Industrial food paper

The industrial food system is food being produced in mass quantities reaching all the supermarkets and fast food restaurants around the country and other countries. It keeps food affordable for everyone. Scientists work to invent new food products to make more money. Trucks ship everything everywhere. The industrial food system is based on fossil fuel, cheap labor and the idea that it is better to produce as much as possible by doing things as fast as possible for as cheap as possible. While people all over the world are being fed by the system, the long term damage caused by it will not be easily fixed.
Explaining how a cheeseburger from a fast food place got to you is a good way to explain how the industrial food system works. First fields of genetically modified versions of corn are planted and then harvested. Farmers are made to grow more and more every year because of the price and scientists have to come up with ways to use the extra corn every year because of the extra surplus. One way to get rid of the surplus is to feed it to animals. To make things more efficient cows along with pigs and chickens are kept in small pens. They are fed corn which is not what nature designed cows to eat. It causes them multiple health problems like acid in the stomach. By the time they are about to die from the health problems they are sent to a slaughter house anyway. From there people are made to work cutting meat and gutting cows but the lines move too fast and they cut themselves and spill the guts all over the meat. The leftover parts of the meat are used to create the beef patties which are sent to the fast food places.
Along with the hamburger the soda that comes with the value meal also is a way to use up the surplus of corn. High Fructose Corn Syrup is the sweetener used. The fries come from huge fields of potatoes and nothing but potatoes and the salt comes from mines that seem to be at the center of the earth. Fossil fuel powers all the trucks used to bring the food to that one restaurant. My experience with the industrial food system is a good experience. Since it is everywhere there is no escaping it. It is less expensive than organic food and fast food tastes good. It isn’t as healthy but I haven’t had any major health problems yet.
The industrial food system is the primary source of U.S. nutrition because the food is cheap and there is a lot of it. 100 years ago, meat was a special occasion in an average household. Since there is so much corn, cows can grow so much faster and since they are crammed into small places more cows can be raised at once. This makes meat much cheaper then if a farmer raised cows by letting them graze on grass. Also it allows people all over the country to enjoy the same foods. 100 years ago you were stuck with the local farms.
One of the most important problems with the industrial food system is the treatment of the animals. Cows get fed many things which they would not naturally eat. They are meant to eat grass, not corn. They are also fed the blood and meat of the dead cows. Cows are herbivores, meat and blood should definitely not be in their diet. All the animals of the industrial food industry are treated as objects not as living things. They are living in filth and manure which causes ecoli outbreaks. Another problem is the CEO’s of all the companies that benefit from the industrial food system. The meat factory speeds up the line so workers have to take drugs to keep them focused and even then many people get injured. The line moves so fast that the people who gut the cows make more mistakes and shit gets into the meat. The owners of the fast food places don’t care as long as they are making money. The industrial food system encourages farmers to grow increasingly larger crops of corn every year. This presents a huge problem. More space will be used for corn fields and more corn will have to be eaten. Humans will become more over weight with all the food there is. Also more food means that it will be able to support a larger population. More fossil fuels will be needed to keep things running and that won’t last very long. The earth can’t support a rapidly increasing human population.
The Industrial food system matters because it is able to provide food at affordable prices to everyone in the country. If the industrial food industry didn’t exist, the population would not be as large as it is today. It is one of the reasons for progress in society.
The system tells us that we just want to have something in our stomachs. A hamburger at McDonalds will quickly fill the stomach of a hungry person not paying attention to taste probably because he is talking to friends or paying attention to the road in a car. I now know that there is shit in the meat but I will continue to eat it because it is most convenient. The more expensive a food is does not mean it is free of the industrial food system. Gourmet cheese ravioli is just as bad. The cheese probably came from a cow in a small pen with machines sucking on the hormone injected utters. There is very little a person with a busy life can do to escape the industrial food industry.
The situation the industrial food system has put us in is not good at all. It relies on fossil fuel and everyone knows that it will not last forever. 100 years ago the human population was approximately 1,500,000 people. The current population is about 6,660,000,000 people. Even if fossil fuel lasts another 100 years or even 50 more years, there is a chance that the population could reach 10,000,000,000 people because the industrial food industry will be able to produce enough food to feed all these people. The Earth can’t handle all those humans. Cities will get bigger, corn fields will get bigger and humans will get bigger themselves. The environment will be destroyed and then humans will have trouble surviving. The industrial food industry might seem good because it supplies people with a surplus of food, but it is doing more damage then people know.