In Professor Ristaino's VoiceThread presentation, she had a slide of the Italian food pyramid and mentioned how it is very healthy with a variety of food. And I just wanted to post this paper that was written comparing nutrition between Italy and the United States.

http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=uhp_theses

Social media has been a constant influence in our lives, whether it is about food, fashion, and many other things. Food allows us to interact with others socially and culturally. In today's society, food has become digitized with social media users posting images of food, blogging restaurant reviews, and even filming themselves eating for people to see as a job.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-holmberg/food-and-social-media-a-c_b_4898784.html

Growing up, I was always excited to go to the grocery store with my mother. She would always let me choose the pasta which was never an easy task. There was so much variety and everything looked so fun to eat. As a kid, I just saw the curly one or the bowtie one or the stringy one. However, as I continued to eat pasta and to this day, I started just buying the same type of pasta, either spaghetti or rotini. Out of comfortability and convenience, I did not think heavily about what new shape with what new sauce I should eat. I always thought, "They all probably taste the same anyway. Why are there hundreds of varying shapes of pasta?" Designer Caz Hildebrand had the same question and decided to venture on her curiosity. With the help of Chef Jacob Kenedy, she wrote a book called "The Geometry of Pasta" and set out to understand the use of the different shapes and written recipes as well.

Here is the link to their radio interview/article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129997818

and to the website of the book: http://www.geometryofpasta.com/