Sweet Charity

In chapter two of Sweet Charity, the author does a very nice job of crunching big numbers down into meaningful statistics. Living on the poverty line around 15,000 dollars a year may seem difficult to imagine at first.  But an average American spends one third of their income on food, which would be 5000 dollars for the year. This translates into 100 dollars a week and 25 dollars a week for each person in a four-person family. That’s only a little more than three dollars a day for each person. This astonishing statistic gives the author the right to question the poverty line. The author claims that the biggest problem involving the poverty line is that it was established back when clothing, transportation, and shelter were cheap, which enabled people to actually spend one third of their income on food. However, the prices of food, transportation, and shelter have risen, making it increasingly difficult for the poor to allocate one third of their income to food. After discussing the poverty line, the author goes into depth about the rise of food kitchens and why people end up going to them including reasons such as high shelter costs, unemployment, and inadequate public assistance. However, the main reason why people go to food kitchens and pantries is that they have recently become unemployed. And with unemployment rates high, the short-term unemployed become the long-term unemployed causing people to rely even more heavily on food kitchens.

I found this chapter very interesting. I’ve actually volunteered at a food kitchen before and I’ve witnessed the shame and embarrassment people feel. What really surprised me though was the fact that food kitchens would require people to validate that they are actually poor. Coming to the food aid service is embarrassing enough for many but having to prove that you don’t make enough money to provide for you and your family is even worse. In my opinion, giving to all, instead of rejecting a few is a much better philosophy that food aid services should follow.

1.     What can be changed in our society to help people allocate one third of their income to food?

2.     Should there be requirements for people to go to food aid services or should whoever feels the need to go be allowed?

The Roots of World Hunger

Why is world hunger such an issue? Yes, our population has grown exponentially in past years, but our food production has grown at an even faster rate. The Scarcity Fallacy written by Stephen J. Scanlan, J. Craig Jenkins, and Lindsey Peterson, talks about world hunger and its causes. As you might guess from the title, there is some mistaken belief as to what is the true cause of world hunger. The authors of the text clearly point out that the widely held belief that world hunger is caused by a limited supply of food is wrong. The authors even go so far as to say that “on a per capita basis,” food is more abundant now than any of the years past. In fact, “poverty, inequality, conflict, and corruption” are the true “contributors to world hunger”. The authors give statistics backing up each one of their hypothesized causes of world hunger. For example, countries with higher than 35% poverty rates (extreme poverty), also have child hunger rates above 35%. To make matters worse, people living in or near the poverty line, spend 60% of their income on food compared to the poorest American who spends 15-20%. After the authors identify the causes of world hunger, they propose a couple of solutions. The first is that food must be seen as fundamental human right. This would increase the importance of mitigating world hunger in the eyes of the public and would also protect the poor against the high price of food. Their second solution would be to rid food agencies of corruption thereby guaranteeing that the efforts of these food agencies reach the right people through the right means. They also propose sustainable agricultural practices and fiscal policy.

            “The challenge, in short, is to create a more equitable and just society in which food access is ensured for all.” That’s no simple task. It might seem easy to write that down in a sentence and dream of one day in which everyone is educated, ethnic inequalities are broken down, and money doesn’t rule the world; but we are far from that dream. Some steps have been taken, however, they are only superficial and do not help in the long run. It is as if we have trimmed the branches off a tree but the roots are still there and the branches just grow back. If world hunger is to be fought, we need to fight the roots of the problems that the authors mention in The Scarcity Fallacy.

1)   How do you propose we fight world hunger?

2)   What do you think is the most surprising statistic the authors give in the text?

Can't Stomach It

Julie Guthman in her cleverly titled essay “Can’t Stomach it” poses some valid thoughts about why we must be hesitant while reading and listening to people such as Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan. Julie introduces us to the problem we face with measuring obesity. Our current system of using BMI to measure obesity has many flaws. First we have no way of telling if people have gained lean mass in the form of muscle instead of fat gain. Secondly, it is difficult to tell whether a couple of people have gained a lot of weight or whether many people have gained a couple of pounds. She warns us that we must pay careful attention to the startling statistics that Pollan and others use to catch our attention. She then turns to talk about the way Pollan and others expose obesity to our society. She comments on the way overweight people are always filmed from the back and with no heads claiming, “headlessnesss invokes mindlessness.” She is somewhat annoyed that Pollan, Nestle, and other writers consider themselves “as super-subjects while relegating others to objects of education, intervention, or just plain scorn”. These writers see themselves as superior to fat people because they are able to resist the temptation to over eat when presented with an overabundance of food. Finally, Julie ends her essay with the complaint that Pollan’s solution to fixing our obesity problem relies solely on individual change and nothing on policy. She is worrisome that her students believe they can change the food industry by spreading the word to individual people instead of focusing on the structural and political aspects our food industry faces.

This essay was very interesting to read. Julie did a very good job pointing out the flaws of Pollan’s and Nestle’s work. I personally love reading about how statistics can be framed to make you believe something when it might actually not be accurate. The BMI is a great case of giving a statistic without all the information in order to create a convincing argument. However, what Julie finds most offensive (that Pollan sees himself as superior to others) I have no problem with. I believe Pollan is a role model to many. He has a great knowledge in the subject matter and presents it to the public in very well worded and fluid way. In many ways he is superior to others in the topic of food. I have no problem giving him my full attention on order to learn from someone who I consider a master of the subject.

1)   Did this essay make you question Pollan at all?

2)   Do you think we should focus more on how to change the structure of our food industry instead of educating individuals of the industry’s problems?

Processed Foods

In his 5^th and 6^th chapter of Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan discusses the role of corn in processed foods and the impact it has on our society. To someone who doesn’t know much about food ingredients, it is a surprising fact that most of the corn we digest looks and tastes nothing like corn. The reason why our nation produces so much corn is because of its multiple uses in our society. With modern technology and an understanding of chemistry, corn is sent to “wet mills” where it is transformed into artificial sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup. The popularity of processed foods came hand in hand with the ability to turn corn into an artificial sweetener. Pollan describes our generation as the republic of fat. One would think that artificial sweetener would take the place of sugar since it is cheaper to produce. However this didn’t happen. Pollan informs us that we ate just as much sugar if not more on top of our incredibly high consumption of artificial sugars. Pollan correlates this issue to the fact that our generation is faced with so many health issues. Adult onset diabetes’s name was changed to type two diabetes because it began to affect children due to the high intake of sugar. In fact, 1 out of 3 children born after year 2000 will be affected with the disease.

            Technological advancements are often thought of as improvements to the world. However, often the benefits of technology mask the harmful side effects they produce. High fructose corn syrup was a great invention that has enabled our society to become what it is today. However, 1 in 3 children born after year 2000 will be affected with type 2 diabetes. That is an unacceptable percentage. The food industry needs to spend more time working on health risks instead of doing anything to make a profit.

1)   Is our society too dependent on high fructose corn syrup to change?

2)   What solutions do you think would work to help our society become more health conscious? 

America's Cuisine

The question of the American cuisine is an interesting topic that Sidney Mintz finds herself in the middle of during a class lecture. Her belief is that Americans do not have a so-called national cuisine but instead many regional cuisines. This is due to a couple of reasons. The first is that America is such a young country made up of immigrants from around the world. The immigrants came to America with predisposed national cuisines, which then turned into regional cuisines. Her second point is that America is too vast and too geographically diverse for there to be an agreed upon national cuisine. The environment of specific areas grows different foods than the environment of other areas. This further continues to split the American cuisine into many regional cuisines. Although this might sound like a disadvantage too many, Sidney claims that this is what makes the food of America American. Not having a cuisine doesn’t mean one is missing out on some important aspect of culture. Certainly America has a very distinct culture. Perhaps, missing a specific cuisine is an identity of America itself.

When writing a paper, I take quotes and facts from multiple sources. I use those quotes and facts to blend in with my own words to form my own essay. When my paper is done, if I looked specifically at direct quotes or paraphrases I could not say that the words belonged to me. However, If I looked at the combination of all my quotes mixed in with my own sentences it forms a paper that I can call my own. The same applies to the American cuisine. If you look regionally you will find Chinese cuisine, Italian cuisine, Mexican cuisine, etc…. But if you broaden your approach and look at the combination of all those cuisines, you will be able to see the American cuisine; one that takes the aspects of all those cuisines and offers them to the American people whenever and wherever they want it. Sidney is wrong that America does not have a cuisine. The American cuisine is a modern variation of all cuisines combined into one country. It could possibly be the greatest cuisine out there.

1)   

Do you think America has a cuisine?

2)   Is America missing a piece of its culture by having a cuisine that’s a combination of other cuisines?

Chapter Eleven In Omnivore's Dilemma

Michael Pollan, in his 11^th chapter of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, describes a farm, which is nothing short of amazing. This farm is an ecological, environmentally friendly, and efficient masterpiece. Pollan describes the farm different than any other farm I ever heard of before. This is not your regular monoculture or feedlot farm; it is an ecological system that interweaves and connects all parts of the farm together to form somewhat of a hand-made ecosystem. Pollan describes it as a loop of activities that all play a role in the previous and proceeding events. During the chapter, he informs us of all the jobs that he did to make sure the farm ran smoothly. Every day he had to move the ten by twelve chicken pen to a new ten by twelve foot area of grass, which cows had just grazed on three days prior. The chickens would eat larva out of the three day old cows dung and thus ingest a great deal of protein, which lead to healthier, better tasting eggs. Then the chickens would fertilize the grass with their own feces until sunrise the next morning when they were moved to a next patch of grass that the cows had recently grazed on. This was just one process in the whole loop of the farm, but Pollan found it fascinating how everything was so interconnected. He marveled at the fact that for corn farms he could easily start by describing them as a farmer planting a seed, growing it, then harvesting it. However, for Joel’s farm, Pollan had no idea where to start; the cow’s waste was the chicken’s food and the chicken’s waste was the land’s fertilizer. This was truly much more than just a farm. It was an efficient way of producing food that actually helped the land instead of destroying it.

I found this technique of farming very fascinating. This was what Pollan was talking about in his Farmer and Chief. We don’t need to resort to some crazy science with biologically engineered plants or some new and improved fertilizer. This is true science. Joel’s farm was not just a farm, it was an ecosystem; it mimicked characteristics of animals in real life and brought them to a place that could use those techniques to produce food efficiently and in a way that was helpful to the land. However, this seemed like no easy task to me. Joel is a brilliant man and if we want other farms to be like this one in the future, farmers need to be educated how to do it.

1)                   Doctors have to go through medical school, Lawyers have to go through law school, should farmers have to go through some sort of farm school in order to learn how to properly take care of land like Joel?

2)                   How realistic is it, regarding price of food, increased employment, and other factors, for more farms to switch to how Joel farms?