Food Inc.

And now the sister blog to Eric Schlosser's lecture from earlier in the year, on his baby Food Inc. There's not really much I can say that either he or Michael Pollan brought up that wasn't also covered in his film and thus wasn't also probably covered on here.

I do want to say, though, that people may not realize it but we have taken our first step to actually reforming the food industry. How? Universal health care. Now that we have passed a bill for the basic structure of a universal health care, we have started to address the health of the people and how best to keep us healthy. The next step, is tackling the costs and, ultimately, some of the causes of the major health problems in this country, and as Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan keep telling us, it's mostly from the food industry and the raging obesity rate in this country.

Now that we have universal health care, that family in the film that has to live on a dollar a piece per meal will be able to afford more because hopefully the cost of medication will have gone down. That goes a long way to putting more money into the people's pocket so that they can actually afford healthy food. (I'm still amazed that anyone would think eating out was healthy at all - but it is getting healthier. Panera Bread is supposed to be one of the healthiest fast food restaurants.)

There is one other thing I would like to mention that isn't necessarily directly related to the movie, but I imagine it helps the meat industry in the same way that the pharmaceutical industry used it to keep costs low: lobbying. I really, really hate lobbying. Too often it drives the policy of this country and that is the very foundation of a corrupt government. I would very much like severe limits to be put on how much you can lobby say, each month, but I know it's not likely these regulations will pass since it's all about lining the pockets of our representatives and senators.

Much like how the food industry has a bunch of high level cronies running many of the institutions that are supposed to keep us safe, money is the driving factor here. Something should be done about it. I have no doubt that something will eventually been done about it too. It probably will not happen in the near future, but I predict a backlash of sorts to eventually hit Washington DC.

At the moment, though, we need to get through the insanity of the Republicans. They really need to level out before we'll be able to make anymore meaningful progress.

Sustainability - The Omnivore's Dilemma

If there is one thing this book has sort of reinforced is the reason why we industrialized food in the first place instead of sticking to less mechanical means. Because it's cheap, and organic living cannot be managed on a mass scale.

I hate to say this, but when I read that Whole Foods has virtually fallen into the same trap as the rest of the industrialized food industry, I was rather amused. Why? That's certainly not a good thing, but it goes to show that no matter how righteous one feels about saving the animals and providing organic fruits, you're still not much better than the industrial machine. They tried to fight it and they pretty much failed.

Because you cannot ship organic foods straight from the farm, across country, to a grocery store! Everything, thus, has to be local if you want straight organic foods and that simply is not possible, at all, for every city. Where is New York going to get their organic foods if there can't be any preservatives? Are there enough farms around there to feed 8 million people (I don't even know how many people live in New York. That's just a ballpark figure and it's probably very wrong) and the rest of the surrounding area? I'm pretty sure farm lands are in short supply up there. Not that they don't exist but that they cannot possibly produce enough to feed that many people. And even if they do, what about the surrounding areas? They'd just starve?

To be quite frank, though, I seriously doubt anyone is going to be able to get rid of the food industry completely. It may produce extremely unhealthy foods and have animal abuse (I love animals too and I think the FDA should look this more closely!), but it does make food on a mass enough scale to feed the 300,000,000+ in our population.

I guess you could rightly call this my primary criticism of this book. It's saying a lot about how good Joel Salatin's farm is, how much it produces, and how it produces but it is not saying anything about how we can transport this. Other than the fact that Joel Salatin refuses to go beyond local.

This is probably what I find annoying about quite a few environmentalist writings that we've read. They totally ignore practical reasons as to why Salatin's way farming hasn't spread like wildfire to other farmers. He seems to be making a decent living. And part of that is because it simply is not practical! Organic food can't be shipped! Or isn't supposed to be shipped because they prohibit the use of preservatives.

Durning did the same thing, because I criticized his article which was so bent on proving the American people are ill with consumerism, that he totally ignored the fact that happiness is quite largely based on job satisfaction. He was so certain materialism is the sole cause of happiness that he completely ignored how job satisfaction is pretty much at an all time low. Big business has CEOs that keep awarding themselves huge bonuses and severance checks(even for doing a crappy job), and meanwhile their poor employee on the lowest rung of the ladder is constantly ignored and withheld bonuses despite working 40+ hours a week. Yes, NOTHING wrong or even pessimistic about that picture at all. (See? I'm not a capitalist through and through. Unregulated capitalism is horrible! Ergo, our current financial crisis right now.)

The Omnivore's Dilemma

There is a point where limited scope of the situation is a real distortion to the reality of the situation, but I guess I never actually knew just how pervasive this problem of families eating only fast food really was. I even worked in the fast food industry for four years and I never realized how bad it really was. Had I suspected? Oh yeah. I knew that my friends' families usually ate out or, at the very least, did not actually sit down for a dinner together. It was every man for himself, usually.

I certainly remember the diet craze that swept the country, but I also do not remember my grocery stores actually changing all that much. My parents tried to partake in the craze, but my brother and I remained aloof. My mom usually cooks dinner at night and although my parents would pick and choose what things they ate, everything was still made and my brother's and my habits never changed.

I definitely remember the videos that had come out about the fast food industry that was meant to show incriminating evidence about how bad the food was and my reaction was, "What? People didn't already know this? Of course it's not good for you!"

And, as I stated in a previous post, it can drain your wallet fast.

Now, the actual book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. I like how he starts off with how ridiculous these diet crazes have gone when he says, "Somehow this most elemental of activities - figuring out what to eat - has come to require a remarkable amount of expert help. How did we ever get to a point where we need investigative journalists to tell us where our food comes from and nutritionists to determine the dinner menu?"

Yeah, I don't know either, Mr. Pollan. Although, you could take this several different ways. Forget what has actually led us to this point, you decided to focus on actually telling people what to eat. Well, that is nice and practical. Hopefully it will actually make families healthy, but I'm going to go ahead and say that there is actually a social problem at work here.

It all starts with the beginning of the century, when women stayed home and did the chores and the men worked. Man would come home to a nice dinner made by his wife. Well, now the women work and now they're tired when they come home too, but still, somehow, the dominant mindset is that the woman should still cook the dinner. Why can't Mr. Man do it? Or why can't they just pitch in together to create a healthy meal?

I will fully admit that my mom cooks the majority of the meals at our house (that's mostly because she's the best cook), but my dad occasionally cooks, mostly grills. Since my Freshman college year when I had to survive on horrible, horrible dorm food, I have craved home-cooked meals and I actually bothered to start cooking myself. So, this winter, when I'm working on my portfolio and not going to Dairy Queen, I'll probably end up cooking quite a few of the meals. Why not? I'm fully grown, I wont' be carrying a job, and I'm staying under their roof, ergo I have the time and the obligation to cook.

There is one more thing I would like to address that he finished his introduction with:

"Many people today seem perfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them."

I am not ashamed to say I am one of those people, simply because I just don't care. I really don't. When these dieting crazes and shocking videos of what's really behind the fast food industry came out, I made sure not to bother with them. I had no interest and, as stated above, was actually surprised people weren't already suspecting at least some of the dirty secrets behind the fast food industry.

At the moment, there are far more pressing issues going through my mind like, "Will I get a job? Where am I going to apply? Crap, I need to do this paper! Shiiit, I could lose my scholarship if I don't make the grade in this class!" When you're a poor college student, who doesn't have anything close to a kitchen (no, microwaves don't count) then how you're going to eat a healthy meal just doesn't factor into your daily thoughts.

I probably think of the future and what lies there far more than most people do in a life time, but when it really comes down to it, that's the future. I'm in the present and all I can really do is live in the present. Maybe once my metabolism slows down, I will actually take greater care in what I eat, but until then...I will worry about what readings I have due for classes tomorrow and the day after that.

Thankfully, I do have the added bonus that I have spent the majority of my life eating home-cooked meals, a luxury that it appears most people have not had the opportunity to do and I feel sorry for them.