I have a lot of mixed feelings about what I learned this past week in class. I will probably keep the same diet. The movie did surprise me. I had heard about the way the animals were treated, but to see it was just disturbing. I think the way these animals were treated was just wrong. When I saw that movie, it made me change my view of a hamburger or a chicken wrap.
I have to say the most upsetting thing about the movie was the cows. Hearing from the mother who lost her son to E. coli really made me stop and think. There are not many small cow farms left, and most of the hamburgers are made of thousands of cows, and if you get E. coli you die within days. The cows are being fed food that they are not supposed to eat. That’s like us eating dog food. We can get sick from eating it just like cows can get sick from eating corn. Corn might be cheaper, but if eating corn can cause people to die, it might be better to buy grass. We are billions of dollars in debt, yet we are still the richest country in the world. If we are so rich then why on earth are we using corn and not grass? People are dying because of E. coli. Hamburgers are actually killing people. Another health issue is the fact that the cows are living in their own poop. The conditions are so terrible that by the time they are sent to the market to be slaughtered for meat, they are up to their chest in poop. The movie said that there are times when a small amount of that poop can get into the hamburger patty. The conditions of the cow farms are truly filthy. Nothing deserves to be treated that way, even if its purpose in life is to become hamburgers. Because of the corn, the cows become very fat. Some of them are too fat to even walk on their feet. Some have to be pushed to the van where they are taken to the meat processing plants because they are too weak to stand and walk.
The chickens were also disgusting to see. The fact that they never see the light in their entire lives is just terrible. The mother hen never gets to see her babies. The chickens too have the same problem as the cows where they can only walk a few steps before falling to the ground. To make the chickens so large, a number of hormones and drugs are added to their food. Thousands of chickens are put together in the dark, and they are picked up in the middle of the night so that they don’t have to see the light. On the video we saw the woman who had the chicken farm. Every day, she went through the farm and picked up all the dead chickens and threw them in a pile. After the men came to pick up the chickens, she went through again and was still picking up the dead chickens.
I learned a lot about corn production and how corn is in tons of things. I never knew that corn was in things like soda. I had heard about the high fructose corn syrup, but I did not know how bad it was for you. So many experiments have been done on the corn syrup, it has actually become harmful. My mom makes sure that we don’t buy things with high fructose corn syrup in it.
I do think that I will get more organic food. I eat a lot of yogurt, and I think if I eat more organic, I could be slightly healthier. I think maybe I could also eat less at fast food restaurants. I was surprised to learn about the things that go into hamburgers and chicken nuggets from McDonald’s. I think it is really funny how they put everything that goes into their products on their website, but people are still eating the food. If things like charcoal are in your big mac, you have a bit of a problem. And the chicken nuggets may contain meat.
It is also really interesting how healthy food is more expensive than junk food. Many people with low paying jobs only have enough money to buy something off the dollar menu at a fast food place rather than buy fruit and vegetables at the grocery store. I’m lucky to be in a family that can afford fruits and vegetables in our diet, but we eat meat a lot more than we eat fruits and vegetables. Maybe if I ate more of that food, I would be healthier.
I am amazed that people don’t know more about what goes into their food. Our diet and the things we eat should matter to us. I never cared to find out about these things, and now I am regretting not looking it up sooner. I did not realize the effect eating a hamburger could have on us. Our food system has changed so much over the years, and it is only getting worse. Energy is wasted shipping food to the grocery stores. Maryland has tons of farms everywhere, yet we are receiving our meat from places like Kentucky. It not only wastes gas, but it also adds to the greenhouse gases. A lot of the fruits have to stay fresh over the course of the trip, so many of them have hormones that help keep them fresh. We are putting hormones in the fruit when we could just drive down the street and get our fruits fresh off the tree. The farms have all the food fresh and hormone free. Many of the hormones actually shrink the apples, so the farm fresh apples are better for you and they are larger. Many people do not even know how bad the foods are for us, and maybe if they did the United States could be a healthier, greener place to live.
What are some ways you could help people understand more about sustainable food? And are you interested in being part of our garden team?
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