Industrial Food Essay

Most Americans wouldn't know exactly how their food is produced.  The only real reference most Americans have is the song "Old McDonald" where they just know what's and the farm and what it's there for.  They probably couldn't tell you the living conditions of the animals or their heath.  The sad reality is that most animals are kept as biological factories, churning out meat, eggs or milk at an efficient yet un-natural and un-healthy rate.  Crops are genetically engineered to yield more seeds and grow faster and provide more nutrients.  To make enough food to feed our nation we have to play god.

"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", an article by Jared Diamond says that agriculture in itself is flawed and is only used to sustain larger civilizations.  He describes it in a sort of "last-resort" tone, relating the agricultural lifestyle to a quantitative existence opposite to qualitative lifestyle of our ancestors.  Hunter/Gatherers were able to live well without the social burdens of laziness and political struggle over resources within that civilization.  Hunter/Gatherer societies were small enough that there was very little social order, at most there was a chief or leader who was chosen based on skill, not lineage.  Hunter/Gatherer societies also didn't have to deal with "dead-weight" citizens, the entire tribe worked except for the children, who learned how to hunt and gather from the elderly members of the group.  It's easy to see the qualitative aspects of Hunter/Gatherer society, in these groups true communism can exist and the population remains healthy due to their varied diets and active lifestyles.

I agree with the fact that Hunter/Gatherer society lacks many of the problems that we have in our world today, the only reason why that lifestyle seems worse than agricultural lifestyles is that Hunter/Gatherers depend on the agricultural societies for invention and things like art and entertainment.  Modern Hunter/Gatherer societies use guns and other modern tools to find food, things which they couldn't make on their own due to their lack of free time.  Unless that group of hunters was exceptionally good they wouldn't be able to develop as fast as an agricultural society.  While it isn't totally true that Hunter/Gatherers didn't invent anything (the spear, axe, bow and arrow are examples of this) they wouldn't be able to create advanced technologies at the rate we do now, and with that advanced technology they would create machines to hunt for them or breed their prey to kill it later, bringing us full circle to our flawed society.

Naturally we lived as Hunter/Gatherers, because humans are naturally omnivores so we can eat meat and vegetables, living as Hunter/Gatherers can be more efficient in terms of a varied diet.  In the kids film about farming, "VVVRRROOOOOOMM!!!" the farms grew massive quantities of a couple of vegetables, whereas Hunter/Gatherers can hunt many different kinds of animals outside of just pigs, cows and chickens, and can gather many kinds of wild grasses and roots that we would just call weeds and dismiss as food.  In out modern Agricultural society we use hormones and chemicals derived from these animals and plants we depend on, as Michael Pollan said in his book "The Omnivores Dilemma" "It's like eating corn with your corn".  We don't see food as a once living thing anymore, we view it as a string of proteins or sugars that we break down.  Using these words scientifically helps distance ourselves from the truth... what we ate was living (including vegetables) and had feelings and a personality (in the case of animals).  As Hunter/Gatherers we become closer to our food and actually come to terms with the food and accept the cycle of life for what it is.

In the movie "Our Daily Bread and Butter" animals are treated horribly and given hormones to grow faster and are kept in small confined spaces.  These animals don't really get a chance to live, they just sort of exist and die.  Our way of killing animals makes them stressed and unhealthy, so it makes sense that as we eat them we become unhealthy.  While I don't disagree with farm raised animals, I think they should be happy and have room to move and get a chance at life.  If not for the moral conflict than for the health aspect, eating an animal that's naturally raised will be healthier.  There's one scene in the movie where a crop duster kills a field of sunflowers to harvest the seeds, this illustrates that as we grow more and more food we have exponentially more waste.  As Hunter/Gatherers we had little to no animal waste, and whatever waste we had was eaten by scavengers or composted, agricultural society encourages surplus, which encourages waste.

Sadly Hunter/Gatherer society works mainly in small scale or small divisions of a large culture as the Native Americans demonstrated.  While not impossible, it's very unlikely that most people will accept an active fuller lifestyle over the luxurious lifestyle we have today.  There are small pockets of Hunter/Gatherers left who have much better food cultures than we do. My investigation of Hunter/Gatherer societies has reinforced my argument of "Natural is better" animals tend to survive better when they don't actively evolve and let nature do its work. As humans who have actively interfered with our natural processes like hunting eating and mating we alter our evolution, but thats a larger discussion for another time. In short, we need to keep to our roots, while Hunter/Gatherer society isn't accepted by larger civilizations I do think it is a better way of life and should be considered as an alternative to those who hate our agricultural society.

Response to Industrial Food Production

The internet flash cartoon "The Meatrix" addresses many different reasons for why industrial food production is wrong, mainly on the part of animal cruelty or health.  They bring up valid points about pollution in farms due to the bad hygiene of the animals.  They also address certain health problems that can come from artificially created hormones that they ween their cows with which can cause health problems for the animals and the consumer.  While these facts are true I don't have a strong hatred for these farm owners, the farm owners are wrong for what they're doing but our society is spoiled on food.  Stopping this mass production wouldn't be supported by the majority of America (the fat people who don't care about animals outnumber the skinny educated people who do care).  I see mass production farms as necessary only to our fattened culture, we can't change our farms until we learn to appreciate animals and live on less food.

Michael Pollan, writer of "The Omnivores Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food" was interviewed by Stephen Colbert.  In this interview Stephen Colbert jokingly asked Pollan if he let his son eat cocoa pebbles, which would be deemed as unhealthy, to which he responded yes but he clarified that we should enjoy certain foods in moderation.  The lesson to be learned from this is that we should be responsible for our own health, letting someone tell us how to eat doesn't make sense because they don't understand our health.  He brought up a point about how humans can't process high fructose corn syrup as well as natural substances, which seems logical.  This leads to health problems that we all suffer from since HFCS is in most of what we eat.        

Comments on Food Blogs

I like the idea of "Pushing" foods on shoppers to influence them to buy them. Do you think that every company tries to "Push" for customers in this way and some just shine brighter than others? or is this a more organized and deliberate way for someone to push food items on us?

-commented on Ian's blog 

I like how you distinguish between "American" foods which are few and fatty, and other foods which aren't american. I would like to see what your opinion is on "Americanized foods" how do we alter foreign foods to fit our American lifestyle?

-Commented on Henry's blog

My Food Habits Draft 2

I try to eat whatever I can to gain weight, mostly eating snack foods, soda etc.  My snacks are viewed as "un-healthy" when no food is completely "un-healthy".  What's unhealthy is the way that these foods are eaten, while we all love to point fingers at McDonalds their food is fine in moderation and when combined with exercise.  I don't say this just to defend my potato chips, even something like arsenic is technically non-lethal in small doses.  While these foods may contain preservatives and things like that, they still don't make you sick directly or have any long-term side effects (to the extent of my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong).  For someone like me who is skinny, with a fast metabolism and burns off calories though extensive exercise these foods are fine.  Most of my meals however include meats and other foods that contain proteins and fats to help me bulk up.  While I am trying to eat more vegetables I wouldn't order a salad in a restaurant any time soon, I don't seem to comprehend how a salad can become a meal simply by adding bacon bits.  As the old proverb goes "If it doesn't kill, it fattens" if it fattens work it off, its very simple.

Response to "The Omnivores Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

The main argument in Michael Pollan's "The Omnivores Dilemma" about American health in relation to food is that as a mixture of different cultures Americans have no food culture of their own.  I agree with this somewhat, while Americans have invented burgers and hot-dogs we've just taken things that already existed and made them less healthy, some might argue better tasting.  Americans are confused when it comes to what to eat and how often, our food culture if any at all is to eat what we want when we want in front of the TV without any specified exercise, whereas other cultures might have certain customs when it comes to how food is eaten and even the exercise that comes before or after, other cultures essentially have eating "rules" or guidelines that tell them when and what to eat, we as Americans don't have that.      

My Food Habits

My own way of eating emphasizes meats and snacking, because meats and snacks taste good and contain fats, since I'm trying to gain weight I try to eat more fats.  I occasionally eat vegetables and fruits, vegetables being the least and I mostly eat them as seasonings on meats.  I prefer to stay away from fast food unless my parents can't cook or its very late.  

Response to May Day

May day is an interesting holiday for Americans to study, we don't really know it exists, we don't celebrate it and we don't know what its about.  learning about history, either yours or anyone else's, can make your life more meaningful because you understand the world.

Knowing your history just as a form of knowledge helps you improve.  The reason why we study history is mainly to study the mistakes we made in the past, May Day is a holiday that commemorates the struggle for workers to have appropriate working conditions, and it remembers the deaths of those who fought for their rights.  By remembering the mistakes that led up to those riots i.e. the abuse of workers, the governments lack of intervention  and the violence of policemen towards the protesters, we can learn from them and live better lives by not repeating those mistakes.

Knowing history also improves relations with people and helps us to understand people.  Many argue that the reason why the world hates, some say hated, America is because we intervene in problems that we don't fully understand.  America is currently involved in the middle east, which has many different cultures within it that have fought for hundreds of years, not understanding who fought for what and against who etc. leads to unseen conflicts based on historical backgrounds.  The same is true for small scale conflicts, not knowing the relationships people have with each other can lead to problems.  Most conflicts are caused by people offending other people because they don't know what offends them, learning who gets offended by what will make it easier to avoid conflicts. 

Overall any information we can learn from will make our lives better, learning other peoples histories will allow us to interact with them without the risk of offending them, and learning our own past mistakes will help us to avoid repeating them.