Organic Foods Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Organic Foods - Research Paper Example An entire industry dedicated to promoting organic food has established itself in recent years. So why the sudden attention towards organic food? What exactly is it about organic food that makes it popular? The answer is probably a simple one: organic food is very nutritious, chemical-free and provides a way of taking back your diet from the big agricultural companies that have come to dictate our diets to us and in some ways our whole lives. It is also a way of empowering people to make healthy choices about their bodies and the world around them. These products are worth the extra cost and are healthier than the alternative. As the middle class expanded more and more throughout the 1980s, people got richer and more affluent. They became more educated and the had more money in their pockets to spend as they saw fit. The result was that they wanted more choice. In the past people used to simply buy what was available to them in the supermarket, now however with more time and more education they have asked for more choice and more control over the products that they want to buy—in particular when it comes to something as important as food, what everyone needs to live and what can affect our health so profoundly. Instead of simply buying what the supermarket has on sale, consumers these days will read the labelling, look at nutritional information, and perhaps even perform research about food companies. There is a real impulse to buy ethical products, products that are environmentally friendly, and products that don’t harm the world around us. A newspaper reporter named Mark Bittman recently w rote in the New York Times: There’s plenty of evidence that both a person’s health — as well as the environment’s — will improve with a simple shift in eating habits away from animal products and highly processed foods to plant products and what might be called â€Å"real

Improving Leadership Skills and Academic Performance Assignment

Improving Leadership Skills and Academic Performance - Assignment Example Whilst I have always been extroverted in social and professional situations, prior to this study program, my over-confidence in my capabilities and knowledge complicated being a solid team member when working in groups. For instance, I had previously desired to work independently in most situations, both academic and professional, with minor levels of resentment and animosity when forced to work in team environments. It was not an inherent part of my personality in which I believed that team members were not capable, only that trust in my own talents and ability to organize made it difficult for me to build group inter-dependency and rely on others achieving team goals. Hence, I have come to learn that an effective leader is one that gives others opportunities to excel and make positive contributions to a group. Stover (2004) discusses the concept of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge, in which individuals that maintain a specialized set of talents (tacit knowledge) must convert this knowledge to teach others. Interaction with others, according to Stover, is absolutely necessary for effective knowledge conversion to be achieved. However, as aforementioned, my personal resistance to participative teamwork challenged gaining followership from others as an effective leader. My current study program has given me ample opportunities to work with others and I have made a very competent effort at reducing the internal conflicts that arise when forced to work in groups where all members have a distinct task. Some of these attitudes and resistance to teamwork ideology is likely a product of my cultural background in the Middle East. In my home country, it is common that professional members of an organization, in politics and even general society to maintain high power distance, defined by Hofstede (2001) as a type of inequality where hierarchies are dominant business, social and political structures.