Food Assignment
1. Farm to Fridge
The video shows us a part, which not everyone knows, about how the meat of animals is produced. The first thing that explains the video is how you get pork. Small pigs are mistreated by workers; they castrate them and remove their tails in a totally inhuman way. Pigs that do not grow very fast, kill them cruelly by putting them in boxes with chemicals or grabbing them and throwing them against the ground. The older pigs are cut in the throat to die, but the pigs bleed to death and their death is like a slow torture for them.
The second example is that of the chicks; These are separated by sex and the males put them in bands that lead to a shredder or place them in plastic bags until they are suffocated, both forms lead to death. The females are cut off part of the beak with a hot blade, a very painful form. They are placed in cages where they spend their whole lives, and when they reach the right weight for the market they are moved upside down in special bands where they make a cut in the neck to bleed and die.
The production of milk goes the same way, with the same tortures that end in the death of the cows. The video shows how the workers of this company beat a calf until it dies. And this they do so that we can get the milk from the cows because if not the calves would be the ones who took it, something that should be the right thing and totally normal. These animals suffer from living in these conditions, they get sick from being in constant contact with their droppings, and what happens when an animal is sick? They kill him, it's that simple, because companies are not going to cover the cost of recovering an animal, and for them the easiest way to end it is to kill it.
Finally, the video shows what the process is like for the fish. The fish are caught with giant nets that trap everything that is found, including other marine animals. Changes in pressure and lack of water cause these animals to die. Others are still alive when cut into pieces. In other parts of the world fish are raised in confined spaces living among their own excrement where they live until they reach an adequate weight to be sold.
In each case, you can see how these animals writhe because of the pain that these people cause them, and it really causes me infinite pain to see how these animals live, in the conditions in which they spend all their days and how the workers end up with their lives in a cruel way.
2. How to stop the distortion of nutritional science
In the article "Food companies distort nutrition science. Here's how to stop them", the author, Julia Belluz, explains the problem of food research funded by food companies. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, started to notice a pattern in nutrition research. Out of the 168 industry-funded studies she looked at, 156 studies were favoring the food industry. For example, the research on Concord grape juice which showed that drinking the juice on a regular basis lead to a better brain development, and it was supported by Welch Foods Inc. The fact that nutrition science is underfunded by the government, gives place for industry groups and food companies to step in and start sponsoring research. Jason Block, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, explained how a lot of people didn't get any funding for the type of research they do and they had to look over more common problems. Another nutrition researcher, Martijn Katan, stated: "nutrition science has always been close to producers". According to Katan, tradition plays an important role in this science since there is a direct interest in the outcomes of research for producers and all food companies are likely to promote this research. Food industries are interested in funding research in order to be backed up by scientific research on their packaging. Through food and drug administration rules and health claims, industries increase their profits. As the author mentions, most people might think that the interest of this science is fully corrupted, but it seems to be subtler than that. A lot of good researchers work with these food industries, however; the industry funding their research can elevate minority views and give them more prominence that they should. For instance, small amounts of alcohol consumption by woman increase the risk of breast cancer, but as Katan said, the alcohol industry isn't interest in funding studies on that but the alcohol industry will rather do research on how alcohol consumption can reduce heart disease. Major scandals in medicine helped the medical community to do something about these conflict-of-interest problems. Unlike medicine, nutrition science hasn't done much to protect against the industry influence. The author believes nutrition research is slowly changing. The New York Times's revelation showed the incredible measure of the soda industry which was to publish on its website most of the researched it had given money over the past few years. Finally, the author agrees with all of the researchers she interviewed that the industry funding of food and nutrition studies shouldn't be abolished but it needs more awareness as well as organized efforts to control these conflicts.
3. Junk Food
The main point of the article is the increase in the number of obese people, such as adults and children, in the United States. The foods prepared by the big companies, nowadays, lack more and more of nutrients. A company should sell more products and make them irresistible for the consumer, so that he can earn more money, but at what price? We have seen an epidemic of public health problems related to the consumption of foods high in sugar, salt and fat, such as diabetes and heart disease.
There have been cases of companies that have tried to sell healthier foods to the population, but they have simply failed because no one wanted to buy them, which led to a loss of profits and, finally, to closing. Many companies try to prevent this by adding any of the three components that lead clients to addiction. These three ingredients are: sugar, salt and fat. But it has come to the attention of companies to achieve the best results when they hire people who specifically design food to be addictive. This is one of the biggest problems in the food industry.
In the case of potato chips, food company scientists followed the effective strategy of the food industry to increase sales of known products. In this case, the Lay's brand of fries innovated and included new products such as potato chips with salt and vinegar, salt and pepper, cheddar cheese and sour cream flavor. According to Mr. Moss, Frito-Lay executives hope to develop "designer sodium", which can lower the sodium content of their products by a considerable amount. On the other hand, something that no one thinks about when eating chips is how they can eat them forever and not feel very full. This feature comes from the "Disappearance of caloric density", which is designed so that your mind does not think you are getting many calories, and by scientific standards, this is one of the things that the food industry has developed.
Although food is only part of the cause of obesity, it is a problem that needs to be addressed on a larger scale. Junk food will probably always have a market share, but many companies have begun to adapt to changing consumer needs and offer healthier and more convenient products. Companies are now improving their products and listening to the consumer to produce healthier foods and we must encourage them to demand products that are healthy and as affordable as possible.
4. Epigenetics
At some point in your life you will have been told that you are what you eat. If you eat junk food your risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer will increase. But, if you eat an apple instead of a chocolate, your body will reward you with a strengthened immune system. That way you feel empowered by your lifestyle choices, so, you are what you eat.
Dr. Randy Jirtle of Duke University conducted a study in 2008 that shows that not only is what is eaten, but also what parents eat. In the experiment he used a mouse called Agouti, named for the agouti gene in his genome, which causes the mouse to be obese, have a yellow color and die prematurely as a result of heart disease and diabetes. The descendants of Agouti were identical to their parents and suffered the same diseases as them. The objective of this experiment was to partially or completely deactivate this gene. They chose to change the mother's diet before giving birth to a diet rich in methyl donors. Methyl donors are found mainly in green foods. When the mice were born they realized that they were brown and thin and showed no symptoms of vulnerability to any of the diseases. And as a result of this doctor's work, epigenetics was born. According to Pamela Peeke, your destiny is no longer DNA, all the things you do, the things you eat, all that you live, are now your destiny. In some way, your thoughts, your way of acting, the food you eat may affect your genetic expression. That is why we must be aware of what we eat and how we live day to day. If you were born with the most lethal form of the obesity gene, the FTO, just by walking every day for 6 months you can reduce this gene by 40%. Another case is addictions, if you like to smoke you should know that in the course of 2 to 3 years more than 50000 different genetic mutations are discovered that are the result of smoking, and this action of smoking ends in a variation in your genes. We are all what our parents ate. The epigenetics works in an interesting way, if your parents did not eat in a very healthy way and your grandparents like it, nothing happens, you are still fine because "Genetics can load the gun, but the epigenetic pulls the trigger", then, there is a very great relationship between us and the way in which our ancestors fed. A study confirmed that if you are the son or grandchild of one of the people who went hungry in the 1880s in Sweden, you will live longer, because your genes come into play with survival. But, as a result, you may end up contracting other problems such as depression. And something similar happened with the children of the people who lived in The Netherlands, during the Second World War, where they ate only 580 calories a day. For at least two generations, the children and grandchildren suffered significantly, of low weight. This is something that leads us to think that everything we do now, everything we eat, will have some side effect in our future or in our descendants.
5. The Inquiry
6. Food Inc.
This documentary manages to reflect the reality that humanity currently lives but that is hidden before our eyes so that we can continue living in a world dedicated to consumerism and "everything for the rich, little for the poor". In this way Food Inc allows reflecting on human beings, exposing issues such as the handling of animals, the genetic modifications that are made daily, the indiscriminate abuse of antibiotics, the violations that exist to the immigration laws that affect workers, the constant epidemics of diseases and the increasing rate of people suffering from obesity due to their inability to buy healthy foods, the limited time they have due to their work schedules, or simply the great variety of foods handled, which can extract very few nutrients A clear example of how the food industry has changed is the growth time of the chicken. A clear example of how this industry has changed is the growth time of the chicken. The chicks used to take 70 days to fully develop but now these are considered fully developed at 58 days, that is, it has gone from 70 to 58. Now, these animals, at 58 days, have not developed as they should and their bones and organs are not strong enough. They suffer from different diseases and as their bones are not strong enough, they suffer to walk and fall very often. Today, Latino workers are starting to fill the jobs that African-Americans worked for. 100 years ago, almost half of Americans were farmers, but today only 1 or 2% are farmers, much less.
It is likely that many of the foods we consume publish words on their labels, such as "healthy", "organic", "natural", etc., that we do not realize as consumers, is that behind these words there is another reality, an industry where they handle raw materials at will and where they try to make the most of each resource to reduce costs and increase the company's income. That is why over time, it is possible to see more variety of products in supermarkets and other points of sale, but at the same time we find more diseases, infertile women, deficiency in the IQ of children, because they require a diet healthy constant for their development, they find products that probably make their parents' lives easier because they are already packed, bottled, ready to be consumed, but behind that there is a dark part that cannot come out in the open, and for this reason you pay a lot of money that keeps our society silent.
The food companies are more likely to continue to manage and constantly manipulate our food, but what this documentary tries to do is, at least, when we do the shopping, remember a bit the images presented by the video, remember what we are doing, and what is the purpose of these food, and therefore, we probably understand that we own our bodies and are responsible for our health and avoid promoting those brands that are not food but "junk" for our family and hopefully in the future. The market Participation presented by companies such as McDonald's It can be significantly reduced and the quality of life of humans and animals can have a significant change.