Area(s) of science that you are interested in and/or techniques you would like to learn as a STAR participant. My main biological interests are nutrition, and the safety and quality of foods. I’m mostly interested in diabetes/obesity, and infection/inflammation, but I also have some interest in neurology. Working with the Oral Biology program will help me gain a better understanding of the full process of food intake. I would like to learn how certain foods and illnesses can effect digestion within the mouth. I’m also interested in working in the Physiology Department because it would allow me to see how a subject's diet can have substantial effects throughout the body in regards to the health and efficiency of their organs. I'm interested …show more content…
I have pleasant memories of meals that contained flavorful and thoughtfully prepared dishes. My grandmother, the main cook during my childhood, would tell me from time to time, “You are what you eat,” as she served foods that were always diverse and nutritious. I didn’t fully understand just how true that saying was until my first semester of college when I enrolled in Nutritional Anthropology. This class didn’t only challenge me, but it also sparked my interest in understanding what we are constructing our bodies with, and the effects of it. Nutritional Anthropology didn’t only cover the societal effects that came with growing, collecting, preparing, and consuming foods, but also the physical effects that certain diets had on groups of people. I began to see that eating was not just a simple act to fight off hunger pangs, but a necessity that shaped the health and history of humans. A lack of nutritional knowledge, or access to a varied and robust diet led to numerous accounts of malnutrition, abnormalities, and death. These negative outcomes from poor diets are commonly associated with early times before the industrialization of food production, however, they can still be seen in communities throughout the