Analysis of Vandana Shiva's Essay 'The Gift of Food'

When Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma was published, many readers began questioning him for advice on what they should eat in order to stay healthy. In his more recent book, In Defense of Food, he responds with three rules, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants"(Pollan 1). This seven word response seems too simple for a relatively complicated question, but as he further elaborates these rules into specific guidelines, this summary turns out to be surprisingly complete. Using inductive and deductive reasoning, he debunks the ideas behind nutritionism and food science, and proves that the western diet is the cause for food related diseases. Inductive reasoning is when a

The world continues to face a wide-scale food crisis. The effects of this crisis reach from the farmers who grow and raise the food to the very system of laws that are in place to govern the system itself. Food giants are reaching deep into their pockets for lobbying in order to take advantage of both the producers and the consumer all in the name of profit. Moreover, farmers are being driven to suicide, and the ecosystem’s livelihood is treading a fine line. Both Michael Pollan and Raj Patel bring to light these problems and offer suggestions to help lessen their severity. Though there are many philosophies on which they both agree, they both have their own ideas to fight back. Pollan seeks to challenge the consumer as an individual while

This gap has lead people to become “passive consumers” that are ignorant towards the origin of their food, how it is produced, and their role in the modern food industry. Berry argues that the pleasure of eating cannot be known without understanding that eating is involved in the agricultural process. He urges people to look into where and how their food is produced and under what conditions. He asserts that food is now a product of industry meaning the food industry no longer cares about the quality of food and how healthy it is, but how much can be produced at a small price. Berry then gives seven suggestions that can help people eat responsibly and understand the pleasures of eating. By being active in our world and in how we eat, people can eat with the fullest pleasure by being connected with the world around them and eating with understanding and gratitude

Throughout the book “Stuffed and Starved”, Raj Patel, the author, makes connections between the current state of the world food system, and the Malthusian and Rhodes dilemmas, the first, proposing that the world population is growing exponentially, but the resources to feed this growing population are finite, whereas the second suggests that hunger leads to unrest, hence as long as people are kept fed, they won't revolt. Patel sections the system and points out to the defects at all levels—starting from the fundamental unit—the seed, going broader touching upon redistributors, consumers, corporations, and, above all, governments and policies. The five major areas Patel criticizes I would like to emphasize are: prevalent selection of desirable

In many ways, food has been imperative to political and social influences on global human society. In chapters five and seven of An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, the importance of food and its effect on history is shown throughout the major themes of trading, the idea that food is equal to wealth, and the life-long sustenance that foods provide to people. In Standage’s book, middle-eastern botanists traded the spice of cinnamon, and potatoes were traded and seen as a valued food in all of Europe. Standage proves that food equals wealth when he wrote about the importance of spices across the Middle East. He says that people who owned spices were seen as “luxurious” because they could serve delicacies such as rare spices and could serve more flavorful food. Finally, the sustenance that spices, as well as maize/potatoes, provide is actually very similar to each other. Although spices could be seen as a more “secondary” source of sustenance, the rarity and high demand for spices allowed for trading and receiving nutritious food. On the other hand, maize was very important because almost anyone could grow maize and it could, therefore, be used as a major food supply.

As the world expands through time and business, the natural process of developing food is forced to adapt to the growing demands of civilization. Henceforth, the modern-day food industry is capable of producing a plethora amount of nutrients that sustains mass populations. However, is the modern tradition and technique of mass food production hiding a burdened truth behind the curtains of society’s unawareness? Is such truth more sinister than productive? Filmmaker Robert Kenner directed a documentary in 2008 where the methods of processing meats and harvesting crops were analyzed with their effects. As a result, Kenner’s documentary, Food Inc., has revealed that the ways foods are processed have consequently made them perilous for society. Through the use of

In the Introduction, to “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, Mary Maxfield argues that food and the way we consume it isn’t something that should define the obesity epidemic in America. A controversial issue discussed has been whether we should have theories or ideas on which diet works best to increase weight loss or whether we should have any diets to begin with. On one hand, Maxfield argues against the Health Professor Michael Pollan, who proposes an idea to reduce the problem of unhealthy eating in America, when he himself chastises scientists and other health doctors who suggests different diets. On the other hand, she introduces that food is just food and doesn’t need to be differentiated since one may seem

In Raj Patel’s novel Stuffed and Starved, Patel goes through every aspect of the food production process by taking the experiences of all the people involved in food production from around the world. Patel concludes by eventually blaming both big corporations and governments for their critical role in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and in so doing causing the key food-related problems of today such as starvation and obesity. In this book of facts and serious crime, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a general but available analysis of global food struggles that has a goal of enlightening and motivating the general Western public that there is something critically wrong with our food system.

Importantly, it deeply explores many factors of the hunger problem, from subsides to health effects but it everything to the central issue of

In the essay, “The Pleasures of Eating”, Wendell Berry, a lifelong farmer and an expert on food production, claims that eating is an agricultural act. According to Berry, consumers have become passive and don’t really know what they’re putting into their bodies. All they know is that they’ve been persuaded to want it. The extent of their knowledge is that plants and animals are raised on farms. They don’t know where the farms are, what type of farms they are, or what knowledge of skills are involved in farming. He supports this claim by first bringing to light the ignorance of the passive consumer and how they as passive consumers have become victims of the food industry. Then, he discusses how one must willingly escape this by reclaiming responsibility

Peter Singer Article “ Famine, Affluence and Morality gives the claim that the current institutions in affluent countries involved in providing aid to those in need are broken. Singer argues that nations that have wealth need to completely change the way they interpret pleasure and happiness. His example in this argument is the famine in Bengal in the 70’s, which gave a visual and real world example to the suffering he’s discussed in this article, he makes a real case of inequality to the emphasis of personal pleasures and moral obligations to our fellow man with economics facts, more money was spent on the happiness of people within close proximity to each other than to those out of sight and out of mind.

There is an idiom in China that says “People make food their Heaven”, which means everyone needs food to survive but also means people take comfort and pride in their food in many ways. However, nowadays, the position of food changes, and it seems not as important as before. Food production has become industrialized and plants have been grown with more problems. Most people didn’t realize this and they continued this process. Then, problems appeared like flooding. However, there are still some people feel the significance of the problems. Mark Bittman, bestselling cookbook author, journalist and television personality, gave a speech “What’s wrong with what we eat” to reveal why we are

He brings up a multitude of disputes between poverty, hunger, and even the discrepancy within our fast food nation. Though the topics may be bold, the purpose of it all requires all to listen given the importance dawning on the simplistic idea of how anyone can end up in the exact category of in need (Berg 45). Nonetheless, much more can be expanded upon.

Why is culturally appropriate food the essence of humanity? Humans are arguably the only animal categorized by diverse cultures, of which food is an essential part; food sustains us and without it we would die out. Humans do not exist outside of cultures, without them we would fail to thrive. After a decade of research and activism on this subject and that of food economy, intellectual property, and traditional lifeways, Vandana Shiva published Stolen Harvest, in 2000 (South End Press). It is an ethical treatise about the inalienable right to food and self-sufficiency that all humans and animals should be afforded, and serves as an excellent primer for novice agriculturalist. Stolen Harvest is a compendium of investigative essays theorizing: monocultures homogenize biodiversity, corporate monopolies augment this destruction, and structural violence clear-cuts sustainable lifeways and food systems worldwide (Shiva 1-15, 70).

Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved analyzes the paradoxical content in its title statement. Patel demonstrates how the world food system has created two opposite, but inherently linked epidemics: obesity and crippling hunger. Throughout the course of this book, it becomes painfully clear that the majority of the world’s population is being manipulated by our global food system and by the corporations and their CEO’s who control it. Patel encourages his readers to make themselves politically responsible (313) and through Stuffed and Starved, highlights the discrepancies and major imbalances of our world food system, the small percentage of people who benefit from it, and the vast majority of humanity who does not. He does all this while