Feeding the Growing World Population

After travailing to Thailand, Shanghai, the Amazon and Madagascar, David Suzuki describes in his essay “Food Connections”, how Product, there producer, and contact with the earth, has been forgotten in industrial countries. He compares countries like Canada to third world countries.

He probes them to learn the what, where, and how of dinner – knowing what is going into the body, knowing where that food came from, and knowing how that food was made. By first knowing what is being consumed, people can make better informed decisions about their purchases. Nutrition, or lack thereof, is a key component in the battle against obesity. Food giants are hoping to hide the often unnecessary filler present in their products by use of dodgy claims and socially engineered advertisements. In general, most consumers probably couldn’t say where their food came from. This usually boils down to the fact that shoppers typically don’t think about it. Breaking this reliance on mass-grown foods is the second part of Pollan’s proposition. The third and equally important element is how the food is produced. More specifically, Pollan is concerned whether or not the food has been produced in a sustainable manner. Preserving the biodiversity of food, maintaining fertile land for future generations, and ensuring consumers receive food that does not compromise health are all factors of sustainability. Without informed consumers, what, where, and how will continue to be unanswered questions. Whether it is for nutritional or ethical choices, a particular food’s history is something that needs to once again become common

There is way too much fascinating information to unpack in this book - 99% of the 400 million turkeys consumed in America annually are artificially inseminated by humans! (p. 90). And we totally misunderstand lactose intolerance (p. 136-37). One would have to read this book one hundred times over to fully critique its value. But it is good! Great even. There is so much to learn about the world and how food systems affect climate change and how climate change affects ecosystems and all living things. Kingsolver provides a tool for change through this book by suggesting ways of living that reduce our harmful footprint on the earth. She does this by sharing her story of eating locally for a year and pairing those stories with loaded insights about how the current industrial food and farm systems are ultimately destroying the world. At the very least this book should cause people who have not before, to stop and evaluate their participation in this industrial food system. Their actions and inactions may even be changed by their uncomfortable awareness of how most of us are eating.

Eating has profoundly impact and influence on individual life. We can tell where most people are going to end up in life simply based on the choice they made on food. the question of what to eat, when virtually every food known to man is at your fingertips. Should you go gluten-free? Vegetarian or vegan? How about low-carb, Paleo, dairy-free, or sugar-free?. Michael Pollen discusses in his article " The Omnivore’s Dilemma" a true understanding of what we eat and what we should eat. Pollan points out that alternative method of producing food that is being overshadowed by the big, industrial system we have in place to provide consumers with sustenance. Pollan brings people a closer look at the true nature of industrial food, he find that most

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, gives light to the question, “What should we have for dinner?” that he thinks Americans today cannot answer simply due to the fact that there are too many food options. This book serves as an eye-opener to challenge readers to be more aware and accountable of what is consumed daily. In order to understand fully where our food comes from, we must follow it back to the very beginning. Pollan goes on to discuss three different modern food chains in which we get our food: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. By tracing our food back to the beginning, we can understand that most of the nutritional and health problems America is going through today can be found on the farms that make our food and the government that can decide what happens. America deals with many food related illness such as, heart disease, obesity, and type II diabetes. Majority of a human and animals diet consists of being corn-fed leading to a high cause of obesity in the United States these are just some of the many diseases that come with over processed foods and diets we are unaware of. In this study, we will highlight the environmental and health issues and impacts related with modern agriculture and how these systems can be made more sustainable.

Over the next forty years, global population is expected to reach nine billion people. This increase in population, combined with expected economic growth, will cause an increase in food demanded and inevitably drain the resources we use for food production. So far, agriculture has been able to respond positively to the rising demand for crop and livestock products. However, farmers are already faced with many new challenges associated with feeding an expanding global population. Farmers must now meet strict new emissions requirements and produce more food on fewer acres while minimizing their environmental footprint. The demand for food is expected to grow substantially in the next couple decades. Some of the factors affecting an increase in food demands are population growth, rising incomes of individuals, food supply factors, and biofuels.

There are many things wrong with our food system but one of the principal problems is us and our decisions. Wendell Berry who is a farmer and environmental activist wrote in the article The Pleasures of Eating about his theory of eating responsibly which included his opinion on food and the influence others have on what type of food we consume. In his article he addresses the problem with the industries’ influence on the quality of what we eat and the role the consumer has in this process. He states that we cannot be free if our decisions are influenced by others and all we do is agree to what they tell us we should.

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

The food industry has a large impact on individuals and will affect wider communities in the future. The rush of today’s society has pushed food production to become more commercialized with prepackaged/premade based foods. For numerous reasons such as time, work and costs of living, people are wanting meals that are cheap, fast, easy and don’t require much effort. This is due to many obligations and priorities in life that are put above

In chapter thirty-two of the kitchen as laboratory, César Vega and David J. McClements discuss what it means to cook from scratch in the context of modern society. Vega begins the chapter by introducing the topic of the importance of knowing where our food comes from, and how it is modified into the ingredients we know today. Although consumers should know where their food comes from, Vega and McClements claim that the consumers should also educate themselves about the process of how food is transformed to provide a better understanding of their food. The authors cite Michael Pollan, an author who writes primarily about food. Pollan claims that consumers should purchase food with a limited number of ingredients, or ingredients that are easy to identify. The authors disagree with Pollan’s point, citing that some foods are enriched to make people healthier, and if the additives were removed there would be a impact on everyone’s health.

In response to the growing trends in the current food system and the change of the notion of food, Allison Blay-Palmer, draws, through her tactful book, Food Fears, the alternative and mainstream of North American food systems. Throughout a deep understanding about the food system and its evolution, she describes various ways, by relying on grass roots and meaningful individual activism as alternatives to change the food agriculture while building up a new food system that embodies social and ecological values as the foundation for future growth.

Barry is asking the public to take care of their health and learn more about the food industry. He is asking us to participate in food production by growing our own food and preparing our own meals. He suggests we need to buy directly from local farmers. Even though this article was written twenty seven years ago, it is still relevant to today’s society. Wendell Berry's “The Pleasure Of Eating” is a strong article about how and why people take for granted the food they eat. I agree with Barry that eating is a cultural and agricultural act. I also agree that the food industry has fooled us into buying prepared food, and fooled us to believe that chemicals in our food is good for us. However we need to eat responsibly, by knowing where our food comes from. We also need to buy from local farmers, and prepare our own meals. I agree that we need to grow our own food to feel the reward and labor that farmers feel.

We can organize and plan for the future but in the end some things are out of our control and can unexpectedly change. With that being said, there still exists an element of planning and envisioning within a leader. This is especially true with Michael Pollan. The current state of our food system and the health of our nation shows the need for vision and positive leadership. Through his hard work Michael Pollan shares his vision of how things can be in the future. Through his published books and appearances, he shares innovative ideas on how the average person can change their perspective about food that will give them the tools to make wiser food choices and ultimately change their health. He is not a leader that provides a simple short term solution. He aims as changing people’s mindsets around food. He encourages us to “accept the elephant in the room”, the elephant being our western diet, and really explore what the western diet entails (Pollan, 2007). In addition to looking at food as a necessity that sustains us, we should also look at what we give in exchange for food. His vision is to teach people to see the relationship we have with the earth which provides us healthy mediums in which we can grow what we need to survive. Furthermore, he suggests ways in which we can accomplish this. For example, he encourages sustainable agriculture, and the use of urban

Nations are judged and measured by their production and selling of goods and services. Not only has increased consumerism resulted in ecological imbalance, it is also depleting earth’s natural resources, which in turn is creating an environmental crisis. One of the biggest products being consumed is food. Rapidly growing world’s population requires increased food production. Author Anna Lappe does an excellent job expounding on the impact that food production and distribution has on the environment. Lappe (2015) argues that modern practices of food production directly contribute to air pollution and increases carbon dioxide emissions (par. 11). Crop production uses an absurd amount of land, artificial fertilizer, and harmful pesticides that seriously pollutes the environment and threatens young children and wildlife species. Author Sandra Steingraber (2015) also argues that increased consumerism has led to a high usage of harmful chemicals to produce products for consumers (par.

Coxe has studied the sector for more than 35 years as a strategist for BMO Financial Group. He says it didn’t have to come to this. “We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output.”