HW 11 - Final Food Project 1

Experiential

For the last part of the food unit, I decided to put the things that I had learnt by reading Omnivore's Dilemma and by watching Food Inc. into action. Both the book and the movie stressed the point that industrial production of food is a cruel and unhealthy system. So for the last leg of this unit, I decided to not eat anything for 72 hours that is made in an industrial factory. This included all kinds of meat, vegetables and fruits grown with pesticides, dairy products from industrialized animals, and eggs from industrialized chickens. This may sound preposterous and extremely difficult but to be honest, it wasn't.

I started my special diet from Friday and I ended it today (Sunday). Being raised in a family who always eat meat for lunch and dinner, it was quite difficult for me to convince my parents that I would be a vegetarian. My job got a lot harder because my sister was coming home from college and we would be celebrating her "outstanding success" my going out to a restaurant. In the restaurant my mom was getting quite annoyed with me because I would not touch any of the food since I did not know where it came from but I was pretty sure that it was industrialized food. So to be on the safe side, I didn't eat any of the meat. I really didn't want my whole family to be angry and upset so I decided to eat some Nan bread with lentil. I figured those had to be hand made for the most part. Right?

I was really hungry when I got home that night and my family talking about how delicious the meal was did not help. I went straight up to my room, played some video games and went to bed. I did not want to think about how hungry I was. I woke up very late on Saturday. I had completely forgotten about me being a "non industrialized food eater" and was about to go eat some breakfast when my mom reminded me (very pointedly) about my diet. She also said that we didn't have any food that would (and I quote) "fit the majesty's liking". But to my surprise my dad had woken up really early and gone down to the Grand Army Plaza green-market and would be coming back any minute. I was really happy when I heard this because I felt as if I had accomplished something great! I had inspired my dad to eat healthy! My mom didn't really like this since she had a whole meal planned that we would be eating as a family which is a rare occasion since my sister lives in long island.

My dad had come back with enough groceries to last the weekend! He also added that if I wanted to turn into a permanent vegan, I would need to go look for a job since the groceries were really expensive compared to our normal ordeal. Since my mom was overpowered, she had given up trying to change my mind and started cooking our lunch with the new groceries and I made breakfast for everyone. Breakfast was a little different since I couldn't eat cereal, I made everyone omelettes and just a glass of milk with one tablespoon of sugar. My family wasn't really satisfied with the meager meals at the end of the day but I felt pretty happy that I was able to share my experience with my entire family.

After my near 72 hour diet I really didn't feel any different. Some people say (especially in my country) that they cannot survive without eating food X everyday. I used to think the same, I didn't think it would be possible for me to survive without meat for 3 days. It was a little difficult since I didn't have my mom's full support because she did cook meat on Sunday for lunch and it was just torture not to bite into a big chicken drumstick. This experience really made me think of my food values in ways that I never thought of before. I don't think I can ever be a vegetarian for life let alone a vegan. Maybe if I changed up my diet every month or so to be the same as the one i had for the last 72 hours, I could possibly get used to eat and one day not really on meat and cheap food so much.

HW 12 - Final Food Project 2 - Outline

Thesis:

The procedures that the major food industries use to process meat is a nightmarish industrial atrocity that involves many unhealthy chemcals added to sell more for less work. Many people in the US do not know about this and hence it is considered a normal routine, and if everyone knew about the outrageous process that their food is made by, there definitely would be a drastic change in eating habbits in the US.

Argument 1: Increased rates of people getting sick from eating food that is considered normal but is actually very weird.
Evidence: Obesity epidemic
Evidence: Diabetes rates in children and immigrants
Evidence: Death toll from food related incidents

Argument 2: Not enough press

Evidence: You will never see an article in a well known newspaper (ex: NY Times) about what the inside of a slaughter house looks like.

Evidence: Unhealthy fast food industries are still making billions.

Evidence:Industrial slaughterhouse structure compared to Polyface farm structure



Citation:
http://www.obesityinamerica.org/
Diabetes Article
Text: Fast Food Nation
Text: Omnivore's Dillema
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/help-needed-require-video-cameras-in-slaughterhouses/
http://www.socialistalternative.org/publications/fastfood/ch3.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/

HW 7D

Chapter 17

Precis

It is considered politically incorrect for a person in today's community to be racist. But as little as 150 years ago, it was a norm to have slaves. Is it too much to hope that it will be possible that in another 150 years it will be politically incorrect to kill animals for their meat? Animal Rights activist, Peter Singer, is one of the most motivational authors. His writing convincingly refuted all the little things I could think of that would support eating meat.

Gems

“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

Animals that are fed in CAFOs suffer unimaginably. Not just physically, but mentally as well. They are treated as if they are machines in their money making factory, not living beings. Fortunately, they do not live long enough to suffer extensively.

Chapter 18

Precis

I was very excited for my first hunting experience. We started really early and headed to a popular hunting spot for pigs. I wanted to know what it would feel like to hunt somewhat similar to how our ancestors did back in the old days. To Angelo however, it was all about the meat and having a good time. When we finally saw a pig, all the hunters gave me the go and I was felt ready but I missed the shot. I hadn't pumped my gun. I eventually however did kill a pig, a pig that probably weighed around 190lb. Same as me. I was excited when I had taken the shot and heard the pig slam to the ground but while we were cleaning it, I wanted to throw up.

Gems

-“Here, I decided was one of the signal virtues of hunting: It puts large questions about who we and the animals are, and the nature of our respective deaths, squarely before the hunter, and while I’m sure there are many hunters who manage to avoid their gaze, that must take some doing.”

-“And what was I so damned proud of, anyway? I’d killed a pig with a gun, big deal.”

Thoughts

If I ever go hunting, I will always think back to this time right now. I will always remember how Pollan felt when he had shot his first game and try to compare it to how I was feeling. Pollan is really talented and describing events that meant something to him. He uses vivid description of very second and of all of his thoughts. and to me, that is just amazing reading material.

Chapter 19

Precis

Its time for the last leg of my "Paris Hilton" journey, foraging. Being an omnivore and eating from an industrial food system all my life, it is hard for me to identify which mushrooms are good for me and which aren't. It was quite difficult to find someone that would show me where I can find mushrooms because the spots are very rare and precious. I now understand why, now that I have a spot of my own, I won't tell a soul about it.

Gems

-“Wild mushrooms in general throw that dilemma into particularly sharp relief, since they confront us simultaneously with some of the world’s greatest rewards and gravest risks,”

-“If the soil is the earth’s stomach, fungi supply its digestive enzymes – literally,”

Thoughts

I have never liked mushrooms. They always tasted weird to me so I cannot really relate to how Pollan was feeling when he first found his mushrooms. However; I watch a lot of movies about medieval times and in those, mushrooms are treated how gold is treated today. They will fight over it, protect it, and trade it for safety. Since mushrooms all look similar, I would never go out to the forest and try to live off of mushrooms, one mushroom can be delicious, while the other can poison you.

Chapter 20

Precis

Now its time to put everything together. Combine all of experiences in the different food systems and make the perfect meal. I won't focus too much on the industrial system since it can kill you... I will focus more on the natural stuff. Giving my friends and me a connection between what they are eating and the environment.

Gem

-“Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honor the things we’re eating, the animals and plants and fungi that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the places and the people that produced them,”

-"The fact that just about all of those hands were at the table was the more rare and important thing, as was the fact that every single story about the food on that table could be told in the first person."

Thoughts

Wow! I always thought that eating healthy and sufficiently would be expensive! Pollan made so much but it cost him almost nothing compared to all the benefits he was getting. I feel smarter after reading this book but kinda dumb at the same time. All this information was right in front of me my whole life, yet I never willingly tried to figure it out.

HW 9 - Freakonomics Response

In Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner, the dominant discourse of correlation being the same thing as causation is examined. One of the things that they studied were the fact that many people in our society today have very unique names compared to names that are very common. Since the beginning of modern civilization, people have believed that there are some names that will increase a person's chances of success in life. Freakonomics showed an experiment done by a Harvard professor to see if there was indeed any correlation between names and a person's future. The study showed that a white man with the name, Greg, will get a job faster than someone who has a very stereotypical black name, Tyrone. The two men have the same qualifications and were applying for the same field of work. The results showed that Greg would get a job 5 weeks faster or 33% faster. That is a very long time. Especially for someone that is unemployed. This was one of the few examples where they showed that correlation and causation is in fact the same thing.

In Freakonomics, the authors seemed to have relied on ethics and moral beliefs of people rather than statistics. For the example with the Sumo wrestlers, all the sumo wrestlers are honored and even feared by the people of Japan. However; "If there is an incentive to cheat, they will cheat." A lot is in the balance if one person loses a match. I personally did not feel very convinced by the sumo wrestler cheating data because I felt like it was more speculation than concrete fact. This is probably because of the fact that the data was so vague since cheating is punishable by death/banishment.

I agree that Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices. This movie explored topics that I thought I knew something about and enlightened me further. There wasn't a single segment where I felt as if it was absurd or weird to me. It all seemed to be issues that I already know something about but in more detail than I would have ever indulged in. For example, I have read a lot about why abortion should be illegal and why it shouldn't, but I would have never thought that abortion could be related to drastically reducing crime rates. The makers of Freakonomics seemed to be able to perfectly send the message they wanted to to the readers/watchers.

HW 7C

Chapter 16

Precis

The anatomy of the human digestive system is marvelous. It lets us eat a variety of food. Compared to the very picky Kaola Bear, who only eats eucalyptus leaves. Because of the thousands of immigrants in US, there is no one traditional food. So there is not nationwide food that everyone likes. This makes marketing companies's job a lot easier. Americans don't have their minds set to one type of food. They will eat everything that tastes good. That is the omnivore's dillema, they have too much choices. They cannot decide between healthy and cheap.

Gems

“Meanwhile, the kids, and Dad, too, if he’s around, each fix something different for themselves, because Dan’s on a low-carb diet, the teenager’s become a vegetarian, and the eight-year-old is on a strict ration of pizza that the shrink says it’s best to indulge (lest she develop eating disorders later on in life)."

Thoughts

Michael Pollan has changed the food habits of many many people. But those people are almost insignificant to the number of people who follow the commands of the big industrial marketing people. What the people need is a man (or woman) of power who can motivate the people to a different level. If only there was a person who was elected to govern the people by the people...

Chapter 15

Precis

I have educated my self first hand with the food from industrial farms and organic farms. Now it is time I must learn about the last category of food. Food that is hunted by me. I have never gone hunting in my life. In America, hunting is more of a recreational sport that you do with your dad. My dad was more of an indoor type guy so he never taught me anything related to hunting or foraging. Fortunately, I had met a man called Angelo who would be helping me through my journey of finding out everything about where food really comes from.

Gems

“…you have to have had a certain kind of dad in order to join the culture of hunting in America, and mine, one of the great indoorsmen, was emphatically not that dad. My father looked upon hunting as a human activity that had stopped making sense with the invention of the steakhouse.”

Thoughts

This Chapter gave us a little bit of insight into Pollan's life as a kid. Especially with the mention of his father. I finally understand why he is doing all these studies and experiments to understand where food comes from. It is not to make money from writing a book or making a documentary. It is to educate people so that people who grew up with parents like his, but aren't open minded enough to do the studies themselves. It is a study meant for lazy people who are willing to accept the truth only if people tell it to them but they will never go out to find it for themselves.

Chapter 14

Precis

After my experience in Salatin's farm, I decide to make a meal for my friends. The healthiest and the most delicious meal I can make. Fortunately, my friends like the food. That would be an understatement, they loved the food. I dedicated the dinner to the chickens that I bought from Salatin's farm. Without the chickens, my friends and I would not have the pleasure to enjoy this wonderful meal.

Gems

“One of the reasons we cook meat (besides making it tastier and easier to digest) is to civilize, or sublimate, what is at bottom a fairly brutal transaction between animals.”

Thoughts

After reading this Chapter, all I wanted to do was visit the country side and get some chicken and ask my mom to re-create Pollan's meal. But alas, with me living in the city, going to a Polyface farm is near impossible. It will probably be a 3 hour drive one way. One day, I will go to a Polyface farm and maybe then I will truly understand the beauty of organic food. Why not just go to an organic market here in the city? Like Salatin says, if you want the truly pure food from the farm, you gotta go down and get it.

Chapter 13

Precis

Salatin has a strict code of conduct; never to feed food that has been genetically modified, meaning, corn. Salatin believes that food should never be shipped cross country. This uses up fossil fuels that could be used for something else. Even though Satalin's food may look more expensive than super market food, it really isn't. With supermarket food you need to deal withthe cost of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water.

Gems

"Oh, those beautiful eggs! The difference is night and day- the color and richness and fat content. There's just no comparison. I always have to adjust my recipes for these eggs- you never need as many as they call for."

Thoughts

The consumers should always know where their food is coming from. The problem with industries is that the meat that they process is never just one animal. Beef for example, a hamburger sold in McDonald's won't contain meat from only one cow, it will always be a mixture of 5-6. This increases the chances of diseases spreading from the cattle to consumers.

Chapter 12

Precis

Today was the day. It was my turn to experience first hand what it is like to slaughter an animal. Many of Salatin's neighbors showed up to help with the slaughtering of the animals so it was more like a family activity rather than a job. It was hard for me to first get used to it. I tried not to look at the animals that I was given to kill. But once or twice I would glance at their eyes and I would only see fear. The chickens were placed upside down in cones so they would be calm and I was supposed to slit their throats. The chickens were later placed into a dumbed down version of a centrifuge where they are cleaned and their feathers plucked. After all the chickens are slaughtered and cleaned, they are placed on a separate section of the farms where people from all over the county showed up to pick up their healthy meat.

Gems

-“We do not allow the government to dictate what religion you can observe, so why should we allow them to dictate what kind of food you can buy.”

-"Make no mistake, we're in a war with the bureaucrats, who would like nothing better than to put us out of business."

Thoughts

Pollan's description of his first time slaughtering an animal was simply stunning. It made me actually imagine my self standing in his place and doing the things that he thought he was never capable of doing. Some people may argue as to why they should buy organic because the animals have the same result as industrial animals. They get slaughtered brutally. To them I say, it is not how their life ends that matter, it is how their life was that truly makes the difference in the end.

Chapter 11

Precis

Efficiency is everything in Joel Salatin's farm. What we consider early is time being wasted to the workers at Salatin's farm. Everything in the farm works in a cycle and in order. Chickens feed from broilers and their feces helps the grass grow, which the cow eats and the cow's feces also helps the grass grow which more cows/pigs can feed on.

Gems

“One of the greatest assets of a farm is the sheer ecstasy of life.”

Thoughts

Industrial farms are cheap but they harm the environment and their consumers at a rate that is unthinkable and food from Salatin's farm costs considerably more but is very healthy and good for the environment.

HW 7B

Chapter 10

Precis

It is sad to see that organic farms like Salatin's are going to eventually become non existent. But for the time being, Salatin is an excellent idol for farmers every where. Farmers who care about healthy living rather than living lavishly. Without using any modern technology, Salatin is able to re-create farming the way it is meant to be done, the way farmers did it 20,000 years ago. Farms such as Salatin's are rare now because of the high cost of maintaining a farm of that caliber with no help from the government. It is only logical to have an industrial farm because of all the more money you could be making.

Gems

“…if the sixteen million acres now being used to grow corn to feed cows in the United States became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road.”

Thoughts

The fact that government endorsed farms are affecting the environment so drastically is nothing short of repulsing. Companies that own the industrial farms need to wake up and realize that this planet is not theirs. They cannot just help destroy it so while they live, they can have fun and the people after them will need to suffer their consequences.

Chapter 9

Precis

Organic farming has spread from little groups of farmers to industries. These industries are a lot cleaner and healthier for both the animals and the people. The companies that own the industries charge the consumers more than the CAFO meat but less than Polyface farm owners such as Joel Salatin. The organic food industry is an $11 billion business. As more and more people are becoming health conscious, organic food is spreading to TV dinners and "fancy" restaurants. The animals that are slaughtered in industrial organic farms, are fed on natural grass so they aren't exposed to any GMOs hence no bacteria in their system that would need pesticides or antibiotics.

Gem

“So it happens that these organic blackberries perched on this mound of vanilla ice cream, having been grown in a complexly fertile soil and forced to fight their own fights against pests and disease, are in some quantifiable way more nutritious than conventional blackberries.”

Thoughts

As the world becomes more and more technologically advanced, farms like Salatin's will start to disappear. With population booming with it the demand for fresh meat as well, Salatin's manual labor will never be able to keep up with the high demand. Even determined people like Salatin will eventually need to give up and hand their land over to industries. I don't think they will ever hand it over to CAFO endorsed companies but they will to organic factories.

Chapter 8

Precis

We looked at the industrial side of the food industry, now we will be looking at the organic side or also known as the "good side". Specifically a Polyface farm in Virgina owned by one of the few traditional farmers in US, Joel Salatin. Salatin is disgusted by how government endorsed "farmers" operate. The very idea of the workers in CAFOs makes Salatin angry. All of Salatin's cattle and chicken feed on grass instead of corn. The process is very natural and environmentally clean. The cows feed on the grass, their manure has fertilizers which help the grass grow again. The chicken feed on the maggots and worms that grow around the cow manure. Thanks to this natural process, the animals never need to be exposed to any special chemicals used to kill bacteria that would normally stick to their skin in an industrial feed lot.

Gem

-“Polyface Farm stands about as far from this industrialized sort of agriculture as it is possible to get without leaving the planet.”

Thoughts/Questions

One question that Pollan never answered was why Salatin refused to send a sample of meat from his farm to him through FedEx. I think Salatin did this so that he would keep to his policy, he wouldn't break his ethics even for a journalist who might give his farm a lot of positive attention. Shipping meat cross country will use up fossil fuels and he also wants to keep his meat local, instead of it spreading all over the world because people would not understand his logic. Pollan portrays Salatin as one of the "good farmers" because his cattle and chickens have a "good life". Even though the animals are still slaughtered, they had a chance to live life like they were meant to by nature.

Chapter 7

Precis

One in three kids in USA eat from a fast food restaurant everyday. One of the most popular fast food chains around the globe is McDonald's. In 1983, McDonald's came with their ingenious and world renown McNuggets. Chicken McNuggets are 56% corn which includes the corn the chicken was fed on also including thirteen other ingredients made purely from corn. It also includes a corn based ingredient called TBHQ. Which if taken without paying heed to the amount, it could be lethal.

Gems

-TBHQ can cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse. Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.

-Why do americans not realize how much corn is infused into our lives?

Thoughts

As most kids, I loved McDonald's. It was sort of a treat for me every time my parents would announce, "Dinner at McDonald's!" The greasy food of McDonald's was heaven for me and I would behave a whole month just so we can go again to the fat paradise. If I knew how unhygienic it was and how unhealthy it is, I would have never entered that place to begin with.

Chapter 6

Precis

Today's craving for corn is very similar to the alcohol craving in the nineteenth century. They are both the result of problem. Over production. In both time periods, the over production of the two substances has led to overnutrition, malnutrition, Type 2 diabetes, and various other health and environmental complications. According to history and the present, if one specific type of food becomes easily available, its value will dramatically decrease.

Gems

"The human appetite, it turns out, is surprisingly elastic, which makes evolutionary sense... Our bodies are storing reserves of fat against a famine that never comes."

Thoughts

In general, most people do not have a lot of self control and I do not understand why that is. I myself do not have a lot of self control. Even after thousands of years, evolution still hasn't made us to learn self control. People buy fast fatty foods because they like it even though they know it is unhealthy. The day mankind is able to control its desires, the world will be a much better and healthier place. Both physically and mentally.

HW 7

The following precis includes my insight on the book, "The Omnivores's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.

Chapters 1 and 2

The first two was chapters of this very intriguing book focused primarily on corn. It talks about the continuing and mostly like unstoppable rise of the the wonderful crop through western culture and the deep impact it has had on our daily lives. Corn is every where, "If we are indeed what we eat, we are corn" After reading about the amazing journey of corn through the past hundreds of years, I could not help but think about the many people that always say, "I hate corn!" I was amazed at how absurd that statement actually is; because if that is truly the case, then that person basically hates every food product that was made in a factory in USA. Another sentence that was a particular gem was, "A notably unhealthy country obsessed with eating healthy." That sentence summarized American culture astonishingly well and made me realized how very flawed this country really is in even everyday affairs like food.

Chapter 3

Corn has fallen from its seat of royalty but it still has the same value. Corn is being produced in an incredibly high yield that the grain elevators can no longer accommodate it. No matter what kind of corn it is, it is piled up by the elevated as golden mounds of grain ready to be shipped too all over the country and beyond. Workers work tirelessly to try and utilize all the corn for maximum efficiency, all 10 billion bushels of it. Thanks to over production of corn, many farm animals who previously weren't corn consumers have no other choice but to accept it.

Chapter 4

Precis

Corn fields in the USA take up more land than New York State. The pungent odor of one of the feedlots can be smelt from many a mile away. The animal wastes that used to serve as a natural fertilizer in farms is now being used to spread diseases among not just the farm animals but humans as well. The cows often eat their own feces along with that of their bretherin. The bacteria that cow consumed will also be consumed by the kid in McDonald's who wanted a hamburger instead of the snack wrap.

Gems

"'Hell, if you gave them lots of grass and space, I wouldn't have a job.'"

Insight

The healthier way is always the inefficient and more costly way. The cows are looked at as if they are just products, like cardboard in a paper factory. If one of them is deformed they are just cast aside. They are all just numbers in a industrial machine. There is no respect for the other species of the world anymore.

Chapter 5

Precis

Corn is one of the most important aspect in our everyday lives. The corn is hardly ever seen in the form of a kernel anymore. Every part of it is processed and artificially engineered to make it into an ingredient in almost every type of food that we like to enjoy. The very existence of natural food is being changed my scientists. Almost every type of food sold in stores nowadays is being changed and new ingredients are being added to make some use of the incredibly over production of corn. High fructose corn syrup is something that is pure poison but yet food companies continue to add it to the products that people continue to consume on a daily basis.

Gems

- "It takes a certain kind of eater- an industrial eater- to consume these fractions of corn, and we are, or have evolved into, that supremely adapted creature: the eater of processed food."

- "There's money to be made in food, unless you're trying to grow it."

General Thoughts and Questions

I follow Alex Jones a lot and he has some very interesting things to say about food. He jokingly made a petition where he asked the food companies to change the name "high fructose corn syrup" to "cancer corn". He was very serious about it because this "cancer corn" is in all of the soft drinks that teenagers consume litters after litters every day. I wonder if open minded people like Alex Jones will ever get their wish and actually be able to stop the food companies from destroying our lives...