It's possible that it's just the result of a different place in America. After all, Brian's still the youngest person he knows at Nike, and he works with a lot more men than women, and not a one of them who have wives or long-term girlfriends (upwards of 5 years) have wives who make anything for them. In fact, some of ones who are most envious of his packed lunches are the older men, who are in their 40s, who wish that their wives did things like that for them. And again, location is probably a larger factor than anything. After all, my friend Staci is our age, and has been married for six months now...and she's one of the most newly married of her friend group in Kansas. Doing domestic things, or being part of a newly married family is considered very normal and ordinary for our age group. And in places like here, it's a lot more common for people to have "girlfriends" of 5+ years, or "committed partner" of 10+ years, without being married in a formal ceremony. I'm still shockingly the most "domestic" of the female partners, though I'm quite possibly the most dedicated feminist. XD That's how I roll.

Yeah, it's definitely a product of a different mentality. But, then again, there is incredible social pressure in Asian cultures for women to be VERY thin. So, even with the traditional background in creating space/color/contrast/etc, it's very likely that a motivation is to make it look like LESS food, a desirable trait for a constantly dieting woman. I've seen the new pyramid. I think that it's a better step in the right direction, as opposed to the older model, but I still think that it is far too heavily influenced by industries such as dairy production, and grain production. After all, it basically says that you NEED to eat pasta/rice/bread on a daily basis. They often use the argument of carbohydrates as fuel for the body, but the reality is (as anyone who ever went on that one No Carbs diet knows) that most food has carbohydrates in it. Food that isn't made of grain. *shrug* So, in my opinion, until the Food Pyramid starts grouping by nutrients, rather than categories like Fruit/Vegetable/Meat&Bean/Milk, it will never be a really honest evaluation of food.

I definitely think that it's a good idea to rewear clothes that are only worn for a few hours at a time. But, it's also important to take note how the clothes are washed--not only in terms of the soap, but also the type of load that is being run, and water temperature. Many offer the differences between "small, medium, large." My first encouragement is to always check to make sure the right setting applies, but to also find out if your washing machine overestimates. Many of our large loads can be washed using the Medium water level setting, rather than the large setting. That saves gallons of water every year, because it's simply not using as much water per volume of clothing. It's always important to make sure you understand the machines! =D

Raw Foods veganism isn't quite the same as just "veganism" or "vegitarianism" which are often based on more of an emotional/spiritual belief against eating meat. Raw Foods, in general, is usually based a lot more on nutrition. You first have to understand how fat works in our bodies, and how it's processed, particularly with a different sort of diet than, say, French Fries or cheese or such, in order to truly understand how much of nut-related fat really is harmful. Yes, many people misunderstand nuts/cheese in terms of an alternative protein. Many do not do research into the issue, but attempt to just entirely cut out meat/eggs/etc. Even more significantly, you get the problem of people who do partial veganism or partial vegetarianism, who don't understand what they should and shouldn't do when they're not converting fully. Many people end up with an iron deficiency when they go off meat, because they haven't really looked at all the nutritional data of what they should eat in a day (that isn't based off the fascist food pyramid the government uses), and then what will be missing if they cut out certain foods, and what can be used in place of those. And the plate trick is something that is a Western issue. We've been conditioned to think large portions are better. In Eastern cultures, particularly in Japan, the art of using a large plate to create a presentation for a small dish is a FREQUENT occurance. In fact, the practice of using many dishes, to create a separation of the food, and therefore a greater variance of color and texture is a lot more important to their presentation than piling it closely on a single plate to create the illusion of "more food." For us, more important that trying to trick our brains into thinking we're eating more food, is to try and break the conditioning that Food Should Be All Over The Plate.

Yeah, it's strange. His coworkers have accepted that he's a guy who brings lunch to work just about every single day--more than the bento aspect with it's cute things or interesting food though, many of them are far more fixated on the fact that His Girlfriend Makes Him Lunch. Apparently, this is a great source of envy amongst his male coworkers.