I have two different directions which I am interested in.
- Relationship
I very care about my relationship with family, friends and my partner. From there, I think it is important how to maintain a relationship and get well along with them. It is impossible to be done without any affords, like tolerance, understanding and considerating. The way to keep maintaining a relationship is sharing, interacting and advising. In my mindmap, I took an initiative to ask my friends around me about their impression on me, especially friends who know me up to 10 years or friends who get together every day. They told me more about my strengths and virtues in which I didn’t really realize them.
In the process of chatting with my friends, there are definitely some discussions and exchanging opinion with them. One of the chatting experiences is a group chatting in 4 people, so they started to discuss on me ( I am the discussion topic.). They gave their own definition and made some examples (what I have done in the previous) and made comparisons (themselves). To be honest, I like the process and the moment of taking an initiative to start a topic in order to evoke people to think, build up their mindset, and also bring out discussion.
2. Food
I like to eat. (a typical foodie :D). However, I will have certain cravings when I was stress or having negative emotion. This is explained by a term called “comfort food”.
Comfort food is food which provides a nostalgic or sentimental feeling to the consumer, and is often characterized by a high carbohydrate level and simple preparation. The nostalgia may be specific to either the individual or a specific culture.
The term comfort food has been traced back at least to 1966, when the Palm Beach Post used it in a story: “Adults, when under severe emotional stress, turn to what could be called ‘comfort food’—food associated with the security of childhood, like mother’s poached egg or famous chicken soup.”
- – extract from Wikipedia
So I started to categorize my comfort food.
(a) high carbohydrate and high calories food. For example, ice-cream, chocolate, cake, pizza etc. These foods are unhealthy and also the foods that banned by my mother when I was a kid. To be honest, pizza is definitely my comfort food because it is a rewarding for encouraging me to study hard when I was a kid. Also, it has the comforting as psychological effect now when I was feeling bad even though I agree that it is very unhealthy.
(b) As I am away from home now, I have no choice to eat food that having MSG. ( I am very sick of those foods 
). I started missing my mother’s home cooked dishes which is definitely healthier even though they are just simple dishes but it is the most delicious food. So I have tried to cook some simple dishes and eat healthy recently.
From there, I think that I am greatly influenced by my parents on my dietary habit. I recalled the food I liked and the food I disliked. To be honest, when I was a child, I really hate to eat for some reasons, I think this is affected by my parents in the way of encouraging me to eat. What does it mean? As I was chatting with my friend, she is a mother with 2 kids, she mentioned that she will never force her kids to eat when they decided not to eat anymore. Even when her kids are fussy in eating, she will keep changing the form or cooking style of the vegetables, trying many times to get kids to accept it.
From there, I researched more on parental influences on children’s preference. In the fact, infants have innate preferences towards certain taste. Infants prefer sweet-tasting foods and reject bitter foods such as certain vegetables. This reflects an evolutionary response that was historically useful because the sweet taste signalled sources of energy (calories) while bitter tastes signalled foods that might be toxic.
As children grow up, they may refuse foods and become picky about certain foods. A reluctance to try new foods is called neophobia. When parents meet this problem, some of them will restriction on their children’s diets or even pressure them to eat vegetable or fruits. Undeniably, these two methods often have the opposite effect. Also, rewarding with a highly palatable food can defeat the purpose of rewarding and does not allow children to develop intrinsic motivation for healthy eating. A more suitable method is to set a good example to offer a model of healthy eating behaviours. Most importantly, parents should expose their children to a wide variety of foods starting at an early age.
If I decide to do this topic, maybe I can do an interactive book for parents to educate children in an indirect way by showing foods visually and attractively. The aim of the project is to expose their children to the foods through 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch – if possible, in order to etch in their minds. The overall graphic language will be looked at the perspective of children (colour, form, texture).
References: Parental influence on children’s food preferences and energy intake
These are what I have in my mind so far. To be honest, I still haven’t had any idea of how to make my dictionary project to be more fun and “wow”.
