Wednesday, June 18, 2014

How many calories did the kids and adults intake in the concentration camps?Compare it to what kids and adults eat now in seperate paragraphs.

I cannot help but think that more detail is needed in this
question.  There are a couple of fundamental premises that need establishing here.  The
first issue is that it is really difficult to compare what passed for nutrition during
the Holocaust and the modern setting.  To a great extent, I am not even sure that the
two domains should be comparable.  I don't think that the modern definition and
configuration of diet is compatible to what victims of concentration camp endured.  The
second point is that if the question seeks to make the connection between the modern
diet and what was absorbed in the concentration camps, a fundamental difference exists. 
The modern diet, to a great extent, is something over which one has choice and control. 
Individuals can choose what to eat, and even conceding that some neighborhoods are
considered "food deserts" in that the food options there lack health consciousness, this
is not compatible with the situations in concentration camps.  People were starved and
deprived of food out of pure sadism on the part of the Nazis.  I don't think that the
modern issue of choice in foods can be related to the situations in the camps because of
this.  The final point would be that the abundance of food now and the differing
approaches to caloric intake is nowhere near the situations endured in the camps. 
Consider works like Elie Wiesel's Night when he talks about how prisoners in the camp
used to eat the snow off of one another's back.  Another moment from his work which is
poignant is when a father steals an extra loaf of bread.  His son sees it and begins to
beat his father for the extra loaf.  As he is beaten, the father weeps to his son and
says, "I stole it for you, son.  Don't you know me?"  The son beats his father to death
and then takes his bread.  While he is eating, other prisoners see the extra loaf being
eaten and they, in turn, beat the life out of the son.  Both father and son are then
placed near one another as corpses.  I am not sure how one measures the caloric intake
in such a setting.  The mere function of ascribing caloric intake values to such a
condition is pretty horrific and loses the importance of both understanding life in the
camps and the idea of measuring calories.

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