Food Journal #8- Industrial Food

It seems that our culture has not changed in its dietary habits so much as it has changed in terms of how we meet the every increasing demand for these food products. The change from a farming society to a fossil- fueled industrial society has been about a greater need for pork, corn, tomatoes and beef, and not a new need for a different food. Since our population has grown in the United States from 5,308,483 people in 1800, to 281,421,906 in 2000, we basically eat the same stuff, but at a much larger scale. This is the basic concept of industrialized food.

The problem with industrialized food is that we tend to work off of the principal "quantity over quality" which allows us to increase the supply to meet the demand, but cutting back on the quality of the product. One way in which food manufactures cut costs is by spending less on the basic amenities of the livestock. While in my opinion industrialized food is necessary to meet the demands of a growing population, it is logical to say that their is always an alternative. That alternative is extremely simple. Instead of moving towards what seems to be the inevitable transformation of the food industry into industrial super- farms to meet the demand, we need to move backwards to regress, and simplify how our food is processed.

In "The Meatrix" video, it talks about how we need to move away from the factory farms and back towards family farms. I agree, because when quantity and profit become involved as factors in food production, quality and health concerns are what suffer. What really disgusted me the most was that the milk fed to baby cows has some cows blood in it. This specifically made me think about the whole way our food is prepared. I asked myself, what point does that serve? Than I thought about the real question; what cost does this lower? This is the real problem, that food has become an industry, and as we learned in the birth unit of our class, profit cannot be introduced to something or profit becomes the primary concern.

In the article "The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Three", it raises an interesting point that i feel is important to make about industrial food, that it is not as cheap as we are lead to believe. I think that what we need to realize is that just because something is bad doesn't always mean that it is better for someone else. Specifically the way in which industrial farms are run, how the animals are raised and fed are horrendous, but this does not mean that their is an equivalent upside to this for the producer. On top of that, costs which can be externalized, in most cases are, and left up to the US taxpayers to pick up the tab. Because we have been fed the idea that the more food processed, the lower the cost of the food, we assume that more local farming (less food processed) results in a higher cost to the consumer and is more of an elitist idea. I think that the image of the Whole Foods shopping, Park Slope living, Fixed Gear bike riding yuppie is what comes to mind when we think of shopping organic and Eco-friendly, but truthfully within this environmentally conscious world of food, their are much cheaper and more sustainable options for the every day person who wants to get away from the factory farmed food, and towards the healthier and happier option of local farming.