the Ominivore's Dilemma

For my AP Comp book, I read The Omnivore's Dilemma. This book was a real eye opener to exactly where my food comes from. It is based on the dilemma that us human's now face in the world today. Since we don't hunt and gather our own food, we have become disconnected from our food to the point where we no longer know what is healthy and unhealthy to eat. In the book, while he didn't really explain what exactly was healthy and not, he did go through which chains where the best not only for us to eat, but best for the government and farmers.  Lets just say there is no surprise that so many people became vegetarians after reading this book. It was a honest peek into not only how animals are treated, but the different crops as well. The author, Michael Pollan, went through the three different food chains: industrial, organic, and hunter-gather.

The industrial food chain is where most of our food comes from today. This are the big industries that mass produce all of our food to make a big profit for themselves, but not for the farmers. These are the companies that make oreos, chips, and most other processed food as well as others. In the industrial farms, many fertilizers, chemicals, and genetically engineered plant seed to ensure the most possible growth of crop for the least amount of money. They also raise their animals in the same way. They try to make the most meat out of each animal in the least amount of time and money. To do this, they over stuff the living places of these animals and feed them corn, which is not natural for them to eat, in order to make them fatten up as much as possible. These animals live in horrible conditions and are treated as meat machines.

The organic food chain proves to be about the exact same as the industrial, just with more government regulations. In order to call their food organic, these farms aren't allowed  to use certain chemicals and require certain conditions of the animals. Even though these foods are healthier for us, most of their produce is treated nearly the same as industrial food.

The final chain of food he went through was the hunter-gatherer, where we gather our food ourselves.This was obviously the most healthy way for us to get our food, but clearly the most unrealistic.

I found these book to be very educational for me in many ways. Not only do I seem to look at my own food in a different light, but how food may be impacting the future of America. It is no wonder why our generation will be the first to be predicted to not outlive our parents just from looking at how our food is processed. What animals are being fed is not only affecting their health, but ours as well. All of the obesity and health problem spikes really are coming from our unhealthy processed food. Businesses are only looking to make money, and they are barely considering our health. Something really needs to be done about the way in which our food is processed and grown in general or else the future of our country may be at stake. Should it not be the responsibility of the government to ensure the health of Americans? Yet, the government funds the industrial food ways in many more ways than an actual healthy way of growing things. This book helped me to realize how big a problem food is becoming and what it may mean for the future. You can hear all of the ways that food is bad for you, but you don't really understand until you read where it comes from for yourself.