Blog Post #6

During winter break, I participated in a global health seminar in Thailand where I was introduced to the social determinants of health. In this blog post, I would like to share my observations that support the following statement from the assignment: From any 'eating / food event,' closely read, we should be able to infer just about anything about a society / culture.

The learning outcome of my study abroad experience was to make us become aware of the complex network that contributes to our level of health. During one of our assignments, our professors sent us on a scavenger hunt to look to identify how a social determinant contributes to the overall health of the community. My group and I visited a local school to see what kind of food was available to the students. We noticed that the food was not coming from a franchised restaurant chain, instead, it was coming from locals who believe it or not, use locally grown and unprocessed ingredients to cook the food they sold. Another observation was that there was not a lot of fast food vendors surrounding the school.

When we returned to the United States, our professors asked us to use the same social determinant of health and compare it to what we saw in Thailand. One drastic comparison was the availability of processed food on campus. Although there is an abundance of food available, the majority tends to be highly processed. Its no wonder why we have the freshmen 15! It's not that students choose to eat unhealthy, it more than they are placed in an environment that lacks alternative choice.