Making the Best Food Choices: Satisfying Environmental Requirements and Nutritional Requirements

Thinking about the importance and significance of food respective to our health, ethnic culture and society can cause cavernous, profound, and even questionable thoughts such as: “Is food taken for granted?”, “Is specialty foods just a fad or a change in lifestyle?”, and even “Is food becoming the enemy.” Mark Bittman, an established food journalist, wrote an article called “Why take food seriously?” In this article, Bittman enlightens the reader with a brief history lesson of America’s appreciation of food over the past decades. This history lesson leads to where the social standing of food is today and how it is affecting not only the people of America, but also the rest of the world.

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

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

The essay “Eat Food: Food Defined,” from Michael Pollan’s 2008 book In Defense of Food was written to address the American general public about the food industry. Pollan focuses on relatable topics as examples, such as family, common food items, and common belief that everyone wants to be healthy. The essay brings across Pollan’s point by establishing his credibility, explaining why this is important to us, and telling us how to react to the given facts. Pollan makes the readers inquire how we define food by drawing our attention to the importance of examining our food before eating it.

While everyone may love to go out and enjoy a fine meal with friends and family, most will never stop to think the process of how the food came about, or the production thereof. John Oliver’s piece on “Food Waste” outlines all the problems of food waste and how they can impact society, animals, nature, and even the farmers who harvest the produce. America and its businesses should try to decrease the amount of food being wasted. By doing so, not only are we a contributing factor to help reduce waste, save time and money, but we are also aiding the less-fortunate in a society, while still saving natural resources and the planet as a whole.

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.

Michael Pollan in 2006, published a work that has to some degree changed the way that people eat, or at the very least attempted to change the way that we think about the food we eat. (Shea 54) Pollan demonstrates through fundamentally modern rhetoric the relationship that people, and more specifically American’s have with food and how very distant we are from it. ("History, Old Favorites in" B08) To some degree Pollan, others like him and internationally challenging food shortages and even worse food born illnesses and scares are changing the way that food is understood with regard to an international and national food traceability and accountability movement. (Popper 365) Pollan challenges the “industrial food chain” looking at

Throughout world history, people have come up with brilliant new ideas to make life easier, and as time goes on, research, making food, and getting news, has all become instantaneous. It now only takes the push of a button to cook a thanksgiving meal or the click of a remote to find out what’s happening across the world. These things are often taken for granted, and rarely does someone stop and say: “I wonder what turning on this extra lamp does to the environment?” This statement sounds insignificant when there are people starving in other countries and people are training for the army. Yet, being concerned about the environment is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the environment should be one of the biggest concerns among people, as

Being humans the main cause of rising global temperatures, it is crucial that every single person in the world should also embrace a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.

The Earth is currently facing detrimental environmental issues. These issues have been evident for decades; however, many people have continuously denied them to be problematic or even their existence entirely. While they have managed to get away with the rejection of these problems for many years, it is no longer deniable that the issue of environmental degradation is very real and in need of immediate action. That being said, although there have been a variety of modest attempts to increase environmental sustainability, they have demonstrated to be of minimal effect. Pollution, global warming, deforestation, and a plethora of other human impacts that cause this degradation rapidly continue to destroy the planet, and in order to obstruct them,

In the decade of the 1970s, the United Nations organized several important meetings on the human environment to study a very serious problem . We humans are destroying the world around us . We are using up all of our natural resources . We must learn to conserve them, or life will be very bad for our children and our grandchildren .

Environmental issues result from discussions over the use of resources and pose challenges that are as diverse as Earth’s ecosystems. The environment is affected by controversies over the use of resources or dependency on processes that affect the well-being of the ecosystem. Over the years, our society continues to use more of Earth’s resources and as a result, our environment has begun to crumble. Environmental issues are controversial subjects that are brought up daily. Currently part of the global conversation about the issue are politicians and the government systems but are seen throughout the worldwide public eye. What some do not seem to understand is the amount of stress our society puts on the Earth. By driving our cars around everyday, leaving the lights on when we leave the house, and buying processed food we are creating trouble. All of these things produce greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide―the main contributor to climate change and global warming. Industries working with fossil fuel are destroying the ecosystem by taking the little amount of resources that it already has, and

‘Food has become so social in today’s world. We meet we eat, we chat we sip. Everywhere we go we see people sitting around food & sharing their lives with each other. Food connects people & cultures’

The population of the earth has grown immensely over the past few hundred years, one of the most prominent spikes occurred towards the agricultural age and again during the industrial age. The Earth’s carrying capacity, how many people the Earth can hold without depletion, cannot sustain the growing population for much longer. The increasing human population has also increased its consumption. The population and connection with increases in consumption have many negative effects towards human sustainability. Some of the ways in which the human population can become more sustainable include regulating fertility rates and limiting product production. A study by researchers at the University of Central Florida found that making college students more aware of their consumption levels can actually limit their consumption levels (Grauerholz). Pollution is another factor that contributes the sustainability of the human population. More pollution and human activities will result in less available resources such as clean air (Trevors). Not only will this affect the human population, but also the populations of other living organisms. Lack of resources, for example, can lead to the extinction of animals. To maintain sustainability, the human population needs to create limits and begin creating regulations that will allow resources to replenish themselves at a continuous rate. One of the first steps is to begin working with developing nations so that they can begin to control their