell you the truth, while my uncle was there all I felt was hatred towards him.

I don’t even know how to explain it, but I have a lot of anger towards my biological dad. The saddest part is sometimes I let all that anger out to the people that care about me. I try my best to change, but I can’t. I just wish I didn’t have his blood going through my veins. I’m going to show him that I’m going to be someone in life. Well, let’s just pray to God I don’t bump into him because it’s not going to be pretty.

A student who goes to Tennyson High School in Hayward, California was recently told that they’re going to close down their high school. Where will the students go? They’re closing down so many schools and then they complain about how they can’t fit most kids in the right classes. The kids aren’t getting the right education. They’re getting packed in classes, and lack the attention they need from their teachers. And if they close down Tennyson High, it’s not going to get any better.

If I was forced to move to a different school, I would be mad. I wouldn’t get the education I need, and that affects me. Not the school board. It’s not just one person, it’s many. As the saying goes “we look to the next generation, because they are our future.” That’s hard to believe because they’re taking the resources we need to become “the future.” It seems like all they talk about is the schools and budget cuts. I understand the schools must cut down on the money they’re spending, and it’s hard. There’s no easy way to cut and still provide ALL the essential things kids need. But at least you still have the power to prevent cramming, provide learning skills that work, and stop laying off so many teachers.
 
Another problem is the no summer school policy. How can kids make up or have a chance to pass the class they failed in? And even if they offer classes at Chabot College in the summer, what if their family is cutting back or doesn’t have the money to pay for it? That student doesn’t have the option to get it right the second time. Yeah, they can take a given class during the school year, but they might not take all the classes they need to earn enough credits to graduate. That’s a huge issue. How about setting up a system similar to summer school but pay the teachers less and have volunteers to help? There are steps that could improve this situation we’re in now.
 
But until then, sincerely
Tina Gerardo