Global Issues For Breakfast Research Paper

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

John Soluri 's Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States, (Which for spatial and repetitive purposes, I will refer to as Banana Cultures for the remainder of the paper), introduces the reader to a world of corporate greed, consumption, and environmental change using the history of the common, everyday fruit, the banana. He explores the various political occurrences, health problems, and changes in mass media through the rise of the consumption of the banana in the United States, and around the globe.

Hunger has been a prevalent issue in both established communities and struggling nations around the globe. It seems that there has never been a time when every person on the planet was food secure, and while it is typically assumed that hunger is an issue only in developing nations, malnutrition and hunger are concerns even in the United States. Millions of children across the country live in homes where food is scarce and meals are skipped on a regular basis. Because research supports the connection between nutrition, good health, and cognitive ability, it is critical that methods of addressing food shortages for minor children be found. One solution, the School Breakfast Program, seeks to provide healthy breakfast meals for children

Many support agricultural modernization, as a solution Africa’s, and many other impoverished nations hunger problems. This would include the industrialization of their agricultural industry, using modern, genetically enhanced seeds, and fertilizer. Yet, some of the same groups that are promoting the organic movement in the United States are advocating against the globalization of modern industrial agricultural practices (Paarlberg 179). Those who support modernization of such nations argue that the current process in inefficient, and inadequate. They believe that globalization of the highly capitalized, science-intensive, agricultural system that has been developed in the West, is the answer to the worlds hunger problems. They also warn that if the West abandons its current practices, it may fall victim to famine due to inadequate production (Paarlberg 179). However, supporters of organic production point to the fact that each year, approximately ten million tons of chemical fertilizer are poured onto our corn

We eat bananas almost every day; however, most of us do not really know where these fruits come from. In Banana Cultures, John Soluri focuses on the relationship between banana production in Honduras, especially in the North Coast between roughly 1870 and 1975, and banana consumption in the U. S.. He focuses on growing, protecting, transporting, and mass marketing of bananas. John Soluri integrates Agroecology, anthropology, political economy, and history in order to trace the symbolic growth of the banana industry. The author admits that his work is highly interdisciplinary, as a desirable trait in the academic world. The study incorporates a wide range of sources, including manuscript census data from Honduras, fruit company records, published scientific records, Honduran and U.S government correspondence, oral testimonies, and ephemera from U.S mass culture. Throughout his work, he combines elements of geography, biology, social history, foreign affairs, and environmental history. Soluri also looks at labor practices and worker’s lives, changing gender roles on the banana plantations, and the effects of pesticides in the Honduran environment and people. His central argument is that United States consumption of bananas causes major social, political, and environmental change in Honduras. In addition, he looks at the banana pathogens, the ways the United States treated these fungal diseases, and the terribly detrimental effects these new treatments had on the farmers on

Argumentative Writing Do you like your school lunches? Schools should offer healthy lunches to the students. The reasons why schools should offer healthy lunches because before the school lunches got healthy food the school lunches were so unhealthy and kids were eating too many calories, the unhealthy food does not meet the Healthy, hunger-Free Kids Act, and with unhealthy school lunches that can lead to obesity in the children.

Sipling 1 Why do we have school lunches? Different children around the world get school lunches. Some children don’t even get the option to eat school lunch. Only fifty-six percent of the world’s children get the option to get school lunch. (Harrington)

Central High School is planning to change our school lunches to something that is “healthier” and “less-fattening”. Many students disagree with this idea, but others are completely supportive about this idea. Students want something that will keep them full for the rest of the school day and not be starved to death by time they get home. This makes learning a lot harder and it makes paying attention a lot harder as well.

Pesticides and genetically modified has unknowingly become part of a worldwide consumption trend. Beyond pesticide planes flying over banana worker’s heads to EMO seeds only being available for farmers, the author reveals how much the workers of these products are affected. With convenience and luxury for consumers comes the oppressed truth about the lives of the impoverished workers. Company websites contain descriptions of

Chiquita, the oldest banana transnational in Latin America was the primary target of banana worker rights and environmental activists until 2001. The company has since teamed up with the Rainforest Alliance to roll out the Alliance’s standards to its banana farms in Latin America.6 Chiquita prides itself on its recent changes, which have involved revamping the company to promote “The Chiquita Difference”; this includes a philosophy of social responsibility, sustainability, community involvement and food safety.7 These changes arose from the use of political activism by consumers in response to poor workers rights, thus exemplifying the fact that people do realize where their food is coming from and are willing to fight for those who create it. This shows that the process of defetishization has begun for many. Production

In the book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (2008), Dan Koeppel talks about the historical background of banana. He also talks about its’ importance to African farmers and its’ importance to Latin America and Asia in economic terms. He describes that a disease called blight has caused serious threats to banana crops, as it is rapidly destroying the banana crops around the world (Koeppel, 2008). In this book, the author describes the role of two mega companies; Dole and Chiquita. They are committing massacres in the name of producing cheap banana. In Latin, America Chiquita is exploiting the labor. It also supports

Bananas are a common household fruit in North American and European homes. However, by buying bananas consumers are supporting an unethical banana commodity chain. Banana plantation workers are paid unfair wages, prevented from unionizing, and are exposed to toxic pesticides in the workplace. After examining the harmful aspects of labour in the banana commodity chain, consumers ethical obligations towards buying bananas must be taken into account. Do consumers hold an ethical duty to ensure that their produce is produced fairly? If yes, how can they act on these duties? Based on Utilitarian ethics, Unger and Singer would argue that a banana consumer should make the decision that does the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people

While globalization is a relatively new phenomenon in theory, but not necessarily in history, as of 2009 it has created transnational corporations linked to government, international economic institutions, and non-government organizations. (Steger 67). With this definition bananas are a textbook example of the globalization of tropical fruit commodities. The transnational corporations of the United States, most notably Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte, have been linked to the governments of Latin and South America, the World Trade Organization, and the “organic” fruit movement. By tracing the path from banana plantations to supermarket it becomes clear how the “morals” of capitalism have permeated

On average, a human being consumes about 3 meals a day. While many people eat whatever they please, there are many individuals who choose to live and maintain a healthy life style. While almost any type of food is available in our stores and markets here in the U.S., this does not mean much of produce we consume is actually grown here. Especially when it comes to the fruits and vegetables we consume every day, many of them are grown elsewhere. While we import much of our fresh produce, many people fail to see the complications these countries and farmers go through on a daily basis to get us these crops we need. A fruit like bananas for instance has more of a history than many people could even imagine. I’m here to discuss the history of this naturally consumed fruit as well as speak about the countless labor and environmental issues that have taken place.

Luis Herrera-Estrella and Ariel Alvarez-Morales, authors of “Genetically modified crops: hope for developing countries?”(2001) argues for genetically modified food to be grown in developing countries in an attempt to alleviate starvation and assist those countries in joining the developed world. The author supports this by immediately identifying and addressing prominent counter-arguments, displaying a localized need of the technology (soon to be globalized), and examining how harshly GMOs are criticized with specific comparisons to deforestation and other climate change variables. The authors ' intended audience is educated voter populations and politicians, in order to make an impact on the GMO debate. Herrera-Estrella 's and Alvarez-Morales ' article serves its purpose, to educate and persuade those involved in the politically charged topic with a researched and defended opinion, one they hope will carry into the polling place and be spread further than its scientific publishing 's beginnings. The article manages to persuade by structuring the discussion in order to narrow the reader 's thoughts, citing research supporting their thought process, using the reader 's sense of global community, and a both humanitarian and scientific mindset on the issue.