A Bold Perspective on Food
Over the past few decades, our food
habits have changed drastically. Ranging
from how we eat to the types of foods, we consume. Does anyone even pay attention to what is
actually going into his or her body? It was
not until recently when movies like: Super-Size
Me and Food, Inc. hit the media
that people began to pay attention to the “junk” that would fill their
system. Chemically processed foods have
become a “brand” to our nation ever since there was solution to the 1970
inflation cost in farming. Local farmers
entered a depression with the spike in food costs. As the food prices started to decrease, there
were more people in the world and more people mean more food. The farmers had a rough time keeping up with
the production of food while keeping the costs low. So what was the solution?...Factory Farming!
Factory farming was able to provide
mass food production at lower costs. How
could we be so blind to the mass changing in food? Factory farms took over control of the food industry;
this allowed them to mass produce food providing more food at lower cost. Unfortunately, there is a high price to pay
for the low cost. The FDA has allowed many standards in food
production that they label as “natural and unavoidable” (Defect Levels Handbook, 2011) . As a standard the FDA now allows up-to 30
insect fragments and one rat hair per 100 grams of peanut butter (Defect Levels Handbook, 2011) . Tomato sauce averages a mold count of about “6 sub-samples is 34% or more and the counts of all of the sub-samples are more than
30% (Defect Levels Handbook, 2011) .” Most of the food that is now being processed
in factories have lower regulations than say an organic farmer! It is very common to find mold, rat
hair/fecal matter, insect fragments, and fly eggs in many of our fruit and
vegetable products.
Food, Inc. also
brought into perspective for most people the simple fact that our meat is no
better than our fruits and veggies! Today
more than 8 million women are at higher risks with bladder infections that have
no cure (Hartman, 2012) . Why?
Because chicken farming also became part of our factory farms, when
eating chicken you are consuming high doses of antibiotics. When you consume large doses of antibiotics
your body eventually begins to reject them, therefore, when you seek treatment
for an infection you are left lying hopeless! Hartman (2012) writes, “A growing number of
medical researchers say more than 8 million women are at risk of
difficult-to-treat bladder infections because super-bugs – resistant to
antibiotics and growing in chickens – are being transmitted to humans in the
form of E. coli.”
You may have heard the recent buzz
about GMO’s, but what is it? GMO stands
for genetically modified organism! Yes,
that’s right ORGANISM! They are foods that are so processed that we cannot even
call them “food”. Almost all of the
foods you see on the shelf at your local grocer now contain GMOs. There have been several bills proposed to
congress, in attempts to require companies to place a GMO label on their
packaging. As of today, this is still an
ongoing battle! “The biotechnology
industry is exploiting this loophole to push millions of tons of GM crops into
the EU food supply, unnoticed by consumers. This is despite the fact that plentiful
supplies of GM-free animal feed are available (Light, 2012) .”
We have an overabundance of corn; corn
is easy to grow taking little time. Corn
has been the sole ingredient in many of our foods. It is now what we feed our cattle, chicken, fish,
pigs, and humans. Many of our products
consume “corn material”, even things that you may never have thought about,
such as: animal feed, diapers, batteries, juice, soda, gum, soap, paint and cosmetics,
just to name a few! What does this mean
for our animals?
Animals especially cows have a highly
complex digestive system, one that is made to feed on nature—grass! Factories looked for ways to speed up the
production of these animals and corn was the way to go. When cows especially, eat corn, they become
fatter more quickly—14 months—allowing them to be sent to the slaughterhouse
and placed on the shelf in half the time (Pollan, n.d) . Pollan (n.d) states, “The problem with this
system, or one of the problems with this system, is that cows are not evolved
to digest corn. It creates all sorts of
problems for them. The rumen (cow’s stomach) is designed for grass. And corn is just too rich, too starchy. So as soon as you introduce corn, the animal
is liable to get sick.” Since the
factory farming process has been on the rise, we have seen higher outbreaks of
E.Coli H7:0157 infecting many humans. Factor
standards have changed the way they process meat, in attempts to prevent E.Coli
outbreaks. The meat is now cleansed in
high levels of ammonia…how is this any safer to humans?
I believe that more people need to be
aware of safety standards and production standards when it comes to
consumption. We allow this cycle to
continue by purchasing the products and not taking account for our own
actions. The more people that enter the
world, the larger amounts of food that will be consumed, thus allowing the FDA
to continue allowing factories to mass produce foods. It is our job to stand up for what we wish to
consume. It is our job to make sure that
we are well educated in this aspect. The
media will only notify us if there has been an outbreak, and only if the
outbreak consumes/harms enough people.
As a favor to yourself and your families….become educated!
Sources
Defect Levels Handbook. (2011, November 09). Retrieved from FDA:
http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidancedocuments/sanitation/ucm056174.htm
Hartman, B. (2012, July 11). REPORT: Superbug
Dangers in Chicken Linked to 8 Million At-Risk Women. Retrieved from ABC
News:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/07/11/superbug-dangers-in-chicken-linked-to-8-million-at-risk-women/
Light, A. (2012, March 12). Health Studies - The Dangers
of Meat Consumption: Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes. Retrieved from
Natural Cures:
http://humansarehealthy.com/2012/03/health-studies-dangers-meat-consumption.html
Pollan, M. (n.d). Interview Michael Pollan.
Retrieved from Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html
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