Monday, September 25, 2006

ConAgra: We are what we eat

“Some people work for food and some people eat for work”. No matter which type of person you are, food is a very important part of our lives. Since the living standard of the people is improving, people eat more than before. Although medical cares in a lot of countries are in advance, problems such as obesity and heart disease are increasing rapidly because of the fast food industry and the junk food that is sold in the market. Also, a lot of people in the US are lack of exercises. People that have a problem of obesity become younger and younger. Therefore, the problem becomes very serious. Nevertheless, the public is lack of the information about how to make choices. Where can they go? People might try to buy books, and give advices from their doctors, other professional people or other sources. Most of the people will choose to get information is from the internet nowadays, since it is so convenience.

People now concern more and more about their health and that is the reason why some food companies try to provide healthy food to the public. Among those companies, ConAgra is one of the most favorable food companies in America. Their web site gives the audience a lot of ways and methods to live in a healthy life style. The site is extending and more and more tips and techniques are put on to the website in order to provide a very high quality site where people can get the best and latest information. They achieved the outstanding website development award by the webaward in 2006. Although the website is very effective and informative, there is something need to be improved.

Although the ConAgra web site is the Nominee and Winner of webaward, it can not amplify the quality of the web site because the judging criterion is not inclusive. Therefore, I will use the judging criteria of webby award to show you how incredible this web site is.The content of the website is really good. They have a slogan which is “Eat well*Live well* Choose well” which is the wishes of all people, especially for the Americans since many of the people in this country are overweight. Their goal is to convince you to choose the best to eat and help you become healthy. The information provided by the web gives people many ways to live in a healthy style.


The web site is
well developed since you can get all the things you need to achieve the goal. The information is very easy to be accessed by the people, and it is very useful. There is very important part of the web is that the design of the web shows consideration for the users. The navigation of the web site is excellent. You can easily find out what you want to know and there is many other information or data that not only can help you to understand what food is good for you but the concept of the health life style also.

The visual design of the web has a very high quality. The appearance of each of the page has related to the audience. It supports the message of the web since you can experience the model of living healthy from the flash, pictures, charts or diagrams.

The site works very well. It loads quickly from one page to another. It has live links, and a search engine that is functional and significant for the audience. In order to show their sources can be trusted, all the tips and information are provided by experts or professionals. There are information such as the amount of exercises that we should do and the nutrition fact and the food pyramid. They tell the audience what they should consume and what they should choose.

The site of ConAgra allows you to purchase their products online. They have commercials and promotions that persuade the audience to buy their products. It has a lot of other functions such as showing people different kinds of healthy food recipes, providing tools that can help you and your family to live in good physical shape, telling you the latest information of their company and event that you can join. Also, there are an IQ quiz that help the children to recognize the importance of eat healthy and choose food wisely. They have a career section that hire people if someone is interest in joining to this company. The web site is not only for a specific group of people or a specific time, but from kids to adults, and from breakfast to dinner.

Some part of the website is not that ideal which can be enhanced or develop in the future. This company only provides food products but no drinks for their customers. However, the high sugar drinks, alcohol and other soft drinks are one of the factors that course the problems. Therefore, I think that even they do not sell drinks; they should introduce some healthy drink in their recipes in order to make the site more perfect. Although the website is very instructive, there are too many texts. There is lack of the use of sound effects, music or other things to simulate the audiences. Also, may be for the reason that this web site is mostly aim for the Native Americans and other people who understand English, there is no translation of other language. Therefore, I think this website should provide other versions in order to make it become an international web site.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Investigate the issues of child labor and disease spreading


In this blog, I have introduced some of the issue that affects us and other people around the world such as the course of disease spreading and the problem of child labor. These two issues become more and more considerable. I have found a few blogs that also discuss these issues. One of them is called Alarming News. It stated that a lot of chocolate companies use child labor to plant and harvest the cocoa beans for them. Those children want to study, read and play, but they have to work at young age. Those companies are definitely violating the humanities of those children. In the second blog and it is called Tiny hands by Peter Lavina. In one of the posts, it said that the children have to work because they are so poor and they even can not effort their basic needs. He stated that there are six worst forms of child labor, and millions of child victims are suffering in those environments Those children can not choose their jobs; some of them work in factories, some of them work in farm and some of them work in rubbish.
In another blog which is called Spreading of Flu. I found that the viewpoint of this blog fit my agrument. Global travel and trading goods are the main factors of spreading disease.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Child Labor

Globalization always provides advantages to the world, especially to the third world countries. More jobs opportunities to improve the living standard of the undeveloped and developing countries. However, at the same time, there are a lot of troubles that are not expected by the people appear. Child Labor is one of the serious problems that is happening in the developing countries.
Today, all the advance countries will provide a very well education environment to children, because they understand that children are the future of a country. Therefore, the adults have to keep their children growing in a healthy and high educational environment. Children would be able to contribute to the nation when they grow up. For example, in America, the children are always the first priority to be protected under law. Children are encouraged to study and learn at any time. Unfortunately, the cases in the developing countries are totally different.
Lacking of education and knowledge cause the serious problem of child labor, the adults do not understand that the children are not born for work, but to build up the countries in the future. So, they are just trying to make the living conditions better right now instead of taking a long-term investment. Since the people in the developing countries are very poor, health care are not provided to them. They have no ideas of family plan, so it means they do not have birth-control policy. At the same time, they are having a wrong idea of giving births as well. They think that more children are born, and then they will have more labor force. The adults always have the children to work at the time they should be study and learn.
Even though their birth rate is very high, the death rate is very high as well; the government does not have enough budgets to provide an adequate facilities and health to the women, so it makes their population pyramid very unbalance. Since too many youth cannot survive for a long time, so they keep on giving birth in order to keep up the labor force size. When more children are working the society, more problems will be appeared too. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has predicted that there are 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen working in the developing countries.Those uneducated children will have a very high possibility to get involve into violence no matter at home and work places. Also, they will commit crime easily since they do not go to school.
On the other hand, the employers might make use of the children by paying them very low, and have them to do those dangerous jobs as well, because children do not know how to refuse to do those jobs that they are not capable to do. Under this situation, children will get hurt easily, and human right is definitely being violated.
We can not slove this problem on our own, but there are a lot of organizations working on the problem and can give us a lot of information about Child Labor such as the Child Labor Coalition(CLC) and Human Rights Watch. And as more people concern on the issue and support those organizations, the problem can be solved in the future.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Factors cause diseases spreading

The living standard of the world is improving tremendously, and at the same time, it creates crisis and problems. Have you ever realized that these problems will gradually emerge to worsen our lives as our world continues to develop? One of these problems is the spread of diseases. It is an important issue since it has a huge impact on people’s lives. Although we are living in America, the wealthiest and the most high-technologies country in the world, there is still no one can escape from the consequence of the spread of disease that is caused by the rapid development. Therefore, it is very important for us to know about the causes of the spread of disease, and also the crisis for all human beings. There are three main factors that cause the disease spreading, and they are globalization, urbanization and the gap between the north and the south.
Globalization provides both advantages and disadvantages to the world. These advantages and disadvantages can never be balanced. Diseases can be spread through global travel and trading businesses. In addition, globalization of food supply and centralized food processing will help the disease spread to other countries easily. Globalization is always wanted in the business world, people attempt to expand the impact of globalization to have a better life; unfortunately, these attempts might put the health of the people in risk by devastating the environment.

Urbanization drives the cities too crowed. People want to move to the cities to strive for better job opportunities in order to improve their living standard. At the same time, they try to escape from the civil wars, famine, and other manmade and nature disasters which are always being seen in the rural area. Moreover, pollution from the industries, burning of fossil fuels, and releasing harmful chemicals will affect the health of the people who live in the cities, they will get sick easier. As more areas become urbanized, the gap between the urban area and rural area is therefore widened. More educated people would leave for the urban areas, so the rural areas will remain the same with no improvement, and always be an undeveloped area.

World Health Organization cannot avoid the spreading of disease, since there are not enough laboratories that produce antibiotics, and those countries in the southern part of the world do not have the finances and resources to develop the need technology in order to protect its people. Also, the living standards of those countries are extremely low, so diseases can spread rapidly.

The spread of diseases are caused by the careless of people who try to improve their lives, and these problems are able to do a huge damage to our world. Therefore people should keep an eye on it, and be considerate for the long-term effects. Apparently, an individual might not have a big influence on a global issue like this. However, if everyone contributes a little to the world, the problems can diminish and eventually vanish.