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.