Welcome to the Thompson Library's video
tutorial on our topic concept map.
This is a really good way to start
brainstorming your topics for
any papers or projects that you
have coming up in your classes.
This is a very simple diagram,
and it might,
you may have already seen
this being called a mind map.
So typically when we start out we've
got a few different lines coming
off of it like this.
And the topic I'm going to focus
on today is vegetarianism.
We do have some downloads of this
concept map on our website on our
Research Process Guide, so
if you'd like to download it you can but
it's really simple to draw as well.
So my assignment is to write a persuasive
paragraph about a topic of my choosing.
I chose vegetarianism, so
I need to start off by coming up
with some definitions of what it is.
So we know the general one is that
there is no meat in our diets, but
I have some friends who are vegetarian but
they eat eggs and dairy.
I have another acquaintance who is a vegan
and that is absolutely no animal products.
There might also be some religious
reasons why you are vegetarian or
restrict some parts of your diet.
As I'm going along and researching and
reading I can add in other things as well.
So for example, if I'm reading along and I
realize that egg and dairy is also called
an ovo/lacto vegetarian because
they do eat those types of food.
Also I'm researching and I find out
that there are such a thing called
a fruitarian, which is a person who eats
only raw fruit, nuts, things that come
off of a tree, so it's a little bit more
restrictive of a type of vegetarianism.
So I've got a pretty good handle on
my definitions, so let's move on to
some other aspects a vegetarianism
in that I might want to talk about.
We're going to start with health.
There are a lot of different articles and
research out there that's done on
the health benefits of being a vegetarian
as well as some of the drawbacks.
So let's start with the pros.
So we know it's low fat; it can also
be low cholesterol,
depending on what type of diet you've got.
You can also be high in fiber, and
possibly high in some types
of vitamins and minerals.
How about some negative consequences.
Alright, so you can be calcium deficient
especially if you are vegan and
do not consume dairy products for example.
You might be low in iron or
possibly low in protein
depending on how you structure your diet
concerning legumes other
high iron products.
A lot of this can actually be taken
care of though through supplements,
right, so that can also be a kind
of a retraction of this con and
become up into a pro if you
need it to be later on.
Let's move onto another area of
the being a vegetarian here.
How about personal cost, how much does it
actually cost you if you
change your diet to this.
So meat is often very expensive,
but at the same time fresh produce
can be expensive or hard to get.
We're in Flint and Flint still has
some issues with food desert, and so
we can link this aspect of being unable to
find fresh produce to aspects of
being in a food desert as well.
We could again kind of
shift some of these issues
with fresh produce and grow our own food.
Depending on where we live, if you're in
apartment that might not be possible but
if you have land you might be
able to start your own garden.
We can also talk about eating out.
Not all restaurants have really great
vegetarian options, some do, but
depending on your strain of vegetarianism
you may not be able to eat out as much,
which might be good for
your wallet as well.
Alright now let's move onto the last issue
that I can think of when I initially
start thinking about vegetarianism and
that's the environment.
So if we go vegetari- if
a large portion of us become
vegetarians there might be a cost
of less animals being used for
or in agriculture and
that means less animal waste
which is something that
a friend of mine in college
pointed out, so
we'd have less methane in the air.
There'd probably be a redistribution
of how water is used,
so from being used by those
animals that we are producing for
our consumption to agricultural reasons.
We'd probably also have a restructuring
of land use as well, so
moving from grazing and land devoted to
animal husbandry to more agriculture or
possibly devoting it back to
aspects of wild use or forest land.
Now as I'm going through this,
I'm adding on things,
I can also start taking them away.
As I start doing my research, if I am
finding more issues related to health and
not as many to the environment, and
truthfully I don't have as many ideas
about the environment at least based
on this map, I can cross this off and
say I don't actually want to
use any of this right now.
I can also maybe go to my definition; I'm
probably definitely want to keep some of
the different types of it and our basic
definition of not eating meat, but
maybe in a 3 to 5 page paper I don't have
enough space to talk about religion, so
I'm not going to talk about religion.
If I come over here to health, there's
definitely a lot of things that I can
focus on but maybe I don't need
to talk about everything on here.
And it's interesting with personal
cost this is one of those things that
I could possibly test myself, so I could
take a week figure out how to find meat,
can I find some sales or is my bill
lower just finding fresh produce and
other vegetarian items
in the grocery store.
I could even do an experiment to see if
I grow my own food over the summer how
does that affect my budget.
So there's quite a few things
on this side that I would be
more comfortable writing about
than the things on this side.
As you're going along please feel
free to add any related terms,
synonyms, other concepts that you
find related to kind of where you've
chosen to go on your concept map.
This is a living document that you
will need to change and grow and
constantly use while you're going
through this process as well.
So remember please come to the library and
ask a librarian if you have any issues or
help that you need with your topic; the
writing center is also a great place to go
when you're thinking
about your topic as well.
Thank you very much for watching.
