I was assigned to write an essay about the broad subject nutrition. Instead of writing the traditional “Proper way to eat” type essay I wanted to look through a new lens, and focus on the quality of the foods most Americans have access to, so therefore we eat. In simpler terms where did the food on my plate come from, and what is the quality of said food? I wonder if the food we eat today is the same food as the food my ancestors ate? Ultimately these questions headed me to the documentary Food Inc. by Robert Kenner and Participant Media that was released in 2008. Robert Kenner apparently was wondering this same thing as me when I was just 5 years old. His documentary saved me a ton of work and opened my eyes to the bigger issues about the food out society has access to.
Farming in the united states looks very different than it did in the 1930’s. In the past fifty years, farming has changed more than it did in the last millennia. The farm fresh we think we're buying grocery stores actually traces back to factories. Today our…show more content… Never in the history of America have we had companies this big and powerful. Tyson is single handily the largest meat packer in the history of the world. In fact, Tyson and the meat packing industry has changed how farmers raise chickens. In order to create the exact same product every time these companies tell the farmers what to do and when to do it. If they don’t follow orders the farmers lose their contacts. Uniformity demands a specific process at a specific time. For example, birds are now raised in half the time they were just fifty years ago. People like white meat so the industry redesigned chickens to have larger breasts. Farmers contracts state very clearly that the industry owns the birds the entire time they are raising them, hence giving the industry the driver's
