So, we’ve just started our health and career unit. This means we’ll be learning about a few different subcategories of health and career, one of which includes healthy eating.

Now, healthy eating isn’t exactly a new topic of discussion for health and career– I remember being taught the food pyramid year after year in elementary school, along with having to categorize foods into the four food groups, and being told that popcorn is not generally considered a vegetable. This year, however, we did an assignment that I haven’t done in health and career, or any class, before: we had to make self-portraits out of food.

Well, we had to digitally edit self portraits out of pictures of food, but close enough.

Here’s what my portrait looks like:

Now, when I found out about this assignment, I initially wanted to create a self portrait entirely out of potatoes. Potatoes are my favourite food, and can be prepared in a variety of ways, plus they come in the shades I would need for my skin, lips, eyes and hair, so they seemed like a good choice for the project. However, I decided that there were some other foods that should be included in a food-self-portrait of me, so I scrapped the all-spuds idea and got to work.

I chose coffee beans for my hair and eyebrows, because they’re about the right colour, and because I owe coffee most of my ability to be a functional human being and not a total zombie. I also decided that my hair and eyebrows would be a good thing to make out of coffee because they make up a large portion of the picture, and I drink coffee every day.

I made my skin out of mashed potatoes, because I felt I should still honour my potato idea, and made my lips out of ketchup chips for the same reason.

My shirt I decided to make from Caesar salad, because I really like Caesar salad, and because I felt I should add in some kind of healthy food.

That covers most of the major parts of the portrait, but I also included milk (eyes), cookies (irises), black licorice (eyelashes) and blackberries (overalls/lining on shirt). Beyond being foods that I enjoy, most of these foods are things that I eat fairly regularly, and can remember having since childhood.

While I had some foods that I wish I could have worked into the portrait– pizza, avocados and mangos, to name a few –I thought it turned out pretty well and only mildly hideous.

Well, toodles!