Whenever I mention that one of my favorite foods is salad, most people usually tell me that it is a pretty boring choice. Although I love a good slice of pizza, salad has always been one of my favorite healthy snacks. My love for salad can be explained by several social factors. My first dinner at Penn was what inspired me to consider vegetarianism. I knew that eating in college was going to be hard since I was so used to eating home cooked meals. When I had my first bite of meat in the dining hall, I knew that I was going to have trouble adjusting to the food choices at Penn. The only meats I enjoyed prior to moving into college were chicken and fish. Although there are some chicken and fish options in the dining halls, they did not …show more content…
It was convenient for my mother to pack me salads for lunch, and there was a wide variety of salads in the school cafeterias. Salads at school were cheap, fresh, and versatile. I enjoyed having a new combination of vegetables and dressing in my salad each day. It was during Lent when I realized that it is hard for me to get sick of salad. There are hundreds of salad dressings, and each of them give the food a unique taste. The versatility, accessibility, and convenience of salad allowed me to begin my journey to vegetarianism every year during …show more content…
This is where the sociological imagination comes into play. From the sociological perspective, a vegetarian diet or love for salad might be explained by one being opposed to factory farms. Factory farms are plantations where cows, chickens, turkeys, and pigs are locked in tiny cages, starved, and injected with growth hormones so the farmers can have more meat to sell (Calderone). These growth hormones can have negative effects on our health, and they have often been linked to various types of cancer (Factory Farming). Not only are factory farms incredibly cruel, but they are also unsanitary. Animals are forced to live in crowded, dirty cages. The failure of the farmers to clean animal waste can transfer a lot of bacteria to the meat that they sell, and this can lead to a lot of health problems for the consumer. In order to avoid supporting cruel and unhealthy practices like these, many members of our society choose to become