HW 10- Food, Inc. Response

Food processing is getting out of hand, and is becoming a huge player in the reason for America's obesity problem. Chickens are now being genetically engineered to grow bigger and have bigger breasts than they normally would in half the time, but are not fed what they should be and are treated very badly. The government allows farmers to sell corn at a lower cost of production, and 30% of US land is devoted to corn growing. Corn is consumed by all animals on a farm, and even fish are being fed corn now. However, cows were not designed by nature to eat corn, and it is proven that corn makes them sick with diseases such as E-coli. This results in many foods that we eat being contaminated with the E-coli bacteria. If those same cows were fed grass for just 5 days, 80% of the E-coli in their systems would be flushed out, but the industry doesn't care about that. Heavily subsidised calories from fast food are cheaper, which is why obesity is such a big problem, espcially among poor people.

Although the general idea of both the book The Omnivores Dilemma and the movie Food, Inc. was pretty much the same, there were a few different positive and negative aspects to both of them. For instance, the book focused a lot more on the details regarding the polyface farm as well as organic food. It also addressed the author's experience creating a meal by living the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, where the movie didnt't speak about that at all. However, one of the advantages of watching the movie in my opinion is that you can hear the tone of voice that is used by some of the characters that we had previously read about in the book. For instance, I feel like I learned a lot more about the type of person that Joe Salatin really is from the movie by actually listening to him speak about how he feels about industrial farming.

The main thoughts that this movie left with me have to deal with becoming a vegetarian. I'm sure that there will be a lot of talk among my classmates about vegetarianism after all of the disgusting things that we saw in the movie relating to processed meat. Although this movie did an excellent job of turning me off to fast food, it did not convince meat to give up meat eating altogether. It tastes great, and is a good source of protein no matter how badly processed it may be, however I do believe that I will cut down on my meat eating, because nothing is truly threatening for you if it is consumed in moderation. If I believed that the people really did "vote" for the food that would be produced and that I actually could change the way these farm animals were treated, I might consider becoming a vegetarian. Otherwise, I would rather enjoy good quality meat even if it is unhealthy for me and lose those few years of my life, because in my opinion food is one of the world's greatest gifts and joys.