Reflection

I have learned that eating is not a simple thing, that it involves many decisions that we might make subconsciously but that are informed by the media, the economy, science, and culture. I have learned that the way humans eat has changed over time and differs between cultures and between individuals. I think it was very interesting to look at the way people write about food and research different issues surrounding health and eating, and the food industry. The things I learned in this class are important because now I am more interested in learning about food production and reading about food related issues.

Vegetarian Manifesto, first draft

It may seem like a rash decision, but the other day I became a vegetarian. I had never really given much thought to the option of being a vegetarian at all before in my life. I had previously thought that it would be fairly easy for me to avoid meat since I have never been a big meat eater, but I never thought I would feel the need to not eat animals. I have known that there are ethical issues involved with eating meat, otherwise why would so many people decide be vegetarians? But, I have also known that almost every food that we buy from the grocery store has been produced in ethically questionable ways. In reality, unless I only eat food I grow in a garden at my house or buy from a local small-scale farmer, my diet will inevitably consist of foods that are grown or processed in ways that somehow hurt others. Since I have known this to be true, I have chosen not to think about my food choices in terms of how they were made. I have usually chosen instead to ignore the ethics of my food. I have been able to choose to eat in ignorance quite easily for my whole life. This does not mean that I have never eaten anything grown in my backyard or bought at a farmer’s market, but I have never exclusively chosen to eat these foods over the foods bought from commercial producers in a store. I have never really eaten by any kind of distinct guideline before.

I believe I have never considered vegetarianism because while I knew that the animals raised for humans to consume live in inhumane conditions I never really had to see their conditions and actually address the problem. The problem was never visible to me so I didn’t have to fully recognize it. Although this is not the right way to view any problem, to ignore something just because it isn’t visible, I still did this. The problem did become visible to me however after watching the short documentary called Food Inc in writing class. After seeing real cases of the methods involved in meat production I had to acknowledge that animal cruelty in regards to food production is an issue that is not completely ignorable. The hourish long documentary showed vivid images of still living cows hanging by their feet on a production line, chickens barely able to move because of malnutrition, and a group of pigs being crushed by a large piece of metal. While some people may have been able to push these images aside, after watching the movie I really was not interested in eating one of those animals forced to live in misery and killed in very inhumane ways. This is how I became a vegetarian two weeks ago in writing class.

Although my conversion was based largely on emotion, there are many rational arguments for vegetarianism. There are arguments surrounding not only the animal’s, but also the worker’s, rights to humane treatment and freedoms. There are also scientific health reasons to avoid eating meat. You only have to look at the food pyramids that have been produced over the years to see that smaller and smaller portions of meat, especially red meat, have been recommended for a healthy diet in the more recent years. There are even arguments proposing that universal vegetarianism would help combat global warming by reducing the harmful effects that the meat industry has on the environment.

In Michael Pollan’s article, “An Animal’s Place,” Pollan discusses his reactions to Peter Singer’s book “Animal Liberation” and his views around the treatment of animals. Pollan took a slightly different approach than I did when faced with addressing the issue of animal treatment. While reading Singer’s book and thinking about animal rights he was sitting down to eat a steak; he addresses the irony of this, calling it “a good recipe for cognitive dissonance (if not indigestion).” Pollan questions some of the fundamental arguments against eating meat. He notes, for example, that rights for animals and rights for people must be looked at differently because we are biologically different and that predation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. In regards to these differences in rights I think one of the more important quotes from the article is this: “The moral idea is that everyone’s interests ought to receive equal consideration, regardless of what abilities they may possess.’” This quote suggests that just because a chicken does not have the capabilities that a human has, it should still be free from pain and suffering and free to participate in any lifestyle that it wants to rather than be forced to live in awful conditions. I agree with Pollan when he later discusses the idea that the inhumane treatment of animals for consumption purposes is a fairly new occurrence, and has become a big problem because of the way production plants are run. I like Pollan’s idea of being a “humanocarnivore” because I do not think that eating all meat is wrong or unnatural, but I believe the meat and poultry industries act inhumanely and do not want to support their actions.

I also do not want to support the meat and poultry industries because they not only remove animals’ freedoms to a happy and healthy life, but these industries can be extremely unhealthy for the workers as well. The article “Foul Trouble” by Christopher D. Cook discusses the dangers found in poultry production plants for the workers. The workers are at risk of disease through exposure to salmonella, bacteria, and blood, cuts from the birds or the tools they use. I found it to be very disturbing that in some plants the workers have to kill the birds themselves by hand. Another disturbing fact Cook brought up was that “OSHA also found that most employees in the plants it surveyed were required to buy their own protective boots, gloves, and aprons, necessities that many poultry workers- who typically earn only $6.50 an hour- simply did without.” Not only are these workers underpaid, they are not even given protective gear to attempt to avoid the many diseases and injuries that their jobs put them at risk for.

Aside from the health and happiness of the people and animals involved in the production and the eating of meat, the industry’s effect on the environment, and on the world food supply, are extremely significant. The amounts of carbon dioxide and methane that raising and processing animals requires are excessive. The article, “Fight Global Warming by Going Vegetarian,” gives a statistic that in itself proves the inefficiency of the industry: “Producing one calorie from animal protein requires 11 times as much fossil fuel input- releasing 11 times as much carbon dioxide- as does producing a calorie from plant protein.” Pan et al also discuss the environmental impact of the industry stating that “the animal agribusiness generates more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation alone.”  As we have been attempting to solve global warming by using public transportation, switching to more energy efficient light bulbs or buying hybrid cars, the meat industry has been contributing to the issue and many people have not had any idea to what extent. The inefficiency of the industry is hurting the environment by taking up huge amounts of land, causing deforestation, and emitting large amounts of greenhouse gasses and this seems to me like another very good reason to avoid eating meat.

After researching the issue further, I know there are many more reasons behind being vegetarian besides the emotional reasons for which I decided to try vegetarianism. I do not believe that people should never eat meat, or even that I should never eat meat if it was humanely raised and killed, but that the meat and poultry industries as they exist today are wrong. They are contributing to too many moral and global injustices for me to support. I also know that these industries are not the only ones doing harmful things, the seed industry for example hurts many farmers, but choosing to acknowledge this one issue is at least a start. I think the industry could be reformed drastically to continue to cater to people’s eating needs but in a much more humane way. In the article, “Is Universal Vegetarianism Feasable,” Professor A. E. Taylor argues that it would be impossible for the whole world to become vegetarian simply because we do not have the technology to produce enough plant calories agriculturally to feed the entire world. While this may be true, I think that we could at least decrease the amount of animals consumed since we have learned that meat consumption should not be a huge part of our diets. With a decreased need for meat these huge plants that are inhumanely raising and killing animals could be replaced with smaller farms which treat their animals as living beings and not as items on a production line. This might not happen anytime soon however, so being vegetarian, or at least what Pollan would call a “humanocarnivore” seems like the best way to avoid being a part of the damaging meat industry. 

What to eat

The essays “Unhappy Meals” and “Angels and Vegetables” both highlight the conflicts that Americans face today when trying to decide what and how to eat. They both discuss how American culture has stressed different ways of eating and being healthy over time as scientific research and diet fads have caused popular belief to change. Rather than deciding what to eat based on historic cultural norms like the French or the Italian, Americans try to decide based on current and frequently changing popular ideas about what they should eat.

In the essay “Unhappy Meals” Pollan talks about many of the things that American food culture has focused on throughout the years. He first talks about how in the 1980’s food culture shifted to a larger focus on the nutrient content in what people are eating, not just on what foods people are eating. He calls this nutritionism and points to several problems to this approach to food such as the fact that highly processed and well advertised foods often may appeal to the consumer as being healthier than a simple fruit or vegetable. He talks about the focus on a low-fat diet, and on the consequences of this diet, that people simply eat more because they think they can since their foods are low in fat.

Dupuis’ essay goes into the history and social aspects of food culture more than into the scientific aspects that Pollan highlights. He discusses how in the past people have judged what and how to eat on their religion, on figures of authority, on income levels, and also on popular culture. Like Pollan, Dupuis notes that because food and health is so publicized, the way Americans decide what to eat is largely based on conscience rather than tradition. Dupuis writes that “ Rather than making political choices, we pretend, like the vegetarian abolitionists, that our dietary choices will solve our personal and national problems” I think this is an interesting observation which describes how the question of “what to eat” is not just based on what one wants to eat, but on history, popular culture, science, and the economy among other things.  

comments

I think it was interesting how so many people wrote about skipping breakfast and especially about eating cereal as an easy fix to skipping breakfast. I thought it was funny how cereal was described as RTE (ready to eat) cereals in some of the studies, this does not really seem like something that has to be abbreviated to me.

Breakfast

Looking our class' food logs, I noticed that many people skipped breakfast both during the week and on the weekend. I am sure most of us have heard a million times that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and believe that science has backed this statement up however we continue skipping this important meal. Even though a few people seemed to have a schedule in which they did eat breakfast everyday, even in such a small sample size, the habit of skipping breakfast was still noticeable.  Although people know this trend is not healthy, it is interesting to look at why people continue to avoid eating breakfast.

I believe the most obvious reason that people skip breakfast is because their day begins too early in the morning; either their work or school day begins too early for them eat before they become busy. I know that in high school, when school would start as early as 8am or earlier for sports, I physically could not eat before heading to school because it made me feel sick. Like I did, some people choose to skip breakfast because their commitments begin at an early hour before they have any appetite for food. Now, in college, I usually do not have class this early in the morning and do have an appetite before class, but sleeping in or finishing homework before class is often more important than eating for me. I could easily sleep right up until the last minute before class starts unless I set an alarm and plan my morning in order to leave time to get food before class. I think this is the case for many people, and explains why a few people did not list any breakfast foods on their food logs.

Another reason people may skip breakfast is in an attempt to lose weight. Breakfast may seem like an easy meal to skip because you are less hungry in the morning and may seem like a good idea for some people. Research often suggests however, that eating breakfast leads to receiving healthier nutritional value in what one eats in a day and can also lead to a healthier weight and BMI. In a study done on Korean adults it was shown that “breakfast eaters” in general had a higher energy intake, but that their diets included less fats and unhealthy foods than the diets of people who rarely ate breakfast or did not eat breakfast at all. The article noted that “The ‘Rare breakfast eater’ group had an inadequate intake of micronutrients” which supported the idea that skipping breakfast would have negative effects on diet quality. Although people may skip breakfast with the idea that it is an effective way to diet, I think this study gives a good example of how this idea can backfire and actually have adverse effects on health.

Whether skipping breakfast because one values sleep more than eating or because they think it will help them lose weight, this unhealthy practice remains a trend despite scientific evidence that it is not good for the body. I don’t find it is very surprising that people do this even though they know it is not healthy. People do many things they know are not healthy when they seem to be an easier or more exciting alternative to the healthy action and skipping breakfast is just one example.

MIn, Chanyang, Hwayoung Noh, Yun-Sook Kang, Hea Jin Sim, Hyun Wook, Won O. Song, Jihyun Yoon, Young-Hee Park, and Hyojee Joung. "Skipping Breakfast Is Associated with Diet Quality and Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors of Adults." Nutrition Research and Practice (2011). Print.

observations on food logs

It seems like a lot of people went out to eat, maybe this was because it was the weekend and people were getting off campus to eat more often than during the week. It was also interesting to see foods that people eat like nutrigrain bars or yogurts in addition to the food you can get in the dining halls.

food log

sunday
yogurt, pineapple, eggs, orange, coffee, carrots, peanut butter, salad, m&ms

saturday
apple, hummus, pretzels, orange, salad, rice, cereal, pepsi

friday
kombucha, cake, carrots, greenbeans, quesadilla, tea

Tortillas

The tortilla is a food staple, which, like many other foods, has been produced and eaten differently and by different people over time. The tortilla was traditionally made and eaten in Mexico and has since been Americanized and expanded upon from its original form. There is no longer just the handmade corn tortilla; people now enjoy flour and wheat tortillas, flavored tortillas, even low fat or gluten tortillas.

Being from Maine, Mexican food has never been a large part of my diet, a chain restaurant called Margaritas being one of the only places nearby to get Mexican food. This means that for me, tortillas are usually eaten not in enchilada, burrito, or any Mexican influenced form, but in place of bread for a sandwich. When used in this way, the tortilla is often just called a wrap, becoming something so different from the traditional Mexican tortilla that it has been given a new name. The tortilla, or wrap, has even evolved to fit America’s health conscious population with spinach, wheat, tomato, and gluten free wraps which hold together a sandwich without bread. As Pollan notes in “Our National Eating Disorder,” American culture has created a kind of “carbophobia” in which things like bread or pasta are seen as bad for one’s health. Pollan observes that “we’ve learned to choose our foods by the numbers (calories, carbs, fats, R.D.A.’s, price, whatever), relying more heavily on our reading and computational skills than upon our senses” (Pollan 4). Tortillas and wraps provide a better choice (over bread) for people prescribing to this kind of computational way of eating that Pollan discusses because they usually have less calories that bread in a sandwich would.   

Although I usually eat tortillas in this very Americanized way, in place of bread on a sandwich, there is one restaurant I go to at home that does not get it’s tortillas delivered premade by some company. Tu Casa is an authentic El Salvadorean restaurant and the only place at I know of at home where you can order horchata or plantains in Spanish and feel like you are part of a different culture. It is also the only place I know of where you can watch your tortillas being made to order right in the kitchen. Tu Casa’s tortillas are not corn based, but flour based. After ordering, you can watch the cooks mix the dough in a large bowl, separate the large blob into smaller round sections and then cook the flattened dough in a pan, working so efficiently that they could probably make twenty tortillas in five minutes if there were enough pans for that. The tortillas come out hot on the plate and taste better than any tortilla you could ever get at a Chipotle or Illegal Pete’s.

Clearly, this Mexican tradition has been influential in the food traditions of America and other countries as well. It is interesting to look at how America has in turn influenced the history of this food staple in Mexico. As noted in “Transnational Tortillas,” “the production of corn, corn-flour, and tortillas (is) critical to the Mexican economy.” Traditionally, dried corn would be cooked with water and limestone into a mixture called nixtamal. The nixtamal would then be ground into masa, or tortilla dough, and then cooked on a griddle. Because tortillas are such an important part of Mexican life, the Mexican government, in times of economic struggle, would create subsidies so that corn farmers received enough money and buyers were able to get tortillas at a good price. The Compañia Nacional de Substencias Populares (CONASUPO) was the agency in charge of creating these subsidies, however, when neoliberalism gained popularity around the 1990’s things started to change.

Neoliberal policies were enforced by American organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF and rather than help the economy, they created many problems. For example, CONASUPO lost control over the food industry and control over pricing and subsidizing. Many industries were privatized, and the corn and tortilla industry suffered because of new policies. Now, “25% of corn consumed in Mexico comes directly from the U.S. market” because subsidies on Mexican corn is no longer allowed and imported corn is cheaper. Price controls on tortillas themselves were also eliminated so they have become more expensive. Because of these neoliberal policies that America imposed upon Mexico, both the corn farmers and tortilla consumers have run into more challenges then they did when CONASUPO controlled the food industry.

From their roots in South America, to their expansion and diversification in American, tortillas are one of the most useful food staples out there. Tortillas have an interesting history and are sure to be around for a long time.

Works cited:

 Bank, Muñoz Carolina. Transnational Tortillas: Race, Gender, and Shop-floor Politics in Mexico and the United States. Ithaca: ILR, 2008. Print.

Pollan, Michael. "Our National Eating Disorder." (2004). Print.

food industry

All three articles discuss current issues surrounding the food industry, highlighting both the immoral treatment of the animals bred for consumption and of the workers in the food industry. I thought the arguments against “specieism” in the article “In an Animal’s Place” were really interesting and raised some issues that I had never really thought about. For example Pollan’s observation that “The moral idea is that everyone’s interests ought to receive equal consideration, regardless of ‘what abilities they may possess’” (Pollan 2) for example, seems like something you might only apply to people, but can be extended to animals as well. Just because a chicken does not have the capabilities that a human has, it should still be free from pain and suffering and free to participate in any lifestyle that it wants to rather than be forced to live in awful conditions.

The infographic about the chicken industry focused more on how the plants where chickens a held and processed for sale are dangerous for the workers. The workers are at risk of disease through exposure to salmonella, bacteria, and blood, cuts from the birds or tools. One of the most disturbing things in this article to me was that in some plants the workers have to kill the birds themselves. The introduction to “On The Tomato Trail” also discusses how today’s food industry condones inhumane worker conditions. The article talks about how growers are exposed to all the chemicals that are now used in agriculture to create large about of artificially perfect fruits and vegetables. The article also discusses how there is a kind of slavery in the industry where workers are denied rights and even sold to different bosses. 

American Eating Disorder

Pollan suggests that the American eating disorder is related to the fact that we base our food choices on current cultural fads rather than on what our bodies actually want. This approach to eating has caused a paradox, because as we give so much importance to eating healthily that often after trying so hard to eat in a certain manner we feel deprived and will make up by eating a lot of bad foods just once and a while. Our nation becomes obsessed with certain healthy ways of eating, but is also one of the least healthy nations. Pollan gives examples of American “carbophobia,” and of other food fads and points out how “a scientific study, a new government guideline, a lone crackpot with a medical degree can alter this nation’s diet overnight.” He argues that this predicament is a product of the “omnivore’s” dilemma. We have so many options and in our culture, we turn to popular culture to help us make decisions. When there are products processed for literally every diet, many Americans base their food choices on what certain credible sources tell them to be eating rather than choosing on what their stomach wants.

I thought it was interesting when Pollan contrasted this American way of eating with the way French people eat. It is definitely interesting that the French eat more of what they want, and have a better relationship with food than Americans and are also a healthier population. I think the French know how to not deprive themselves and because of this they don’t overeat at times or feel guilty about how they eat.