King Corn The industrialization of corn and other crops has caused more harm than good. A lot of this has been pushed along by government programs and food companies looking to make a quicker profit, at the cost of the health of their customers. Corn is no longer corn. Covered in chemicals, inedible until processed, the production of high fructose corn syrup, the loss of small family farms, it’s damage to the environment, and its use as cattle feed are a few of the reasons this new era of corn needs to be changed.…
1). In Hungry for Change, a 2012 film from James Colquhoun, Laurentine ten Bosch, and Carlo Ledesma that posits that the processed food diet is the root of our ails, Dr. Alejandro Junger says, “The problem is that we are not eating food anymore, we are eating food-like products.” Ten years ago, according to the National Restaurant Association (2016), the top five food trends were bite-sized desserts, locally-grown produce, flatbread, and bottled water (p. 1). Local sourcing, gluten-free cuisine, ethnic cuisine, and nutrition were the top five of the fastest-growing food trend in the last 10 years (National Restaurant Association,…
The documentary Food Inc. provides an eye-opening glimpse on the mass production of food and the process in which it reaches consumers. Personally, when I go to the supermarket, I never think about how the chicken, beef, or eggs I’m buying, actually got there. I was oblivious of the whole process. For instance, baby chicks are being modified to grow within 48 days compared to three months. Chickens are put in dark and overcrowded coops and some die daily because there bodies cannot handle their enlarged body parts. Cows are being feed corn instead of their natural food, which, is grass because they have to be fattened up. Lastly, the animals live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Not to mention, the conditions of the workers are horrible.…
Food Inc. is a documentary directed by Robert Kenner targeted towards the general public about the ugly truths behind the food industries. The documentary outlines the procedures taken to process the food that surrounds us, with the aim to expose and change the basis, footprints, and corruption behind this process. Kenner successfully does this through several techniques and strategies used to persuade and motivate others to make a difference.…
Obesity is perhaps one of the biggest problems society faces today, people are asking the question: Who is to blame? Fast food, while a major contributor, but it is not the only cause of the obesity epidemic in America. In particular, food producers that supply the high calorie, minimally nutritious, and highly processed foods that dominate our market must be examined. Although the external factors are important, it is more important for American citizens to educate themselves to make more informed individual decisions.…
government wrongly spends billions of tax-payer dollars, just so they can assist food companies to gain more profits and subsidize foods. For example, the federal government annually spends approximately $38 billion in meat and dairy product subsidization. Although, national dietary guidelines encourage Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables, only about $17 million out of the $38 billion are spent towards produce. Additionally, two-thirds of American farmers received no funds from the last 15 years’ worth of subsidies, equivalent to $100 billion. Instead, those funds went towards corporation-owned-factory farms, which, hurt local economies and made meat and dairy production cheaper. Besides the subsidization costs, the government also spent an additional $550 million in marketing expenses, in order to boost sales for meat and dairy products. In fact, each dollar (of the $550 million) increases meat and dairy sales by $8, annually, which would be an additional $4.6 billion invested in the meat and dairy industry (“10 Things We Wish Everyone Knew About the Meat and Dairy Industries”). By subsidizing the meat and dairy industries, the government has unduly encouraged Americans to predominantly consume those products, which may contribute to future health complications. When meat and dairy are the primary components in a person’s diet, people miss out on the benefits other foods can offer; particularly, fruits and vegetables, which offer a variety of benefits, including the following: lots of vitamins and minerals; may reduce the chance of being diagnosed with many diseases; and fiber-rich produce that help with digestion; that is to say, all essential to a healthy…
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, attempts to figure out how such a simple question as, “What should we have for dinner?” (Pollan 1), turned out to be so complicated such that we need investigative journalists to tell us what is in our food. To do so, he went on a journey to follow all three food chains that sustain us today: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer back to their origins. Although these journeys may have led to very different paths, there was one underlying theme that linked them all: the tension between logic of nature and industry. For every step industrialization takes, natural forces push it back to balance it out. Even so, industrialization has found a way to keep up with nature’s work by breaking through its cycle in order to thrive and profit. The work of industry is undeniably compelling. The Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) alone has made meat so cheap and abundant that most American families can afford to eat it every meal. Industry makes this happen by feeding cows and steers large amounts of cheap federally subsidized corn, which the cows never evolved to eat. The result of this poor diet is simply a hoard of sick cows due to the acidity the corn produces in their stomachs. To counteract this problem, industries turned to antibiotics. Medicines that were created to treat diseases are now a staple ingredient in a cows’ fodder, as an attempt to treat this acidic imbalance. Pollan explained the irony in this situation: “Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn’t be sick if not for the diet of grain we feed them.” (“The Feedlot: Making Meat” pg. 79) The power of industry lies in its ability to manipulate and twist the work of nature and to break closed cycles within nature. It has stripped the evolution of the rumen and its relationship with grass and has transformed cows into corn-fed machines. However, it doesn’t…
To the average consumer, eating has now developed into well beyond an agricultural act, declares Wendell Berry. Apparent in the audience of his lectures on the decline of farming, American citizens are unable to recognize the existence of food beyond the food industry—the world of fake, processed food. Ask any individual from where their food comes and they will answer, “the grocery store.” Stirring Berry to anger, he exclaims that food begins with life, plant and animal; if food begins in the laboratory, the results more accurately categorize as experiments rather than food. Michael Pollan strongly supports this claim by stating, “what reductive science can manage to perceive well enough to isolate and study is subject to change, and that we have a tendency to assume that what we can see is all there is to see” (p. 11). What this means is that food plastered with health claims can only assure the consumer their soon-to-be purchase has been on…
Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation, Michael Moss’ article The Burger That Shattered Her Life and the documentary Food Inc. all come together to inform people on the facts about the food industry’s contamination issue. The food industry has many slaughterhouses and meat packing industries in the United States. People never think about where there meat has come from, how it is prepared, stored, or made. Unfortunately, the sanitation of our meat from where it starts to when we eat it is appalling. Many farms now raise livestock in mass groups in dirty environments, they gather into unsanitary slaughterhouses to be killed with unsanitary utensils, methods, and machinery, the meat gets combined with other meat in filthy meat packing industries, and is then packed away for us to eat. Farms should raise cows how they used to be raised, consumers…
The documentary Food Inc. provided a shocking view of corporate farming in the United States. It exposed the unhealthy, harmful, and the inhumane process behind the farming industry. The documentary addresses the problems in the typical supermarket today and the conception of the meats. They talk about how the producers of the products in the grocery store care about is how the packaging of the products is viewed. They bring out the issue that most of the products in the shelfs are often showed to perceive the idea that it is “naturally” produced from a farm by local farmers. That advertising method gives the consumers a false image of how and what is behind the production of such items. Instead of a pastoral farm, products such as meat are…
Director Robert Kenner’s film Food Inc. asserts that there is a veil of secrecy perpetuated by the food industry that separates the consumer from the realities of how food is produced in the United States.…
In relation to the dangers of E. coli outbreaks, Kenner cites the death of a food advocate mother and her young boy after consuming beef contaminated with E. coli. The approach is effective in such a way that Kenner puts a face on the issue. However, the rest of the health section does not provide epidemiological data regarding the incidence or prevalence of E. coli cases. Additionally, Kenner spends a lot of time focusing on genetically modified soybeans and Monsanto, yet data regarding health effects that arise from consuming GMO soybean products remains…
Food Inc. by Robert Kenner shows us how big corporations are changing the game in the food market. Companies today care more about being efficient and do not care who or what is effected by it. Meat is being grown at a record pace, and processed and sold even faster. This movie takes a look behind the scene of the food market and how major players and growing their profits and lowering their bottom dollar.…
Food Inc. is an eye opening documentary about the food industry in America. It examines the less known facts about the food industry. Our nation’s food industry is controlled by only a few companies who are in control of their consumers’ health, the livelihood of the American farmer, and the safety of its works. We have bigger chicken breast and there are no longer any seasons for fruits and vegetables in the supermarkets anymore. This new type of farming has brought good but it has also brought bad such as new strains of E. coli and obesity in America. I think that Food Inc. did a good job at examining the side of the food industry that has been hidden from the world for too long. We have a right to know where our foods are coming from and how it was produced.…
The human body is a remarkable thing. It is filled with organs that need to be fed the right foods, as well as be taken care of. Over the course of twenty years there has been many articles and books published trying to teach humans how to better their bodies as well as minds. The number one way humans get their food intake is through meat and dairy products and it’s not a lie when people say the food industry is a bunch of shady people. Past generations have been able to eat raw beef without even considering consequences like e-coli, but at this point in the United States e coli is the least of our worries. It is time to stand up against the food industry and make a change for the better of our world, and our future generations.…