Monday, February 17, 2014

Ben Kim Exploration #4

This film talks about how Americans don't know what is in their food.  Everything in our food is a mystery and we cannot resolve the issue because we don't care.  There are various chemicals in our food but we only value the taste of it.  In the modern day, anywhere you go there is always a fast food chain nearby.  Michael Pollen once said, "Americans live in a food desert where you can't find fresh food." These industries are providing food that lack nutrition and the consumer does not get any benefit from it.  The movie goes in depth about how these industries use puppetry on these farmers. The farmers sign a contract to get what they need and in return they have to follow orders from the company.  They have to use antibiotics on their livestock to promote their growth. The reason they do this is because of money and the demand for fast food is high. 

 The purpose of the whole movie is about comparing and contrasting industrialized and organic foods.  Industrialized foods typically are cheaper than organic foods because there are more supply of it.  Even though industrialized foods are cheaper, they lack quality.  Organic foods generally have higher quality due to the fact that farmers take care of their produce.  Will Allen uses worms to keep his crops fresh and the people that ate his food couldn't believe how fresh it was.  According to him, the worms produces clean bacteria in the soil and that causes the crops to have such high quality. 

The main question I would like to ask would be what else are manufacturers doing with our food?  Since technology is advancing rapidly, there should be other techniques industries use to make industrialized foods.

In our culture, we typically eat unhealthy food.  Majority of our population depend on fast food as others favor a healthier lifestyle, more suitable to women.  As I mentioned before, America is a fast food paradise and everywhere you go, there's always a fast food joint.  In my experience, off the bat I would choose to eat at a place that sells industrialized food because of how cheap it is.  As of now, I'm leaning towards a healthier diet, eating organic foods because of all the benefits I am getting.  Lastly, people need to educate themselves about the nutrition facts and what it is in the food rather than buying the product because of your own desire.


4 comments:

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  2. "As I mentioned before, America is a fast food paradise and everywhere you go, there's always a fast food joint. In my experience, off the bat I would choose to eat at a place that sells industrialized food because how cheap it is." The American culture has become so dependent on fast food. Most of my younger cousins are all chubby because of the bad habits there parents have put on them. Eating fast foods most definitely does not help, but it is a cheap way to get around paying for fresh food. It just needs to become affordable for people in different classes so that it can be affordable. If fresh wood was cheaper than fast food I guarantee we would have a healthier society.

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  3. At some point, like you mentioned, with technology so rapidly changing, you would think that there would be inexpensive ways to mass produce more natural foods. When will this ability come though? It likely may not because the cost of developing a new method could easily exceed those of keeping current methods in place for decades.

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  4. ""Americans live in a food desert where you can't find fresh food." These industries are providing food that lack nutrition and the consumer does not get any benefit from it." Yeah there are definitely some places where healthy, good, and high quality food are hard to come by. We have a serious lack of competition and access among some of these types of foods, and the industry's unfair advantages are making it difficult for a lot of people. We need more people doing more things to grow/produce better food in more places, and I think we need a smaller community minded focus when it comes to food.

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