I have come across parts of The Omnivore’s Dilemma from time
to time, yet have never sat down to really give it a good read. I found that
the information dolled out about corn and its travel from the field to the
factory incredibly interesting. The dissection of this simple idea of “food”
produced a story that is so easy to overlook, and that’s the scary part. Corn
is something all around us, and apart of us. One of my favorite lines in the
book referred to us as “…processed corn, walking” (Pollan, 23). It is so
engrained in American culture that it had the potential to be abused by
American corporations.
My interest lies elsewhere, for while I do think it is a
shame that corporations have taken advantage of the American populous, whose
fault is that? In my opinion, the consumers have been pointing the finger too
much at these big corporations. To be fair, these big companies deserve much of
the blame, but what I am saying is so do the citizens living and eating in the
United States of America.
One of the most indicative stories of the lack of education
in Americans is the story about Pollan’s son. After a meal eaten at McDonalds,
Pollan asked his son if his chicken nuggets actually tasted like chicken
(compared to the old recipe), to which his son replied, “‘No, they taste like
what they are, which is nuggets…’” (112). This is somewhat of a sad tale,
especially because this is our youth and future generations. Backtracking to
our discussion in class and Kelsey B.’s CYOA, many children are not educated
about food. Our society has removed itself so far from the source, that we do
not even know what we are eating anymore.
My little sister is 11 years old, and she will eat good food
when my mother cooks it. However, she prefers fruit snacks, gushers, lunchables,
and go-gurts. She likes these things because her friends have them, and they
taste great because they are loaded with sugar. I realize that not every family
has the luxury to cook meals from scratch with fresh ingredients, but it is so
important for our society to reverse this trend. Processed foods are hurting
our bodies, our farmers, and the land.
There are so many problems with the environmental effects of
producing corn. Runoff from the synthetic nitrogen and phosphorus, fossil fuel inefficiencies
in producing it, excessive use of antibiotics, and more are some of the
problems with current farming practices. The rich loam that once wrapped our
lands has been abused, and cannot withstand much longer. Sustainable farming is
required if we wish to feed off our land for years to come.
There are so many faults exposed with our farming system in
The Omnivore’s Dilemma. One basic solution for this structure is education. It
is so important to educate consumers, so they make informed decisions. It is necessary
for school systems to educate children in the classroom about these practices
to ensure a healthy future for our people and our planet.
I hope you bring up this up in class on Thursday.
ReplyDeleteI'll elaborate my argument in class, but Pollan did mention corporations who took advantage of farmers after the Nixon administration.
It's a pattern of domestic policies aimed at making things bigger--making production bigger, and when you do that you make the role government bigger, to make the govt bigger you expand the bureaucracy, when you expand the bureau you are spending more money, thus you're also making the debt bigger, and when these policies make the power of corporations larger they spend money aimed at influencing the policies they want. The policies they want are lower regulations. So now you have larger govt, a step farther away from the people, but with less regulations with these ever-growing corporations from that government that represents you. This feeds into a cycle and leads to where we are now: complaints from the people that Washington is too far away from our voices, and in a situation where the politicians' voices who do want to create change become drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
Again, I'll clarify these points during next class.