HW 12 - Final Food Project 2 - Outline

Overarching Thesis: In todays society, our dominant social practices are never questioned, when in fact, the root of these typical practices come from nightmarish industrial atrocities

Major Argument 1-Food: As people living in the united states of america we deserve to know who, and where our food is being processed and made. Huge corporations such as Tyson have tried to hide this from us, but since the 80's people have started to become more aware of this problem. We have started to question this more recently due to climbing obesity and diabetes rates.

Chunk of MA1: Huge food corporations have been hiding the truth

Evidence 1 of Chunk 1 of MA1: KFC’s Claims That Fried Chicken Is a Way to “Eat Better” Don’t Fly

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/06/kfccorp.shtm

Evidence 2 of Chunk 1 of MA1: "All Natural" food products exposed

http://www.greaterfaithdeliverance.com/_all_natural__food_products_exposed

Evidence 3 of Chunk 1 of MA1: Tyson Foods Injects Chickens with Antibiotics Before They Hatch to

Claim "Raised without Antibiotics

http://www.naturalnews.com/024756.html

Chunk 2 of MA1: We have started to take action

Evidence 1 of Chunk 1 of MA1: Labels on front of food packages coming

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/business/28label.html?_r=2&hp

Evidence 2 of Chunk 2 of MA1: Going Green: Good for the planet, good for the body

http://insideschools.org/blog/2010/10/14/going-green-good-for-the-planet-good-for-the-body/

Evidence 3 of Chunk 2 of MA1: New Way to Help Chickens Cross to Other Side

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/business/22chicken.html?_r=1&hp

HW 11 - Final Food Project 1

In two months, i have learned more about food than i ever thought i possibly could have (fast food, and nightmarish industrial atrocities in particular). Still i wonder a couple of things. Why, after reading Omnivores dillemma and watching Food inc. am i still inclined to eat fast food? Why are other people still eating fast food and meat produced in huge factories where the workers and animals are abused? Why do most americans not think about the food they eat?

By last friday i finished watching Food inc. and reading the omnivores dillemma, by saturday i was eating french fries at a burger king. Believe it or not these images from the movie and book we watched and read had already slipped my mind until i sat down with my food. Halfway in to my meal i thought to myself: "I was just given plenty of examples not to eat this stuff, what am i doing?". So i thought why i decided to eat there in the first place, reason one: I had 10 dollars,when i have this exact amount i always look at it is as the most convenient to buy fast food with it. Reason 2: i had barley eaten all day and was very hungry, the smell coming from the kitchen pulled my senses in without me having any control. Reason 3: I was in a mall, with no other places to eat in the mall, in the middle-of-nowhere queens. When put under those circumstances, my brain cant help but to choose the more convenient option. Although while i will choose the more convenient option most of the time, ever since watching movies about the truth behind these "farms" I have made eating healthy at home with my parents more of a priority. My overall experience from this food unit has helped me grow to be a healthier eater, even if they are just baby steps.

So if i am still eating fast food for convenience, is this why most Americans are eating it as well? After doing further research i have realized the answer to this question is an undoubtable: yes. As stated in an article by Michael Pollan called: The Food Movement, Rising; "Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than any people in history—slightly less than 10 percent—and a smaller amount of their time preparing it". As americans we rely on cheap and convenient food, because that's what were used to (at least since the 1970s). Convenience is not the only reason americans are eating fast food, some americans actually do not know what goes on in these nightmarish industrial factories. This is because huge food corporations such as Tyson hide the secrets behind how they process their food. In an article for 2008, it was revealed that Tyson released false advertising on the way their chickens were raised claiming on their products that the chickens were raised without antibiotics when in reality they were. Even after the company was caught and warned by the USDA to take the false advertisement off of their products, Tyson tried to defend their claim by arguing that the antibiotics they were using were "Antimicrobials not Antibiotics. Even after proven wrong the Tyson vice president claimed that "The vast majority of the industry does exactly the same thing". To me this sounded childish, the vice president is basically saying that "just because they did it, we can do it too"

In conclusion, most americans eat fast food because they do not know the truth behind industrial atrocities. In fact 93% of america is uneducated when it comes to the knowledge of these industrial atrocities. Sadly even some people just like myself eat fast food for convenience even after knowing the truth. Although (as stated before) i have made some changes to my diet, i hope that i will gradually improve my habits of eating fast food. about 4 years ago Mcdonalds was a guilty pleasure, recently i became used to eating it. Now i have gone back to my old habits of making it a guilty pleasure and i will continue to do so after learning what i have learned.

HW 10 - Food, Inc. Response

1. Please summarize the main ideas of the film in a single paragraph succinct precis.

The way we eat has changed so significantly in the past 50 years that it is even more of an astonishing fact how much we don't know about our food is produced. Although some people are aware and have tried to pass laws against food corporations such as Mcdonalds and Tyson, these companies have become so large that they cannot simply be stopped. The USDA and FDA are supposed to protect us from eating meat that is tainted (and countless other examples) but the bottom line is they haven't, and as consumers, we deserve the right to know what's really going on.

2. What does the movie offer that the book didn't? What does the book offer that the movie didn't?

The movie offers more visuals. Reading "The Omnivores Dilemma", i often found myself struggling with the vocabulary and picturing these farms and slaughterhouses and feedlots in my head. When watching the movie, i could really see for myself how horrifying these places were. Although the film offers great visuals, it does not give two opposing view points of organic foods in supermarkets.

3. What insights or questions or thoughts remain with you after watching this movie? What feelings dominate your response? What thoughts?

After watching Food, Inc i wonder why there haven't been more people taking action to try to stop the USDA and FDA. It made me wonder why I haven't done anything to stop this from happening, even by taking small steps of not eating fast food. I finished the film by friday and the next day i was already in a Burger King. I took note to why i did this and essentially i ate fast food right after watching Food, Inc because

1. I was in a mall, ironically with no where else to eat within a mile that wasn't fast food

2. Convenience

3. I was extremely hungry

So there you have it. My desire to keep myself happy and hungry overshadows any consideration to eat healthy unless I'm eating with my parents. I can say for a fact that although i cant escape the desire to eat fast food, i can cut down on eating it so frequently.

HW 7d

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 17

Precis

Most vegetarians eat how they eat because they do not believe it is ethically right to slaughter animals and eat them, but do animals even feel pain when being slaughtered? Does it feel ethically wrong to eat farm animals fed healthy grass and that live in a healthier environment? Rather than the animals fed on industrial farms? In this chapter i answer several of these questions a long with a look at how some people compare the discrimination of animals to the discrimination of races: being a "speciesist "speciesist"

Gems

"That's not because slaughter is necessarily inhumane, but because most of us would simply rather not be reminded of exactly what meat is or what it takes to bring it to our plates."

"Half the dogs in America will receive christmas presents this year, yet few of us ever pause to consider the life of the pig-an animal easily as intelligent as a dog-that becomes the christmas ham"

Thoughts & Questions

I enjoyed this chapter in the sense that it gave me a good insight about why and how people think about meat when they are eating (even if they are aware). This is someone like me, who knows where my mcdonalds hamburger is coming from after taking a bite out of it and paying no mind to the disgusting nature of how the cow i am eating was raised and slaughtered. I also found it interesting how Pollan argued that eating (organic?) meat can help the enviornment.

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 18

Precis

After a few failed attempts to shoot a wild pig (my rifle was jammed several times) i was able to kill my prey. Hunting for my own food gave me excitement and pride, but when "cleaning" the pig i was disgusted by my own actions. Even further, when i received an email of the pictures i had taken with the dead pig i felt a moral disapointment. I came to terms with the understanding of taking the role of a hunter, but still could not make out what caused myself to take a picture with such a disgusting site, with a cheep-ish grin.

Gems

"I felt a wave of nausea begin to build in my gut. The clinical disinterest with which i had approached the whole process of cleaning my pig collapsed all at once: This was disgusting"

"The fact that you cannot come out of hunting feeling unambiguously good about it is perhaps what should commend the practice to us"

Thoughts & Questions

I thought the comparison between how Pollan felt when killing the pig (a sense of pride) and when he actually saw the picture of it himself (next to the dead pig) was interesting because i personally would feel the same way taking the picture and looking at it. Either way i would feel guilty. But i can see how Pollan felt this way when looking at the picture, a picture is a picture and becomes stuck in your mind when it especially a powerful one.

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 19

Precis

Unlike my experience hunting wild pigs, finding morsels of mushrooms required my attention to detail more than i thought. Mushrooms are mysterious and are not easy to find. Choosing the right mushroom is never easy, some are hallucinogenic, some are healthy and some can even cause death. After gaining enough confidence

to find these mysterious mushrooms i was able to pick out a load of them.

Gems

"Without the pop-out effect, finding one's dinner would depend on chance encounters with edible species and, of course, on fruit, the only important food source in nature that actually tries to pop out."

"As it happens the answers to most of my questions about mushrooms, even the most straight forward ones,

are elusive. Indeed, it is humbling to realize just how little we know about this, the third kingdom of life on earth."

Thoughts & Questions

I have never liked the taste of mushrooms but if i were to ever eat a wild mushroom how would i know if it was poisonus or not?

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 20

Precis

Finally i was ready to make and serve my meal. With help from Angelo i created a feast of all the things i had hunted and gathered. While i did add certain things to the meal and broke a couple rules i had created for myself (and even fell behind in my cooking at a point) i still accomplished what i mainly set out to do, which was for me, the perfect meal.

Gems

"Here, i realized, was the West Coast's answer to the Jersey Meadowlands, a no-man's-land where a visitor would not be wrong to worry about stumbling upon criminal activities or the washed-up corpse of a murder victim."

"I suddenly felt perfectly okay about my pig-indeed, about the whole transaction between me and this animal that i'd killed two weeks earlier"

"I realized that in this particular case words of grace were unnecessary. Why? Because that's what the meal itself had become, for me certainly, but i suspect for some of the others, too: a wordless way of saying grace."

Thoughts & Questions

I enjoyed reading how Pollan analyzed fast food in saying that it is a "reverse thanksgiving" and without fast food, food would just be..well..food. I also liked how Pollan reflected on his achievements in cooking his meal that he made from scratch but was still thoughtful and admitting enough to point out his flaws in the food.

HW 8 - Growing Our Own Food

Harry:Growing my own food was an experience that i've never had, and at the end of the day i felt proud that my sprouts had "sprouted" so much. It lead me to realize how rewarding it feels to eat food that i myself had grown from just these tiny little seeds. At first i didn't like the idea and felt like it was forced, just another thing i had to deal with but after a week and the sprouts had grown and i ate them myself, i felt like i had actually accomplished something i could never see myself taking the time in doing (growing my own food).

Richard: I really enjoyed the sprout experiment and our sprouts turned out quite delicious, we are going to make a sprout and shallot soufflé with rare goat cheese from New Hampshire accompanied by a roast free range poulet with organic green market fingerling potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes for dinner tomorrow.

Seriously, I have been practicing what Michael Pollan preaches for over 50 years and I built and operated a sustainable vegetable farm in Chiapas Mexico from 1970 to 1975. I don’t hang with Mario Batali like Mike and I don’t believe that green markets food and organic food is ever going to be a staple for the hoi polloi in the USA, just a reality for the upper middle class and the wealthy, a shameful thing.

Currently we practice micro agriculture and grow chile peppers on our terrace which we bottle as hot sauce for friends and family every year.

In our household we eschew all processed and fast food and eat healthy home-made meals every day.

PS, my oldest son Wolfram is dedicated to providing healthy food for the poor and less privileged in California and has basically worked at this all of his life.

http://www.wolframalderson.com/about_us

HW 7b

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 6

Precis

In the early nineteenth century americans were drinking alcohol more than they had ever before. This was because at the time alcohol was extremely cheap and convenient. Fast forward to today and we see the same thing happening with fast food. Pollan also talks about "super sizing" which is when americans (or people in general) are given a large amount of a certain food at one time it makes them feel like they are eating less ("Going for seconds makes people feel piggish")

Gems

"But the outcome of our national drinking binge is not nearly as relevant to our own situation as its underlying cause. Which, put simply, was this: American Farmers were producing far too much corn"

"the cleverest thing to do with a bushel of corn is to refine it into thirty-three pounds of high-fructose corn syrup"

Thoughts & Questions

I thought it was interesting when Pollan was discussing the origin of super sizing foods for convenience. This really made me think about all the times i have walked into fast food restaurants or just places in general and have seen this (movie theatre popcorn deals, subway: "five dollar foot-long")

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 7

Precis

Pollan and his family take a visit to Mcdonalds for Pollan to investigate what exactly it is about fast food that makes it so appealing to consumers. He discovers that places like Mcdonalds often put ingredients that, with a decent amount of, can kill someone in their foods (the ingredient TBHQ). He also discusses how all this corn that is processed into HFCS is enough to feed hundreds.

Gems

"That perhaps is what the industrial food chain does best: obscure the histories of the foods it produces by processing them to such an extent that they appear as pure products of culture rather than nature-things made from plants and animals"

Thoughts & Questions

I thought that the specifics of how dangerous the ingredients places like Mcdonalds use in their food. I was always told by my dad to read the ingredients. Now i did without even trying to. I also thought the way Pollan ended the section of "Corn" was interesting by basically saying that corn deserved a lot more recognition than it deserved now a days since we are eating so much of it

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 8

Precis

In this chapter Pollan talks about how we eat animals that come from farms, but what do these animals eat on these farms?: Grass. Therefore as he concludes (from the title of the chapter) All Flesh Is Grass. This chapter was an introduction in to the next chapter where Pollan discusses one of the biggest markets and talked about way-of-eating: Organic.

Gems

"'Grass,' so understood, is the foundation of the intricate food chain"

"We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate"

Thoughts & Questions

I found the comparisons between the industrial and pastoral farms discussed in the chapter very interesting. It is interesting because although the farms seem different, just as Pollan stated they have a similar way of doing things: "growing grasses to feed the cattle, chickens, and pigs that feed us."

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 9

Precis

We tend to think that just because a food has been given the label "organic" it is necessarily healthier for us, so we should pay extra for it right? While the fact that "organically" fed chickens are more often likely to be healthier for us, that doesn't mean the foods taste or quality increases, and even if it does it is barley worth the price we're paying.

Gems

"Twenty thousand birds moved away from me as one, like a ground-hugging white cloud, clucking softly"

Thoughts & Questions

I thought this was a great insight of the organic food market, i like how the author (Pollan) visited the industrial farms but i was still a bit confused by what "organic" meant exactly.

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 10

HW 7 - Reading Response Monday

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 1

Precis

Corn is essential to our lives today, it is easy to cross breed corn and human beings have been doing this for years. Corn has been around for over 500 years and is still as fascinating and important but has had to adapt to being processed in well... almost everything. From beer to ketchup you will find corn in almost everything you eat.

Gems

"You are what you eat, it's often said, and if this is true, then what we most are is corn-or more precisely, processed corn" I think it this is a great quote because it sums up the main idea of the chapter in once sentence

Thoughts & Questions

-I thought it was interesting how Pollan did that much research on corn, from finding out how how corn breeds, how corn was introduced to america and how corn is in virtually anything we eat today.

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 2

Precis

George Naylor owns a 470 acre farm in a part of Iowa that has some of the richest soil in the world. Pollan follows Naylor through his days working on the farm and discussing the essential and controversial crop that is corn, and how the government encouraged farm owners to increase the production and size of farms for corn. This chapter also discusses the idea of why farmers still grow corn when it costs more to make it than to sell

Gems

"He calls it the Naylor Curve. ('Remember the Laffer Curve? Well, this one looks a little like that one, only it's true.') Basically it purports to show why falling farm prices force farmers to increase production in defiance of all rational economic behavior"

Thoughts & Questions

-I found it interesting how although corn is used in almost everything we eat it's a hard crop to grow enough of to sustain a balanced life style (paying your bills etc..)

-I didn't much understand the sections in the chapter about using nitrogen for energy as many times as i read it back. From my understand at one point people basically started using a different source of energy rather than the sun

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 3

Precis

The history of how corn used to be transported from place to place dates back to the 1850's when farmers used to just grow as much corn as possible and throw the bags of corn on to trains until they soon realized that didn't work and started a system of organizing the corn. The system of checks given by the Iowa Farmers Cooperative and USDA to George Naylor is designed to keep "production high and prices low" so the only way farmers can make a living is by growing a very large amount of corn

Gems

"Grain elevators, the only significant verticals for miles around in this part of Iowa, resemble tight clusters of window-less concrete office towers, but this day the cement sky had robbed them of contrast, rendering the great cylinders nearly invisible"-great imagery

"Though the companies won't say, it has been estimated that Cargill and ADM together probably buy somewhere near a third of all the corn grown in America"

Thoughts & Questions

-When Pollan was talking about how corn is processed through animals, specifically what does that mean?

-I think that the whole idea of making a living off corn requires you to work extra hard is interesting because typically a farmers work ethic is usually more-so than any other worker (it makes sense to me, regardless of the messed up economics of it all)

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 4

Precis

While visiting the "poky" cattle pen Pollan spends time with a young calf number 534 and gets to learn about it's origins and the whole system of how the USDA feeds cows processed corn and even other cows to make the cows fatter to produce as much as possible. Feeding cows cows (redundant i know) creates a bigger chance for mad cow disease, and along with the conditions these cows live in when we eat these cows we are essentially eating "number 2 corn and oil"

Gems

"You are what you eat' is a truism hard to argue with, and yet it is, as a visit to a feedlot suggests, incomplete, for you are what you eat eats, too."

"So this is what commodity corn can do to a cow: industrialize the miracle of nature that is a ruminant, taking this sunlight- and prairie grass-powered organism and turning it into the last thing we need: another fossil fuel machine. This one, however, is able to suffer"

Thoughts & Questions

I liked how this chapter really dug deep in to the facts of where these cows are fed and how. It really painted a disgusting and convincing enough image in my mind to not want to eat cow meat. But as Pollan stated: "Yet i'm sure that after enough time goes by, and the stink of this place is gone from my nostrils, i will eat feedlot beef again"

Michael Pollan - The Omnivores Dilemma - Chapter 5

Precis

In this chapter Pollan goes in to specific detail of how much corn is actually used in the foods we eat today and how it is exactly distributed.

Gems

"corn has done more than any other species to help the food industry realize the dream of freeing food from nature's limitations and seducing the omnivore into eating more of a single plant than anyone would ever have thought possible"

Thoughts & Questions

what exactly is "sub-stitutionism" as Pollan describes on page 95?