Final Paper On Food

The American Way Of Food seems to have changed over the decades. Now Americans look at food based off of how cheap it is, and how quick it is. Alot of this has to do with major corporations doing whatever they can to increase their profits, no matter how what they are doing effects the food or the people eating it. They manipulate us into thinking that the food we are eating is good for us, when in reality practically everything that we consume is industrialized. From farms to the animals we eat, major food corporations will do almost anything to make a dollar.

In the food world, industrialization is used to speed up the process of producing large amounts of food. As seen in the movie "Vroom Farming for Kids", the farming industry is mostly industrialized, everything is done by man operated machines. Everything from tending to the crops, to picking the crops, to taking them to the processing plant is done by fossil fuel operated machines. In the movie huge tractors, trucks, and bulldozers were all used to help transport the crop (I think corn and cabbage) in some way. These machines help do a lot of work in a little bit of time. The machines are eliminating most of the man power from the picking the crops, which results in a lot of profit. It is definitely cheaper to buy gallons of gas for about $2.00 a gallon, instead of paying 20 to 25 workers minimum wage to do the work for you. The food corporations take the easy way out by relying on the fossil fuel operated machines. It seems like they don't care about what's being done to the food, just as long as the work is being done and it is either saving or making them money.

Industrialization was also seen in the movie "Our Daily Bread", how various fruits and even animals go through industrialization. Everything is grown in a controlled setting and is done by machines. “Our Daily Bread” shows specifically how pigs are fed and then killed and prepared to be shipped off. Instead of a couple of men feeding the pigs, huge machines are used to throw the food at them. They are then killed by going in one end of the machine alive, and being spit out the other dead. The pigs are cut open by machines, organs taken out by machines, faces cut off by machines, EVERYTHING that goes on in the factory depends on some type of machine. Even though these machines are being operated by man power, it is still saving corporations money. The jobs are getting done faster with potentially less power and money; it would take for maybe 20 people to do the job. American corporations result to industrializing the production of food to help increase profits, and to also save money.
Animal cruelty not only happens in the movie “Our Daily Bread”, but also in the animated video “Meatrix”. “Meatrix”, kind of based off of the movie “The Matrix”, is about a pig who doesn’t know about the mistreatment and cruelty that really happens on farms. When he is given these glasses by a hip cow named Moofius, he sees how cruel his life really is. Moofius lets him know that many farmers don’t raise their animals with care; it’s very rare to see a nice ‘ideal’ farm. As seen in both videos animals that are raised on industrialized farms are kept in confined places, and are not given everything they need. They are not only killed when they are fed and injected with chemicals so they are ‘plump’ enough, but slaughtered. All of this helps contribute to the profits of the corporations’ in charge of these farms and factories.

When I went on the extra credit trip with Wildman Steve, I felt like I was experiencing something that a lot of people in America will never experience. During the trip, we picked various herbs and plants that we could use in our everyday lives. I learned a lot about plants and berries that can be found in central park. For example I got a lot of “poor man’s pepper”, which can be used as a seasoning in almost anything. This example also showed me how much I (and many other people) depend on industrialized food. After watching a couple of movies, and seeing how our food is really treated, I’m starting to realize that a lot of what we eat is potentially bad for us. We can live off of things found in central park for FREE, which is healthier for us than the industrial foods that we already eat. People should really consider eating natural, healthier foods, instead of the foods that the money hungry corporations provide.

Grocery stores (which are owned and operated by corporations) push certain foods based off of taste and age groups. It seems as if grocery stores are using mind games to get consumers to buy certain products. When we took a trip to the grocery store, I noticed a lot of these things. In the fruit/vegetable aisle, everything was clean, shiny, and perfectly organized to show how healthy these fruits/vegetables are supposed to be for you. However, in the middle of the aisle with the perfectly presented fruits/vegetables, was a perfectly organized setup of beer. I felt that the corporation did this to make consumers think that beer is just as important/healthy as fruits and vegetables which we need in our everyday diet. I also noticed that things were targeted to different age groups. For example, the unhealthy and sugary cereals were at a kid’s eye level, while the seemingly healthier cereals were at an adult’s eye level. Based off of my observations I can tell that food corporations use various marketing techniques to manipulate consumers into buying certain (unhealthy) foods, so they can get more money.

Micheal Pollan on the Colbert show (Comedy Central) was basically an argument between the typical American (Colbert), and an American who is totally against food corporations (Pollan). Pollan kept suggesting that a home cooked meal was in fact “a healthy meal”, while Colbert disagreed. It seemed like Colbert thought that Americans want their food to be prepared for us so we are not wasting our time preparing our meals. The media is trying to convince people that they don’t even have enough time to make their own meals. It also persuading Americans that fast food is in turn good because it is cheap and accessible. The media manipulating consumers to believe that fast food/industrialized food is good for them, helps the food corporations gain more profit.

Industrialization, media manipulation, and animal cruelty are all present in the American Way of Food. By looking at the movies “Vroom!”, "Unser Taglich Brot (Our Daily Bread)”, “Cows with Guns”, “Meatrix”; and my experience with Wildman Steve have shown me how cruel that industrialization process is. Corporations have industrialized almost everything when it comes to food to help them save money, and gain profits. Through industrialization, food processing, animal cruelty, and animal cruelty, food corporations will do just about anything to our food as long as it makes them profit.