Food of the Yen Family

The average cost of food in my household is about $150 per week for 5 people. We are able to keep costs fairly low because our family owns a restaurant so we can get food at wholesale prices. The breakdown of what we buy is about 13% dairy and eggs, 15% starchy foods, 26% fruits and vegetables, 27% proteins, and 19% snacks and side dishes. As an Asian family, we always have some rice in the rice cooker. We will go through about 4 pounds of rice a week.

My family lives a fairly fast-paced life. Breakfast is always quick, we rarely eat lunch together, but we will always eat dinner together. Breakfast usually consists of just a few pieces of toast or waffles and tea before we rush off to work and school. My parents usually bring left-overs from dinner for their lunch while I usually eat at the Dining Commons. My grandma cooks dinner which usually consists of tofu, some kind of leafy greens, protein, and a soup. We also love to snack between meals.

I am constantly eating. Breakfast, snack at nosh, lunch, snack after school, dinner, and snack before bed (probably not the best thing for me). Lunch is usually my largest meal. Snacks include peanut butter sandwiches, cookies, celery, dried seaweed, cereal, and fruit.

Most of the processed foods we have at home are either snacks or canned side dishes such as pickled bamboo shoots, bean curd paste, and pickled radish.

We seldom dine out, but when we do it is usually at a diner or at my family’s restaurant. It’s nice to have your own restaurant since you can ask the chefs to make whatever you want, and a dish which may cost $20 at another restaurant you can get for about $5 (since you are only paying for the cost of the food). At first it might seem like a great thing, but when you become the taste tester of every dish on the menu, you get tired of it.

Food of the Philippians: The Cabaña Family

               The story of who we are and where we are from can easily be told by using what we eat. As saying goes, you are what you eat.

               The first thing you notice when looking at solely the cost of the food, is that the Cabaña family spent the most money on meat, fish, and eggs while spending equal amounts on grains, other starchy foods, fruits, vegetable, and nuts. Now if you look by volume, the Cabaña family bought the bulk of their food in the categories of “grain and other starchy foods” and “fruits, vegetables, and nuts” (about 40lbs of each category.). From this you can deduce that they live in a location where these items are easily found which is true. The Philippians are a chain of Pacific islands in South East Asia with a tropical climate, which also explains why they eat so much fish (about 9lbs of it).

               Most of the foods on the list are items that still need preparation, showing that most of the food this family eats, they eat at home. There is barely any fast food on the list, but there are several drinks. Something interesting is the fact that there is only tap water from 2 to 6am. This suggests that they either cook with very little water or have to collect it in the morning.  Overall, the Cabaña family seems like a very healthy family, eating mostly grains and vegetables. 

Alien takeover of Rutgers Prep

Finally, we found another form of “intelligent” beings. They’re located on a tiny blue marble they call Earth. Following protocol, we landed on their schools, disguised ourselves as the subjects, and explored their lifestyle through food.

               These organisms are complete slobs. Serving sizes are huge and the quality is bad. We have never seen anyone eat that much food before. Some of the subjects just at plate after plate like an endless garbage pit.

  We don’t even know why they eat so much. The food is bland and sometimes we didn’t even know what it was. More often than not there is some sort of ground mystery meat which they call “tacos” or “chili”. These primitive organisms have yet to evolve into more sophisticated beings. We don’t understand how anything could like this kind of stuff. It’s oily, non-nutritious, and just doesn’t taste good. It is amazing that these students aren’t a bunch of walking balloons.

Something else we observed was this strange phenomenon at the sandwich maker. The students were receiving these golden tickets when they made their sandwiches, but not every student would get one. We believe that this might be an incentive to become healthier, but we are not completely sure yet. We will continue to observe until we find the use of these golden tickets.

From eating their lunch we determined that these organisms are extremely unhealthy, likely to die off in just a few hundred thousand years making it much easier for us to colonize the planet. Chances of successful planetary takeover are high.