Heritage Assessment - Book Report/Review Example

The tool not only provides an understanding of the culture from which a person comes, but also how they are connected to their family. Knowing the support system of a person lends a great deal of substance to the overall picture of the individual’s level of social health, which then can contribute to understanding their psychological help. In taking the Heritage Assessment Tool, it was discovered that my life was deeply rooted in attachments to my cultural heritage. I am close to my family and have adopted a great many of their traditions, even though before taking the tool I had believed that I had detached from a great many of those belief systems.

Most of the answers were positive answers, and according to the tool, this is a good sign. Even though I had considered myself separated from my family’s cultural heritage, I found that the more I worked with the tool, the more I understood that taking a different path in life was not the same as disconnecting from my family traditions and beliefs. I am proud to be a part of my family, and now I have an understanding of what those connections mean. One of the areas in which I focused as I interviewed individuals about their heritage was their eating habits.

Heinzelmann (2008) writes that “Food culture has been described as a link between agriculture and nutrition” (p. xi). . Her specificity about eating raw and healthy was a shift from the types of foods she had experienced while growing up. In interviewing a few people with the use of the tool, it became clear that this connectivity does not universally exist across experiences. The first individual that was assessed came from a mostly Germanic background. Germanic food traditions include. This individual had little connectivity to her family and while she loved and respected her family, followed few of the traditions with which she had grown up.

A very Americanized background where food was concerned, her family traditions were based upon cooking with boxed and canned goods. She had chosen a different path and had adopted a more healthy eating style and exercised regularly. Although her family shunned doctors as often as possible, she went regularly and followed the advice of healthcare professionals, which was not part of the habits of her family. An interesting part of her experience growing up had been that her family believed that going to the doctor was a last resort.

She expressed how most of the time when she had been ill, she was told she would get over it. Her family was not uncompassionate, but truly believed that most illnesses would just pass and giving attention to them encouraged them to be worse. She expressed how she always felt like she was a hypochondriac when she went to the doctor, but had learned that wellness checkups served to protect her health rather than waiting and finding out too late that some aspect of her general health needed attendance.

In this case, she was close to her family, but had chosen to actively pursue good health through the resources that society allowed her, which included