People from wealthier countries are often predisposed to having larger diets or increased access to different food items. For this reason, consumerism is much higher in post-developmental nations as opposed to developing ones. It's important to manage the usage of resources with respect to the number of people those resources are intended to feed.

Researching the differences between the expiration dates allows me to make better decisions because I waste far less food instead of just throwing something out if the date has passed. I especially researched the meaning of these dates for different types of food, because some expirations can impact your health or make you ill while others only impact the taste. For those that affect taste, I've found that the taste is not even bad after the expiration date, like with orange juice. I've also shared my research with my roommates when we do our fridge clean-outs and it has significantly reduced our overall food waste as well as our grocery costs.

I recently made a stew in which I incorporated a few cups of chopped walnuts, and 2 bags of previously frozen vegetable mixes. I did this so that I could use less meat in the stew but still have similar caloric and nutritional value!

I researched some barriers to women's success in STEM in particular since that is the field I am in and that's where I've personally seen the most disparities. A lot of the barriers center around the stereotypical view that women should be homemakers and must take care of the family instead of working. One male doctor even recently said that the pay gap between female and male physicians is justified because women are more likely to have to leave work early to pick up the kids or be distracted by their work because they're worried about the kids. These blunt generalizations that result in discriminatory acts like those that affect the pay gap keep women from being able to pursue higher professions since they're not even earning as much to pay back all of their debt and they have to consider more setbacks to their career than men do.

I would rather use this money to contribute to local farms that practice sustainable practices, whether that be raising animals ethically or growing fruits and vegetables in a sustainable manner. Moreover, I would use those extra dollars to buy plant based alternatives that I normally would not buy because of the financial barrier and instead invest into what I am putting in my body.

I really appreciate how UCLA is providing students with free public transport next school year. It enables me to not choose an Uber and consider using the Metro system to get to different places. I used the FAC pilot transit pass last quarter to navigate LA and I am pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to go to different parts of LA. Even UCLA provides free bus services that pick me up from my dorm and take me to the mall or the beach. I want to continue using public transit everywhere at my time in UCLA.

Being stuck at home these last couple of weeks, I've found myself cooking a little bit more than usual. While I've been challenging myself to reduce as much food waste as possible whenever I cooked this whole quarter, I've not been cooking frequently enough to have needed to be more innovative than just getting more convenient fruits/veggies/foods that I can use entirely already. Cooking more recently has required me to look up more recipes to try new things because I am unfortunately still a novice in the kitchen. I recently made some food with a bunch of vegetables, and was left with a lot of peels, and I was going to compost them when I decided to look up whether I can use my leftover garlic, onion, and potato peels. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that you can use them in soups and vegetable stocks! Honestly, reading that made me feel a bit stupid because that felt like such an obvious thing to do that I felt like I should have known that earlier or even thought to look up how to use that 'trash' earlier, but I was glad to learn that when I did! It just so happened that my boyfriend was feeling a bit under the weather the day before and I was planning to make soup for him, so that worked out so well! I saved those peels for when I made soup later that night, and it was great! I got to learn something new that I'll definitely use again in the future, and I got more use out of my food and reduced a little more of my food waste! In the process of learning that, I also found out that you can use slightly sour milk (not spoiled/rancid milk!! no no NO!!) for recipes that involve baking or frying (and also for some soups!), mango seeds and peels for syrups and jams, fruit that's starting to go bad for fruit leather snacks, banana peels for teas, and eggshells and avocado pits for smoothies! I was definitely skeptical at first and found those unusual as I am so conditioned to see seeds and peels and spoiling food as waste, but if so many sources are telling me that these can help me reduce waste and add some nutrition and/or flavor to my foods, why not! I'll definitely try these out at some point.