We’ve recently gotten into our Health and Career unit for this year and we’re coming at it with full force. We started off the unit with a little project called “What I carry with me” and I assure you that in due time, there’ll be a post for that project but for now, I’ll be explaining the second mini-project/assignment that we’ve been tasked with. This little assignment has to do with what we personally enjoy to eat and making it into a self-portrait of ourselves using only food. It’s called “You are what you eat” and it’s pretty interesting because each portrait will result in something completely different. My two drafts are completely different so I can imagine how different it would be to other people’s.

(This is the first draft. I know, not so great huh?)

The picture at the very top depicts a master level of “food portrait” and shows huge creativity as the artist paints everyone like that. I wanted to go for more of a cartoon-vibe than a realistic one because it’s more fun for me to look at it that way because all of our physical attributes are being exaggerated for the food portrait. I thought of some foods that I like to eat that could possibly fit my face but to know for sure, I took a selfie and started slapping random foods on my face to see if anything looked good. Eventually, I started piecing everything together as I prioritized one body part at a time. I didn’t have a very hard time finding foods that fit different parts of my face as it was the lord’s plans to make all foods like like different parts of a face (True fact.)

I had finally finished making my portrait of food and I must say that I’m pretty happy with it. It shows some foods on there that I really like and it perfectly fit on the picture I took of myself so that was a plus for me. I liked how my portrait sat on my actual shoulders from the picture I took so I decided to keep it so there was a contrast between “Real Lucas” and “Food Lucas.”
(Final draft)

This is my most recent draft. As you can see, there were some significant changes made since the first draft. I definitely made this portrait look much closer to how my face actually looks compared to my first draft. I even made a little tooth gap made from Tic Tacs.

WAIT

Theres more…

We also watched a few different videos on food, healthy eating, and some of the worldwide crises that deal with food. After watching the whole lot of them, there was one that stuck out for me the most which is Ellen Gustafson’s Ted Talk on world hunger and how she’s making her effort to help stop it.

This video definitely got to me the most. She started off on being hangry which instantly related me to her story and talked about how she wanted to do something about it. She was in this program that fed kids before school which would take away the hangry vibe that some of them might be having so they would be ready and willing to learn. She and a colleague realized they could raise money doing this and selling their “Feed Bags” but they were rejected by the UN. So instead, she went off and started her own business which has fed well over 55 million kids to this day.

I think it’s really amazing that people are out here doing things like that as the world can often times seem bleak and helpless. The fact that she’s making an effort to change this is really cool. It also got me thinking about how I could be eating and how I can help others. When I’m the position to be able to change my eating habits and be healthier by choice, I really start to think about how there are people who don’t have that chance and I really like the idea that you can help improve someone’s life just by donating food, even though there’s so much more that people can do. Saying that, I really would consider checking out the FEED Project site and help by donating. A little bit of money can go a long way.