By Brandall Bernal, Katherine Roldan, Olanny Medina, Yejin Jang
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| Ashley Carter puts final touches on her group's third floor bulletin board |
McDonald's feeds more than 46 million people a day - more than the entire population of Spain. The lunchroom audience didn’t realize the harm that fast food restaurants do to the young people in our country, but our most recent audience did. In the library speak outs, during the week of January 9th, classes came and really listened to what we had to say. These speak outs were a success because we had the chance to educate and enlighten younger kids about what they were consuming and why it was bad. Most of them looked like they were into the speak-outs, so we believe they really got many things out of it.
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| From left, Christopher Hernandez, Muhammad Mahmood, Rueben Pena and Anthony Shiwmangal present before an invited class in the library. Forty grams of sugar in a can of soda is the equivalent of at least 10 teaspoons of sugar; in a 16 oz soda, that's 12 1/2 teaspoons. Would even the high sugar coffee crowd stop long enough to scoop ten teaspoons of sugar into their cup? We instantly open a can of the syrup we crave! |
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| Rangel Guzman raps to lyrics by Masoom (see "Health is Weatlth" below) as part of his group's Against Fast Food presentation in the school library. |
Health is Wealth
(a rap by Masoom Rahim)
Here to show and say words about heart disease.
You think eating cheeseburger is healthy? Please!
Choosing to eat fast food may seem very simple,
Looking at your face, dirty oils are bringing pimple.
It’s possible you can be placed in your death bed,
From eating unhealthy is why you’re dead.
Try eating vegetables, exercising more often,
Or Heart disease will lead you to the coffin.
Every 25 seconds an American will have a coronary event,
A lot of people dead, relatives lament.
Prevent everyone you love from doing the wrong thing.
Coronary heart disease is number one on the list,
McDonalds and Burger King should be stopped, I insist.
Don’t let your house be the captivity,
Americans are at risk due to inactivity.
Obesity is another factor to the equation,
Meat should be consumed only on occasions.
You don’t want to look like the man above.
Taking hits to the chest with boxing gloves.
Live as long as you can offer yourself.
I sure wouldn’t want to be on the no longer living shelf.
Tell smokers to stop or there will be no happy ending.
We students of DeWitt Clinton are here to sing,
To be heard everywhere, make a buzz like a ring.
Decreasing heart disease is the fight we’re trying to bring.
The most exciting part of the speak-out was the rap because it got students more interested and open to hear what we had to say. Our hard work paid off because educating 20 people is way better than speaking to hundreds in the lunchroom but not being heard.
Although we did not get a big audience, those who did watch our presentations were intrigued by the information given. For instance, one student asked for a healthy plant based diet menu immediately after the presentation. How can we get more students to stop and seek more information?
Throughout our Witt Seminar work, our peers learned how to inform other students with facts about our diets and provide information from reliable sources. We also gained a great sense of accomplishment throughout the project due to the fact that we had to cooperate with each other to receive greater feedback. There were many pros and cons within the work, and some of the outcomes did not fully accomplish our goals. However, it is important to acknowledge the fact that this is only the beginning of the journey and we have embarked.
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| Students leaving the library will see these posters by Carishma Budhu (above) and Jesse Orellana |
