Monday, June 1, 2009

industrial vs natural

To end this year’s history class we’ve been doing a small unit on FOOD. We’ve watched multiple videos or film clips including: "Our Daily Bread, and "VROOM - Farming for Kids". The unit has mainly been focusing more around Industrial Food/Natural Food, and Americans eating habits compared to Europeans. Just as our last unit, focused on Health Insurance within the US, when compared to Europeans us Americans seem to be in for the worst. To get started on this assignment, I read an article called "The Worst Mistake In the History of the Human Race", and it expressed the author's opinion of Humans today exploiting the use of agriculture that past centuries have carefully tried to spread for much years to come. I also viewed a video showing the abuse of farm animals that are used for industrial producing. Of course I was familiar with slaughterhouses and etc. but there were other arguments that went deep past the main argument of killing live animals, those that I never took into consideration before. One argument the video placed on viewers that really caught my attention was how when animals are batted with metal rods, breaking they're bones, or leaving them in extremely tight rooms with other animals, leaving some already dead before they are actually executed leaving some with natural diseases or curses such as cancer. Also those who have died from the group are taken and placed directly into food producing, without checking into they're physical conditions and whether they are eligible for digestion after purchase.

One huge worry people have about industrial food is shortage. Whether the person is a vegan or a meat-eater the question remains in ones head. That is why all we ever hear about is cloning or insemination. In the video of farm animals and they're abuse, they claimed that turkeys or hens are one of those who have it the worst. After reviewing, it does make a whole lot of sense as Americans all crave a huge turkey for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, both holidays being back to back from each other. Because today's turkeys have a huge section in today's supermarkets, they are needed and sold immediately, although today's turkey's have breast that are too huge and get in the way of the male turkey's chance of actually mating with the other turkey in order to reproduce. So today’s "urgency" means that we must make order quicker and industrialized rather then natural. Humans take the male turkeys and take they're sperm in order to place it into the females, creating artificial insemination and keeping up with today's production. It also explains the turkeys, after being cooked and prepared, dryness in other ways.

In my opinion nothing of this course that I've learned can actually change my eating style because I’ve eaten so much of it already, and we've also established in class that there are two different kind of eaters, those who eat to experience new taste and such as to those who eat only to refuel they're energy. I would label myself as only an eater who eats to refuel energy. Sure, I know now how deep into right and wrong it goes but I think that something as evil as slaughtering animals does serve us a good purpose since in reality those who don’t always eat healthy have relied on this habitual for so many years, and odds are they will rely on it for many more.

Vegetables and fruits and other healthy sources of nutrients and such are always available and probably always will be, at least until this land is used up to its last straw. But in order to get the full amount of nutrition that one needs from eating vegetables one would need to eat probably an excessive amount compared to what they are used to getting from just maybe 1 -2 servings of meat. Also, one would get much less Iron from plants then from a normal serving from Meat, something humans should maybe capture as much as possible. I just think that if we lived in a perfect world where animals lived in farms or wildly and humans only ate plants and gathered they’re nutrients from them and maybe only ate dead road kill since it is an animal already passed, I believe if this perfect world did or once again happened then only complications would occur because how long would it take until we get greedy as a whole and create shortcuts into our eating habits and tamper with mother nature and exploit plants and other things eatable.

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