October 29, 2010
October 27, 2010
October 15, 2010
Reflection Essay
Sustainability in food production is the ability to be able to keep the production and distribution continuously going without interruption of demand or bankruptcy. It depends on how the crops are doing, the cost of fertilizer or any other necessities for producing the food, the cost of shipping the food to the distributor, and many other things that are also important. To be sustainable the manufacture would need to be able to keep a flow of the food product at a constant rate, and make sure the food was actually satisfying to the costumers. Good advertising would also be needed to help encourage the costumers to buy the food, and the manufactures would have to make sure the food was safe to eat so the company wouldn’t have a risk of being sued. However, many companies in the United States and around the world have been able to be sustainable over the years, making sustainability seem easy.
Going organic would be a good thing for my body, the animals, and the planet. I am thinking about making this a new part of my diet but, going organic would also cost more money. This fact just doesn’t seem right to me. Organic food could also be the answer to a good percentage of obesity, and might be one of the main reasons why there is so much obesity in the United States. Many families don’t have enough money as it is so why would they waste that money on a head of lettuce? When instead they could be buying three or four cheeseburgers off of the dollar menu at McDonalds. For most people the cheeseburgers taste better and are more filling, but most importantly, they’re cheaper than many other foods that are healthier. So why is it more expensive to eat healthy food than stuff yourself with junk food? Because it costs more money to grow the lettuce compared to the cost to make the cheeseburgers. If people were more aware of what they were eating maybe they would start eating less junk food and more organic foods. Therefore, resulting in a higher demand and lowering the price of fruits and vegetables.
Few people probably know what is really in their food that they’re eating or how it is made. During this project I learned some disturbing things about how my food was manufactured and what they had to do to keep my food fresh and edible. I didn’t realize how many chemicals they put in all of the food or all the procedures they made to make my food taste the way it does. I also learned about how many different products contain some type of ingredient made from corn. However, the most surprising fact for me was the cruelty in the way the factories treated the animals especially cows. Making animals live in these conditions is just unhealthy and unconstitutional. They deserve to live in good conditions even if they are going to be used to make food a month later. Many manufactures don’t care about how they treat the animal or how they’re affecting the planet. Instead they focus on how much meat the animal has on it or how much money they’re making. Seeing the factories treat the animals in such poor care is just depressing, and should be stopped.
Learning some of the details about my food also made me rethink about eating a hamburger or chicken tenders. Many manufactures feed all of their animals corn before being slaughtered because it is cheater and makes the animals fatter in less amount of time. Some cows even have to be rolled to the slaughterhouse because they are too fat to walk. Also, having the animals eat corn causes a greater risk of e coli that can kill people within days. Since e coli likes to eat and live in the corn it remains inside of the corn when the cows eats it, therefore eating the e coli also. After the factories do inspect the meat for e coli but sometimes they miss a piece of the e coli, and that’s all it takes. Then the e coli infects anything else that the piece of meat comes in contact with. For example one lady had her son that was only a couple years old die because of this life threatening bacteria germ. Corn may be cheaper compared to the cost of grass, but later on it might be a greater hardship than what it’s worth.
Another health issue is that the cows are standing in several inches of their own waste before they are being taken to the slaughterhouse and then killed. There are even times when little amounts of their waste can be found in a hamburger patty. Cows don’t deserve to be treated this way even if they later do turn into hamburgers or steaks.
But besides the cows, chickens are also being treated just as cruelly. Many different kinds of hormones and drugs are added to their food every day to make them grow larger, faster. Most chickens don’t even get to see light. Manufactures stuff thousands of chickens in a small, dark room. Then they get picked up in the middle of the night and slaughtered. One woman who had a chicken farm had to pick up dead chickens every day because of the unsanitary conditions. After the men would pick up the dead chickens, she would go through again and find even more. If people knew about this maybe more of them would be making the choice to become a vegetarian.
It’s amazing how little people know about their food and yet still eat it. Before it didn’t really matter to me how my food was made or where it came from, but now I’m really starting to wonder. These big companies that are replacing farms hurt everything from the animals to our bodies to our planet. There could be farms all over Maryland but instead we have our food shipped in from the other side of the country. This is only adding to the greenhouse effect, and is wasting gas that could be used elsewhere. People should be more aware of what they are eating and the process of how it’s made. Maybe then organic food will become more popular.
Food Journal and Produce
MONDAY
Dinner- Contessa Mongolian Beef, Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red
TUESDAY
Breakfast- Dannon Light and Fit Blueberry Yogurt
Lunch- Gold Kist Farms Chicken, H & S Bakery Roll, Tropicana Fruit Punch
Snack- Now and Later, Nabisco Ritz Bitz Cheese
Dinner- Blue Ribbon White Bread, Jif Creamy Peanut Butter, Welch's Concord Grape Jam, Herr's Salt & Vinegar Chips, Deer Park Water
WEDNESDAY
Breakfast- Thomas Original Bagel, Hillshire Farm Oven Roasted Turkey Breast, Yoohoo Chocolate Drink
Lunch- Gold Kist Farms Chicken, H & S Bakery Roll, Tropicana Fruit Punch
Snack- Pepperidge Farm Rainbow Gold Fish, Deer Park Water
Dinner- Met-Rx Big 100 Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Gatorade
THURSDAY
Breakfast- Kellogg's Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tart, Yoohoo Chocolate Drink
Lunch- Gold Kist Farms Chicken, H & S Bakery Roll, Tropicana Fruit PunchDinner- Rice-A-Roni Beef Flavor, Coke
PRODUCE
Sunbury, Pennsylvania- Mushrooms
Imlay City, Michigan- Carrot
Santa Maria, California- Celery
Placentia, California- Strawberry
United States- Red Grape, Pear, Watermelon, Cucumber, Tomato, Green Pepper, Lettuce
Costa Rica- Banana
Chile- Fuji Apple, Jumbo Navel Orange
Brazil- Mango
New Zealand- Kiwi
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