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Olivia Madrigal

Ms. Wylie

Foundations of Nutrition 1020

19 April 2017

The Truth About Our Food

The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years than the

previous ten-thousand, but the image that is used to sell the food is still an

image of Americas farming America (Pollan, 2008). Looking around the

grocery store, there is a realization that the food industry has framed a

pastoral fantasy for the available food, mainly produce, then anything else.

There are no seasons when it comes to produce in America, because fruits

are picked when theyre green, and ripened with ethaline gas. Your

strawberry isnt a strawberry, but just the idea of a strawberry. What has

become of our food industry?

Food Inc. explored the harsh reality of the food industry. It walks the

viewer through the truths of the food industry among the FDA,

manufacturers, farmers, fast food, factories, and industrial food producers.

What happens when you trace the food on your plate back to the grocery

store, meat packing, crops, and finally to the farmer? Are we going to like

what we see?

The harsh truth is that our food comes from a factory not a farm. In the

U.S., there are national corporations that are controlling a powerful industry,

which affects every consumer in the nation, the food system! It opens up
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about a world that is deliberately hidden. Industrial food began with fast food

in the late 1940s. McDonalds pioneered a revolution that is now considered

the fast food industry. McDonalds is now the biggest beef, potato, pork,

lettuce, apple, and tomato purchaser in the nation. It is also the second

largest purchaser of chicken. This fast food chain has now redesigned how

our food is being produced including the meat.

A few companies are now controlling the food industry, and we are

eating the food controlled by this system. For example, they have redesigned

the chicken species so rather than taking seventy to ninety days for a

chicken to be considered full grown now it only takes forty-eight days. The

goals for companies like Tyson, which is the biggest chicken producer in the

U.S., to Produce a lot of food, on a small amount of land, for a very

affordable price (Pollan, 2008). In Food Inc. animal cruelty becomes

apparent in many animal factories. In the chickens lifetime, they are never

exposed to sunlight. The chickens are so large and top heavy they can only

walk a couple of steps before they become immobile. Antibiotics are in the

chicken feed causing some people to become immune to antibiotics.

We have the right to know about our food. In Food Inc. the viewer is

shown how much America is dependent on the corn crop. So much of our

food and products can be traced back to corn. Thirty percent of Americas

land is corn fields. Corn makes so many ingredients. For example, high-

fructose corn syrup, citric acid, gluten, xanthan gum, fructose, baking

powder, and vanilla extract starch are all products of corn. Corn is also the
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main component of animal feed. Americans are extremely dependent on

meat that the average American consumes about two hundred pounds of

meat per year. Corn is also the main ingredient in animal feed. Corn is really

cheap to make, and because of its starchy component makes animals fat

really quickly.

What consequences do we have when animals no longer live on the

red barn farm in pastoral fantasy shown in advertisements, but instead are

being mass produced in an assembly-like factory? Diseases like e-coli, due to

the inhumane living environments of these animals, travel around so quickly.

It then reaches our food on our table riddled with disease. Youd expect for

the government to step in and take control. Wrong. In the 1970s, the FDA

conducted about fifty-thousand food safety inspections a year. However, in

2006, the FDA only conducted on average less than ten-thousand a year.

During the Bush administration, there were many USDA staff members who

were former employees of the National Farm Industry Association or even the

National Beef Association. As Michael Pollan best describes it, Our

governments own regulatory agencies, like the USDA, are being controlled

internally by the very companies they are supposed to be scrutinizing. We

put faith in our government, but we arent being protected against the most

basic levelour food.

There is no higher standard of food safety when it comes to

contamination reports in meat or poultry factories. Numerous cases of

reported e-coli or mad-cow disease had occurred more than once in specific
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meat factories, but the USDA did not have the power to close down plants

that had cases of contaminated meat. The industry is more protected than

the consumers buying the product. A variety of environmental contaminate

and pesticide residues can be found in foods (Wardlaw, page 596). The

meat industrys solution of diminishing cases of e-coli was to introduce a

hamburger meat filler product, like such used in fast food, and cleanse it with

ammonia and chemicals to kill traces of food-borne pathogens. This meat

filler is used in seventy percent of hamburgers in the U.S. This government

system allows the food industry to not only survive under these dangerous

health conditions, but thrive.

Our food system is so skewed the junk food is cheaper than the fresh

food that is better for you. Who are the controllers of the food industry? The

wheat, corn, and soybean corporations make processed food so cheap, that

it creates the affordability of food a dilemma in many American households.

Its no wonder that with salt, fat, and sugar are addictive ingredients being

so cheap that obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are on the rise. There is a

sort-of mystique when junk food or fast food has the appearance of cheap

food, but in the end, you pay the price in health. More than half the adults

in the U.S. are overweight, thirty percent are obese, and these numbers

continue to climb year after year (Wardlaw, page 150).

The food system has lost all of its integrity and accountability

explains, Joel Salatan who runs a small sustainable farm. In contrast,

sustainable agriculture is an integrated system of plant and animal

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production that will, over long term, satisfy human food needs, enhance

environmental quality, efficiently use nonrenewable resources, sustain the

economic viability of farm operations, and enhance the quality of life for

farmers and society as a whole (Wardlaw, page 600). We have lost the

ability for many farmers to go back to basics when it comes to animal feed.

Grass fed animals are hard to come by in farms. Cows, for example are

natural herbivores. They are not meant to eat corn or antibiotic filler feed as

their main diet. Mega-processing facilities are keeping the consumers in the

dark about where their food is coming from, and how the animals are being

treated.

The meat slaughter houses in the nation have some of the worst

conditions for both the animals and the workers. There are only thirteen

slaughter houses for the beef produced in the U.S., and thirty-two thousand

hogs alone are slaughter at the average slaughterhouse. The workers are

paid low wages, are not allowed unions, offered zero pensions, and are

mostly illegal immigrant workers. The U.S.s corn crop industry left a lot of

Mexican corporations out of work. Due to the poor working conditions (many

workers experience infections from the contaminated animal parts) meat

packing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.

Americans want to pay for the cheapest food, but at what cost? The

government and the FDA can take back control by getting rid of any USDA

and FDA employees that have ties to the meat or farming industry. Several

generations ago the FDA took back control of the tobacco industry by cutting
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the advertisement, and immediately labeling a warning of health risks on

tobacco. The FDA can do the same on food. We need to lobby to cut the corn

crops and tax on junk food. Its time the government criminalizes the true

victimizer.

I chose Food Inc., because I am interested in knowing what I am

eating and where it comes from. It was quite interesting to discover a

startling predicament when it comes to the food industry. This film was

directed by Robert Kenner. It took him about six years to produce the film,

and later won many awards including the 2006 Emmy and a Peabody award.

He alone does not have any health education, however he teamed up with

two highly respected health professionals Michael Pollan (author of The

Omnivores Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) to

produce the film.

The documentary was produced in 2008, but is still relevant today. In

fact, President Trumps choice for the chief of the USDA, Sonny Perdue, has

many ties to the farming industry and meat industry. Before he was a

governor of Georgia (a top chicken-producing state) he sold fertilizer, and

currently has agriculture business deals. So yes, the themes presented in the

film are still applicable today.

I learned that we shouldnt overlook what food is on our plate, and

where it was produced. Food Inc. was a powerful documentary that opened

my eyes to the predicament of the food industry. I think I will now

incorporate meat raised without antibiotics, in my diet, shop locally so I know

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where the food is coming from, and possibly start a small garden this

summer.

Works Cited
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1. Food Inc.. Directed by Robert Kenner. Participant Media. Interviews

with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlossar. 2008

2. Warlaw, Collene, Smith, Contemporary Nutrition: A Functional

Approach, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education 2015, Print