What's Good To Eat (Final)

Obesity is a major problem in today’s society. Over the past several years we have become the heaviest country in the world. This is due the lack of information that is given and the lack of information people have on food. People are not able to pick out what is healthy for them and what is not. People will read the label “Low in fat” and they think that food is considered healthy. Just like fruits and vegetables, people are told that you should have more servings of fruits and vegetables; people think that this is the healthy way to eat food. Other people consume too much meat and not enough fruits and vegetables. This is one of many reasons why people become vegans. This is of course a false statement. It’s false because it doesn’t matter what you eat but what’s inside your food is what’s important. The trick about food is that when we eat food we think of it as a whole and the collection of minerals that we need. That’s why we eat in the first place. This could be the cause of obesity in our country today. The reason why we should eat our vegetables is because of what they contain. Sure their low in fat but the reason that we eat it is because we require the nutrition that they contain. When people become vegans they stick to a diet that contains no animals in their meals. What most people don’t know, is that they miss out on the minerals that are inside meat that is needed for their health. “Wait! I thought not eating meat was good?” Wrong. We require different types of minerals that are found in meat, vegetables and fruits. So what should we eat? Well we should eat a balance meal that has meat, vegetables and fruits. But the answer isn’t that simple. Remember when I was taking about what’s inside your food and stuff. Well let’s take a look at the development of food to your plate. The first step is first planting your seeds in the ground. Now this process involves machines ripping the ground and then they the machines plant the seeds. The next step is watering the plants. Now they to hasten the growth of the plants so that the fruits, vegetables and animals will grow quickly so that they can reach you faster. (Wouldn’t want to make you wait) Now they need to protect the plants so the put some pesticides so that the food doesn’t get eaten by the other animals and bugs. Then in a couple of weeks the fruits and vegetable. The animals are shipped over to be killed by machines and processed by humans. Then the boxed and shipped and processed by and shipped to your grocery stores. Then you by the food and prepare at home to eat it. Now let’s think! At the development of the meats and vegetables, they are educed with chemicals and pesticides to hasten their growth and to protect them. Do you think that we eat those pesticides? Well of course we do. They are introduced in the development of our food so it’s now introduced into their system and they will introduced into your system. Reports of these of these effects (worst outcome. Also very unlikely) is that you grow worms inside you body. Better known as pesticides that fest inside your body. So you can see that in the worst possible outcome that this is probably something to research on. We all know the common con out of eating industrial food and that’s obesity. Simply because of the added product that are added to make your food have some taste. Do you ever read what in your food? If you look at the ingredients you will probably read “corn starch” or “natural flavor.” What does “natural flavor” mean? Shouldn’t it already have its natural flavors? It’s something to think about. So what’s good to eat? The answer is simple. We should eat food that doesn’t have natural flavors added in it. Our food should be as natural as possible. So the other option is whole foods. It’s an alternative process that involves the natural growth of our food. So machines aren’t used and chemicals and pesticides aren’t add. So you already have that natural flavor just waiting for you. There are also local food farms that are around that you should considered. This alternative is something to think about when facing the food crisis.

Final Exam Questions

Final Exam Question # 1
Describe the past and present of food. Predict the future of food.

Food has it’s own culture that is douched in history. Even if no one knows this. This history involves sharecropping, manual labor, small care community etc. Food’s past is a clear and clean one. We know that framers would take time in growing and picking their products. This involves a lot of man labor and a lot of care. Food didn’t have as much chemicals and pesticides. This might have lead to a more natural taste of food. For example is when we travel to different places and taste other cultures food. We can taste the difference in food that is common around the world like rice, pasta, etc.
Today people aren’t to concern with were their food comes from. They assume that their food comes from proper growing and care just like in the past. Food today involves less care because machines take care of our food. Our framing is left in the hands of the industrial food chains. Our food is douched in pesticides and other chemicals that grow our food faster and that protect our food from insects. This process is use to produce the maximum amount of food to produce the maximum amount of profit that they can achieve. The big food companies are the only one that only benefit from this. The public is denied the age of good and healthy food that is beneficially to our health and maybe our survival. I say our survival because if we look at America today we can see that the obesity rate is increasing and the next several generations the rate of obesity will increase dramatically.
A future result of this would lead to a larger amount of food production with even more profit for the food company. The taste of food might be completely lost. I don’t want to live in that future. The future will also hold an even larger obesity rate. In the future, if you were to walk down the street you wouldn’t see an average weight person for a while. This is the drastic long-term effect that the industrial food industrial will have on society.

Final Exam Question # 2

“Food in our culture is one aspect of a larger nightmare.”
Write an essay that opposes, supports and/or qualifies this thesis.

I believe that this thesis is correct, simply because food effects different aspects of peoples lives. For example the oil that is needed in order to transport and to process our food, the immigrant workers who are hired at less pay than the non-immigrant worker, and how the food industry takes care of its animals. In Fast Food Nation: The Movie it shows the viewer how immigrant workers are treated in this environment. It shows how the workers were treated as second-class citizens. For example when a worker was injured he wasn’t given to much sympathy when it came to taking care of their workers, but they really don’t have to because these workers are here illegally so the company doesn’t feel that they really don’t have to care. This makes them more profit while their workers are getting paid less. In class we were watching a film Our Daily Bread that shows how the animals are treated in these industrial farms. In the movie the animals are encaged with several other thousands other animals that only have a small amount of space to walk around. This causes the animals to trample each other and kill each other. Others die because of the manure that is left around. They are forced to live in this unnatural environment this can cause diseases that can effect us. Something that I noticed in the film was that the machines killed the animals. The people simply handled the rest of the of the body parts. Also, a large amount of animals were killed daily in these industrial farms. In class we were analyzing what makes the industrial food system different from other types of food production and that’s oil and profit. We analyzed how food and oil are connected. We concluded that oil was involved with oil in the development of food and the transportation of food. When the seeds have to be planted the machines break up the ground and they plant the seeds. Then they apply the pesticides to protect their plants, using planes, which needs oil. Then the plants are picked and shipped out in thousands of trucks. The animals are induced with chemicals to help them grow and to produce even more animals. Then like the plants, they are sent out.
So we can see how food is one aspect of a larger nightmare because of the things that are involved with the whole production of food. We can see the ethics with immigrant treatment as well as animal’s treatment as well as the usage of oil. Though the biggest concern for most would be the oil consumption. If this continues peak oil will come and the prices will increase dramatically.

More On Food And Oil

I recently read a article about how our society is based on oil. The article is called Oil and Food: A Rising Security Challenge by Danille Murry. This is located at http://www.energybulletin.net/print.php?id=6052. This article talks about the energy use of oil increases due to transportation and population increase. My response to this is that the industrial food system is a finite system. This is because the energy consumption keeps increasing. If we look at our energy supply that we use now we see how much we use to transport it all over the world.Compare it to our total, we use a lot. Over the years we can see the rapid growth of energy that we use. For example when food is package it is individually wrapped, bagged and boxed. This process uses a lot of energy and raw materials that end up in landfills. An alternative to this would be creating a near by farm. This would dramatically decrease the use of energy that we use, but this is complex due to space. Take New york for example, there is not enough space to have a large enough farm to feed all of New York. Of course creating the alternate space we can save much more energy in the future.

Oil and food?

In today's class we studied how oil and food are connected. We learned that oil helps us produce food and transport it around the world. The machines that help us grow our food and transport food and machines like trucks and airplanes. Without oil we would have a hard time accessing our food. The wed site http://energybulliten.net/primer.php describes the reason of peak oil and how they are trying to develop new energy sources.

Food paper (3rd Draft)

Erick De La Cruz March 26,2007
Pluto D History

Food Paper

The industrial food system is the mass production of food to maximize their profits. In the results of maximizing, their profit ‘s people are infected with altered bio products that have long-term effect to human’s, animals and the environment. The industrial food system works by adding products that help their crops grow more efficiently. So they won’t loss any crops. Then most of the crops is feed to animals and the other’s are shipped out. So the animals now contains the product that the food had. The animals are raised in confined spaces for their entire lives until they are ready to be cut up and shipped out. The people who are involved in this process are illegal immigrants, the lower class and the machines. The people who are involved in our food do not hold any sentimental value to the animal’s lives. As the animals are encaged or if they are handling their organ, they are not affected by it. My experience with industrial food is that I consume it everyday. The reason that I consume it everyday is not because I chose to but because it is accessible, cheap and tasteful as compared to something that is “healthy.” Most of the “healthy” items cost excessively much for the lower class kids to buy. “Healthy” stores are not located anywhere near poor neighborhoods so most of the time it a matter of location. It is also a matter of the amount of food that is provided. Some kids need more for their money; they need to be filled.
The reason why Industrial food is our primary source of the United States nutrition is because fast food chains surround our society. Fast food chains allow us to get our food, quickly and make it taste better than organic foods. For this reason alone is why our diet is comprised of industrial food. The other source of food is limited and inconvient for people, as compared to fast food chains. When the average person walks down the street he will be more likely to see McDonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and other types of fast food chains before they even finish walking down one block. As compared to organic foods it might take one or two miles before reaching any organic store. The Real Problems behind the industrial food system is at the start of where your food comes from. The food comes from the factories that produce your food. You think that your burger contains natural ingredients, but that’s just not true. In order to grow your burger and other billions of burgers that company has to enhance the cows to grow quickly so they can produce enough for the thousands of McDonalds that are stationed around the world. As well, in order to produce your tomatoes and lettuce they have to spray pesticides in order to protect their crops. These products are harmful to the human body, which causes physical and mental problems. It’s like taking a bath with chemical waste that been spilled out for weeks and reeks of rotten eggs. Another problem that is associated with the industrial food system is how there are workers who are affected by this system. Most of these workers are made up of immigrants who earn $.40 - $.45 There are two million migrant farm workers that earn an annual of $10,000 dollars a year. This means that the workers have to pick up 4,000 – 5,000 pounds of crops just to earn the minimum wage in Florida. This has not changed since 1978. This has put three out of four of these families below the poverty line. That’s what’s wrong with the industrial food system.
The reason why the industrial food system matters is because it is incorporated in our way of life. The industrial food system is not concern with America’s health but getting their money. They do not need to concern themselves with our health as long as they’re making their money. An outsider would examine our culture as an obese culture and that we are only interested in making money. Our lives are examined as lazy. This can be proven be how so many American’s would chose to eat the super sizes than have an extreme exercise. Or how these large companies to eat their food, or to work in their restaurants are manipulating our culture.