Michael Pollen is an authoritative figure in the realm of food that, indeed, has portrayed some very interesting and beneficial perspectives. However, he also has a tendency to use his position of power to infiltrate societal views when it comes to agriculture and eating. In “Visible Farmers/Invisible Workers” by Sarah D. Wald, Pollen is dissected critically for his lack of attention paid to the workers that allow the United States to produce megatons of food each year.…
In Meagan Flynn’s article “The Promise of Indoor, Hurricane-Proof “Vertical” Farms,” published in The Atlantic, she explains a new type of farm that is emerging. She uses Federico Marques’s farm as her main example of these new farms. She explains that they are vertical farms, “where plants are stacked in trays on shelves, instead of laid out horizontally across larger plots of land. In these high-tech structures, plants don’t rely on sunlight or soil, rainwater or pesticides, but LED lights and minerals instead” (Flynn). Next, Meagan tells the reader of the benefits of vertical farms: they save space, are a more economical way of producing food, and reduce the costs of getting food to the people.…
The 1991 movie “BOYZ ‘N THE HOOD” is written and directed by John Singleton, and the director of photography is Charles Mills. The movie is edited by Bruce Cannon; music by Stanley Clarke,and produced by Steve Nicolaides. Columbia pictures released the hour and seven minutes movie. The main characters of the movie is Doughboy, Tre Styles, Ricky Baker, Furious Styles, Reva Styles, Brandi and Mrs.Baker. The movie is rated R and is considered a drama film, but also considered an action movie. The film setting is in los angeles south central neighborhood.…
The film, Food, Inc., argues that our food system has been corrupted by corporate interests; as a result, we are put in danger by very items that should guarantee our survival. We should reclaim our right to health by eating more locally produced organic food and ensuring all people have access to such food. The film wants the viewers to think negatively of the business of mass production of the foods that we eat on a daily basis. The logical fallacies allow the film to capture the attention and emotions of its audience by giving a reason for their concerns, but without any legitimate statistics or facts to back up their claims. The use of these logical fallacies in the film help strengthen its arguments by making the audience feel as if the corporations are exploiting the farmers and their traditions, causing families to go through avoidable obstacles, and making the companies and government look like the “bad guys” in this web that is called the food industry. However, the reality is that the food industry isn’t as evil as depicted by the fallacious arguments in the film.…
The unforeseen problems that agribusiness has brought to the host cities range from the increase in crime, health problems, communication problems, increase in migration (documented, undocumented, refugees) that leads to prejudice and culture clashes, inhumane working environments, increase in housing cost while working for minimum wage, environmental problems, and much more. In the book, Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America, David D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway point out that the current state of the meat and poultry industry is unstable and inhumane. If large meat and poultry corporations like Tyson and others want to decrease these unwanted problems that come with the food industry, Stull and Broadway…
I had actually already seen this movie. It was a great companion to Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food: The Dark Side of the American Meal. The director and Sclosser wanted to turn Fast Food into a movie, and I think Food Inc covered much of the same material. With my research into obesity and reading the book nothing in the film was surprising. The film I think served to re-ignite a passion in me that I had lost. The film also put visuals to much of the book, and the visuals are disturbing.…
Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser both offer us information that assists in answering the questions at hand. Each journalist offers us their views on how food modification affect our lives. As each discusses issues that pertain to the food we eat they both connect on their overall concern as to what American’s are consuming. Michael Pollan’s article focuses on the food we see on our shelves and the food-like substitutes that are taking their…
To the average consumer, eating has now developed into well beyond an agricultural act, declares Wendell Berry. Apparent in the audience of his lectures on the decline of farming, American citizens are unable to recognize the existence of food beyond the food industry—the world of fake, processed food. Ask any individual from where their food comes and they will answer, “the grocery store.” Stirring Berry to anger, he exclaims that food begins with life, plant and animal; if food begins in the laboratory, the results more accurately categorize as experiments rather than food. Michael Pollan strongly supports this claim by stating, “what reductive science can manage to perceive well enough to isolate and study is subject to change, and that we have a tendency to assume that what we can see is all there is to see” (p. 11). What this means is that food plastered with health claims can only assure the consumer their soon-to-be purchase has been on…
As the film advances, it demonstrates the rise of current method of raw food production as a response to the growth of the fast food industry of the 50’s as compared to traditional methods. It makes a strong point by highlighting that a few multinational corporations who dominate the modern food chain and its production have skewed interests. The emphasis of these food corporations like Monsanto is on business and profitability rather than food quality or health and safety - of the food itself, of the animals produced themselves, of the workers on the assembly lines, and of the consumers actually eating the food.…
In the article Not All Industrial Food Is Evil, published on August 17, 2013, in The New York Times, Mark Bittman questions how a pound of tasteless and watery tomatoes cost $2-$3 a pound when 2lbs. of canned tomatoes, that had a better taste to them, could cost only half that amount. Now that businesses have to produce so much food for the population and with the processes tomato market is international, with increasing pressure from Italy, China, and Mexico (Bittman, 2013), the question of how can they produce so much food at a timely rate, yet make sure it had nutrition?. We are surrounded with the Mid Wests idea of farming with overcrowding animals in pens, and crops used for junk food, fuel, and used for the animals to feed them with. Canned tomatoes and fresh market tomatoes are grown the same way, canned ones just have a few extra steps added to them.…
The documentary Food Inc. brings us closer to the reality of mass produced food. The purpose of the video is to open the families, meat lovers small shops and restaurants eyes and smarten them up about how the food comes to their plates. Its also sending a message to these big companies, saying that we know what you guys are up to. The food we are buying and thinking thats healty, is actually not healty at all. During the processing of our food the big companies have absolutely no mercy to people who will slow them down or cause a problem or damage their company name. Big food companies in USA such as Tyson , McDonalds and etc. prefer efficieny of their products for human health.…
Studies have shown that many people all over the world are unaware of where their food comes from. When an individual goes to consume a food product, he or she could be completely oblivious to the methods of manufacture, processing, packaging or transportation gone into the production of the food item. It is often said that ‘ignorance is bliss’ – perhaps this rings true in the case of food, its origins and its consumption as well. In such a scenario, eating well could seem like an unlikely prospect. The definition of ‘eating well’ in modern times seems to have gone from eating healthily, to eating ethically. The manner in which food is produced and consumed has changed more rapidly in the past fifty years than it has in the previous ten thousand years (Pollan and Schlosser, 2008). With this swift transformation, various ethical issues came to the fore. Food production is now done large scale in factories, rather than in farms. Mass production of various types of food, from crops and vegetables to seafood and meat, is very much the norm. The fact that food is mass produced nowadays is already something that a lot of people do not know about. The reason behind this is that food producing firms do not want the consumers – their customers – to know too much about the food manufacturing industry (Pollan and Schlosser, 2008), in the fear that customer loyalty could be lost upon their finding out various truths. To retain their customer base, according to documentary film ‘Food, Inc.’, narrated by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, the image associated with food in the United States of America is that of an American farmer. Various motifs plastered all over food packaging and advertisements for food products, such as green pastures for grazing cattle, picket fences, the typical farmhouse, vast meadows and, most importantly, the farmer, lead consumers to believe that their food still comes from farms, or at least a pastoral version of small time cottage industries. With…
This documentary is more or less broken down in a ¬¬form of chapters, using supportive authors of several books on food industry, interviewing knowledgeable individuals, safety advocates, and farmers to advocate the reality of food industry. The documentary first illustrations a supermarket filled with different food items. As the camera focuses on the fruits and vegetable the speaker states “The tomatoes you buy in the grocery store are picked when green and then ripened with ethylene gas.” The process of food production has changed in the eyes of many, over the years. Many of us don’t know where the food comes from. Since 1950’s the fast food industry have had transformed the current method of raw food production. The goal is, “production of large quantities of food at low direct inputs (most often subsidized) resulting in enormous profits, which in turn results in greater control of the global supply of food sources within these few companies.” Only top four companies are handling the meat industry, which are implacable to the animals, workers and environment. The consumption of meat by an average American has raised tremendously so has the demand of fast foods. The methods of production have whole new level. First, thirty percent of American land is based on corn. The government policy pays farmers more to overproduce this easy-to-store crop. The corn is then modified in different chemical forms, which is used ninety percent in most of our industrial foods. The farm animals are feed corn to increase their weight for high dense meat. The cows, chicken, pigs and more over…
Robert Kenner explores a valid problem of the real objectives of the food industry and the reliability of the food that is sold in markets and restaurants. The market for food is much different now than how it was over fifty years ago. The ultimate goal of food industries now is to make profit. With this mentality, the lives and…
Most off our food is handled and processed by somebody else. The truth is Americans don’t have the time to farm and nor do the dirty bits. In America, whoever does the best in the fourth quarter controls how things will run, with the ever growing hunger for wealth there is no limit to what can be achieved. An American Filmmaker, Robert Kenner, released a documentary Food Inc, a perfect example of greed and disregard for what can be considered ethical in the food industry. Kenner was inspired to make this film after reading Fast Food Nation to show how portray the whole supermarket has become industrialized almost resembling the fast-food industries. The documentary Food Inc. is about slaughter houses, food manufacturing, and other food related subsets. The film relies heavily on visuals and also the commentary used statistics and facts creating attitude.…