whats good to eat essay

What is a good way to eat? Everybody is different in the way their body uses the food that is given to them. Some people need more calories to just be alive than others. The question is where to get those calories. Of course there are the obvious choices concerning health. For example you might want to choose a salad with chicken in it rather than a bacon cheese burger. But if you are a person with high metabolism and gets enough exercise you wouldn’t have to worry about which one you chose. What you would have to worry about is how it got to your plate. What sort of chemical pesticides were used on the lettuce? How much space did the chicken have to live in? How healthy was the cow before it was killed? Someone could have a diet good for themselves and be completely healthy, but why do that when you could be just as healthy maybe even healthier by eating food coming from an organic sustainable farm. A sustainable farm is the opposite of the industrial food system. Instead of having cows all in one place and all the chickens in another, all the animals are on the same grass. The quality of the food comes how healthy the environment is on the farm. There are no chemicals involved in the farming process which is healthier than feedlots. Farmers markets carry everything the farm produces so it is very accessible. The animals live better lives, workers are not exploited, and it is all sustainable.
Eating plants and animals from an organic sustainable farm is healthy for multiple reasons. The first reason is that organic fruits and vegetables are grown without chemical pesticides. The animals are also not fed hormones or antibiotics. Organic means that you have a closer relationship with the food you eat. Pesticides are just one more step coming between you and your food. It is further from what nature intended it to be. Same goes with hormones and antibiotics in the animals. Animals that live their normal lives should not need antibiotics or hormones. Another reason why the organic sustainable foods are healthier than normal foods is that since things are working they way nature intended it to, all the nutrients are they way they are supposed to be. Since the animals are eating grass instead of corn, omega-3 fatty acids are in the meat instead of omega-6 fatty acids which appear when animals eat seeds. Omega-3s help with neurological development and omega-6s help in fat storage (Pollan). It is important to maintain a 1-1 ratio with these fatty acids. When you eat meat from a sustainable farm you are more likely have that ratio which will keep you healthy. Healthy animals mean healthy meat. Of course if you just eat meat all the time you won’t be healthy but if you balance it with all the other food groups you will be healthy.
Eating food from an organic sustainable farm is very convenient if you live near a farmers market. All you have to do is walk a few blocks and buy whatever you want. You could even start your own organic garden in your backyard if you don’t live near a farmers market. Then to get the meat just go to the supermarket and look on the label to find out where it came from. The prices shouldn’t be too much higher than other foods but it is more expensive. It’s more expensive because it does not rely on corn like everything else. Farmers in the Midwest produce too much corn so any product that has anything to do with corn, which is a lot, is very cheap. Spending the few extra bucks is well worth it.
Ethically, eating from an organic sustainable farm is one of the best food choices a person could ever make. First of all it is not dependent on oil like industrial farms. Even though there are vehicles that use oil, they could live without them. When the peak oil crisis finally arrives, these farms will continue to produce healthy food without a problem. There is no place for oil on this farm. The animals do all the work. They way a sustainable farm works is how the animals do what they are supposed to do. Cows eat grass then drop their waste and move on to another patch of grass. After 3 days when the maggots in the cow pies get big, chickens come and scratch the cow waste all over the patch of grass, which fertilizes the land, and then eat the maggots. Other chickens eat other patches of grass and their waste provides nitrogen to the ground to allow the grass to continue growing healthy. The farm just tries to imitate symbiotic relationships found in nature (Pollan). By doing so the animals are happy doing their job. This is how it is sustainable. The farmers make sure things are working and help the animals along and maximize the production without harming the animals except of course when they are slaughtered. In industrial feed lots, the animals are fed corn all day and have no space to move. They are not happy or healthy. Their lives are meaningless compared to animals on a sustainable farm. Choosing to eat from a sustainable farm is the right ethical choice. Workers are not exploited on sustainable farms. There are no conveyer belts of meat waiting to be sliced at a pace to quick for a normal person. Animals are killed when they are ready to be killed. In industrial meat factories illegal immigrants from Mexico come to this country because the overproduction of corn has destroyed their economy. They work long shifts and sometimes take drugs to stay alert. This doesn’t happen on sustainable farms. Sustainable farms have good ethics.
Eating a balanced diet from the industrial food system with enough exercise will keep you healthy. The industrial food system has 3 major flaws though. It isn’t as healthy as sustainable farm foods, it is cruel to animals, and it exploits workers. You might find a good way to eat using the industrial food system but the right way to eat is by sustainable farms. Michael Pollan the author of The Omnivores dilemma and of Unhappy Meals (an article for the New York Times), has done a lot of research and is very reliable. People should know why it is important to know what the right way to eat is because when fossil fuels are limited in the near future the industrial food system will collapse. In order to get through the oil crisis people need to know about sustainable farms which is how nature intended it to be. Oil made Americans fat and unhealthy, organic sustainable farms will make people healthy again.

article response

I read the article about how calories work. I thought it was interesting that 217 big macs can power a car 88 miles. I thought it was also interesting that food labels dont always tell the truth. How hard is it to write the real amount of calories. Knowing that calories help you breathe and pump blood makes the idea of starving to death worse than i origionally thought.

Peak Oil comments

Since the predictions for global peak oil range from now to 2035 i think society should be doing more to prepare for life without oil. i think life will go back to the way it was before oil was discovered. the population will steady itself out or even decline. I think the reason people arent focusing on the changes that need to be made because its too hard for them to see the future. they want to see it to believe it and it will be to late to change before chaos breaks out.

comment on simone's blog

great paper. I think you should read over your paper to catch grammar errors. YOu explain the IFS very well but maybe you should give your opinion on the future of the IFS too.

comment on brian's paper

Nice paper. You talked a lot about the past and present of the IFS but maybe you should add something about where you think the IFS is heading in the future.

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.

What I did at Wendys

I went to Wendys after school and I stopped by a store to buy a cookie. It was less crowded at Wendys so i thought they would be able to take the time to deep fry my cookie. I asked the lady if she could deep fry my cookie but she said no. I asked why not and she just ignored me. I kept asking and she kept ignoring me so i left and ate my cookie.