Final Food Assingment

Why that happy singing cow is not so happy and the fresh squeezed smiling orange is not so fresh. What lies behind the label.

When we sit down for dinner and see the food in front of us, most of us enjoy what we eat. We try to enjoy the flavor, the texture, the essence, but do they really know what they have put in their mouths? Why is it so good? How did it get here? Where did it come from? And most importantly, is it good for you? Many people do not tend to think of these things when they eat or buy food at grocery stores or fast food restraints. I must say even before this unit, even acknowledging animal cruelty and being vegetarian I have not come to learn all the things I needed to know about what they did to animals and the other foods that I do eat until this industrial food unit.Maybe the reason why most people cannot really get the answer to those basic questions is because most of us have been blinded by corporate food industries as these industries do a great way to manipulate and hiding what really goes behind the scenes of what you eat. People's food habits and thought processes is what keeps corporate food industries alive and richer than ever. The supermarket to many people is like a sanctuary of food, I always had curiosity as to why supermarkets are the main source of food to most people. According to Micheal Pollan's Omnivores Dilema, he stated that there are just too many choices of food for an average American. The fact that there are almost no fresh foods to that are affordable and accessible to most Americans most end up shopping at local grocery stores where most of the food are packaged foods from industrial food companies which provided Americans with choices. This I think is definitely true, fresh organic food is definitely a lot harder to find then industrial food but I also think that most people are just use to and comforted by the labeling on packaged foods. We believe that what we buy is cheap and believe what we see on the label when a carton of juice says "100% fresh squeezed fruit". When looking down at a Tropicana fruit juice carton, what comes to mind? A fresh farm full of beautiful orange trees with the sun in the sky and the wind blowing through the workers hair as they all hum and pick oranges? What do you see when you look down at a pack of eggs? Happy chickens running around on the grain, frolicking with their fellow chickens? While exploring the topic on industrial food it is pretty clear that this is not the case. The fruits oranges and apples are not natural and the chickens are not happy. The corporate food companies do a great job at blinding people by their marketing and labeling. People should start thinking outside their dinner plate and think: Why don't industrial food companies tell us what goes behind their food labels?

When I use to eat meat when I was a little younger I did not realize or think much about the fried or grilled dead corpse lying between a bun and sitting on my plate. I eat it because it was food, I did not no any better. Many Americans most likely do the same, they eat things mainly because it is edible and it taste good. Growing up I have had a soft spot for animals, most animals I see I tend to think and react to animals like most people react to babies. People tend to find it amusing when I "awe" at dogs like many do to little kids. I remember the first few times I started to wonder about meat. I knew it was from an animal but I did not quite get it. As I started learning how to use the internet and heard others talk about how meat was made I was heart broken. Most of the pork, chicken, beef people eat are treated horribly and tortured. Most of the animals such as chickens are thrown around tossed around. They are slaughtered by being cut by the throat or even being plugged while still alive. Many pigs and cows are being treated no different. As this may be what most Americans eat, for the chickens and other farm animals that are not slaughtered for America's "wonderful" Big Mac the rest of them are confined and stuffed in small cramped spaces, fed antibiotics to keep these animals alive. This can be seen in the video www.chooseveg.com. Most animals such as cows never get to see sunlight and feed or natural grass. They do not even let the cows have natural breeding as it was shown in the movie Our Daily Bread. Remembering when I first found out about how animals are treated so cruelly it was like the time when my brother ruined my childhood Christmas holidays by telling me Santa Clause was not real when I was 6 years old. Although I do not think it compares unless my brother would have told me that Santa Clause was beaten, tortured, cut up and was currently the pork chop sitting on my plate. That to me is how I pretty much felt when I found how the meat ends up in the supermarket. As those who are not sympathetic to creatures that are tortured and have no way of offending and would continue to eat meat, they way they treat their animals also effects our health as well. As stated in The Meatrix, animals such as cows are fed unnatural things like antibiotics, artificial hormones and these things spread diseases such as mad cow diseases. These places is where most dairy products come from as well, not just the beef people eat.

Factory farming is not just involving animals but it is like this for many of the fruits and vegetables that we get in the grocery stores. In many of the commercials I see such as the Tropicana Orange Juice commercial shows a man on a orange tree farm speaking about how freshly squeezed the orange juice is. In the background is other white farm workers picking out the oranges. As most people probably are niave and either are in denial that this is how fruits are really picked out and and totally healthy or people just seem to not care anymore. There are a lot of things that go on in fruit and vegetable farms that effect many people such as the workers and our health. For example is that workers tend to be exploided, in the movie Our Daily bread it shows all the workers, silent, bored, picking food, planting seeds, being closely watched to make sure they are no slacking on their work. When I watched these scenes I felt that it was so dead, and the farm owners do not even think about the workers as they were spraying the sprinklers while some workers were still working. Most of the workers had to get in a line, kneeling down to talk to their boss to receive their paychecks. Many family factory farms are put out of business and destroys certain communities. Most of the fruits and vegetables are sprayed with pesticides which are obviously unhealthy for us. Some harmful pesticide are even harmful for the brain as they can damage the brain especially for young children. According the an article I found called Harmful Pesticides Found in Every Day Food Products by Andrew Schneider (hmm, that last name is ironically similar to Andy's)says that apparently in January 2008 and government had promised to get rid of pesticides but are not doing their job as a year long study seemed to show found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods found biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II. According to the article I think this took place in Seattle (http://www.seattlepi.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html). As I am a vegetarian and eat many fruits and vegetables I never thought that in these food products I would not find any problems but unfortunately industrial food companies seem to find a way to make our fruits and vegetables harmful as well. In Vrroooomm Farming for Kids (or what ever it is called) even though trying to come from a more kid friendly approach it showed giant tractors who picked cabbages and potatoes off the fields. These giant machines, like cars use oil for fuel which causes pollution and of course as we all know pollution is bad for us human's health. Speaking of pollution the confined animals that are forced to live in seeping amounts of animal excrement can really effect our pollution as well. Which is another way that effects our health. In the article Third Myth: Food isn't cheap, "Intensive use of pesticides and fertilizers seriously pollutes our water, soil, and air. This pollution problem grows worse over time, as pests become immune to the chemicals and more and more poisons are required." So if we do not in some ways stop our most of these industrial food factories and farms we will keep letting them growing where they will completely effect the lives of animals, the lives of workers, our environment, and what should be most important which is our lives and health.

As learning about all the new effects of how the American way of food can really effect our lives as individuals in such harmful ways there are alternatives as well. For example is organic food. Organic food such as organic vegetables are foods produced without harmful pesticides or the chickens are not fed growth hormones, antibiotics and any other harmful junk. As a vegetarian I personally think people should just not be eating animals at all but I know that it is most likely unrealistic and I don't have the right to tell people to stop eating meat but this reminded me of the small discussion we had in class the other day about cultures of food such as Kosher food and Halal food. In class Andy taught about how in certain cultures they believe that you are not allowed to torture the animal or feed it anything harmful and when killing it the animal cannot see the knife and must be killed with one cut. Although I would not approve of any animal killing I think for those who must eat meat for some reason I like this idea better then the way the animals are treated in factory farms. Someone in the class made a comment to this that there is no difference between the cultures way of killing the animal the the factory's farm way of killing animals since the animal is going to suffer the same and be eaten. In response to that comment now I must say that if you (not just stating the person who said this because I do not remember who that way) were a defenseless animal who only had a few days to live would you rather spend that time being tortured and living in your own poop or would you rather spend it on a field and be put killed quick and almost painless? To me I would not kill an innocent animal but if I were an animal and knew I was going to die I would not want to be thrown around and beaten first. And also an alternative to the fruits and vegetables that industrial food companies companies produce, organic food is a lot healthier and better. Although organic food is definitely pricier then industrial food, even for myself it would be difficult for me to buy all organic foods all the time but I think a couple of organic bought foods would definitely help family farms and my health. In the article Food isn't Cheap it made a point that I really liked which is that even though organic food is pricey in the long run we would be paying for our health and the health of our future generation by eating organic foods and supporting small family farms.