My Year Of Meats Essay

A central theme within Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats is the idea of authenticity. It appears in the very core of the show My American Wife!, where the goal is to find “authentic,” “attractive” wives with attractive families and lifestyles so that BEEF-EX can make meat look appealing to Japanese viewers. However, many characters in the book have different views on what authenticity means, and the definitive definition is never revealed by Ozeki. In fact, My American Wife!, the authentic reality show, is one of the least realistic parts of the entire book and a reflection on the lack of authenticity in today’s reality TV shows. Although authenticity is projected as subjective, as My Year of Meats shows us, one will find nothing “real” or “genuine” about reality TV, which is negatively impacting our society.

Would you do anything to keep your family together? The novel Bastard out of Carolina, written by Dorothy Allison, reveals the early life of the main character, Bone. Born an illegitimate child, Bone grew up being physically and sexually abused by her step-father. The novel My Year of Meats, written by Ruth L. Ozeki, showcases the behind-the-scenes story of a reality television show, My American Wife. The show was produced by BEEF-EX, a meat company. The show was created to “create a new truism: The wife who serves meat has a kinder, gentler mate” (Allison 13). Although the novels may seem to be completely different, they both have a strong theme of family. Characters in both novels are not only forced to make decisions that affect themselves and their families, but they also make decisions based on their families’ opinions. The main characters in both novels have hidden the truth to protect their families, but they both received different outcomes.

Eating meat has been part of our daily lives for many years and continues to be today. Without realizing, we became more susceptible to the meat and dairy industries’ inaccurate information. To further demonstrate this, Americans seem to become more and more sicker as time passes even while we evolve in medical advancements and research. With that being said, we do not need to consume animal products to survive nor do we need to consume them to be healthy.

After reading My Year of Meats Ch 8 by Ruth L, I am astonished at the deep irony in this book. Ozeki, Ozeki writes, “Truth lies in layers, each of them barely opaque, like skin, resisting the tug to be told. As a documentarian, I think about this a lot. In the edit, timing in everything” (175). I think this citation intends to illustrate Jane’s position, and she doubts about this commercialized TV show, which displays the unreal American culture to Japanese. Jane tries to tell the truth to public so that she finds two vegetarian lesbians to record the TV show. Meanwhile, Jane cuts down the schedule to only a little time for her boss in order to force him to broadcast the show. What’s more, in chapter eight there are also many sentences reveal

Did you know that buying that burger at dinner or frozen chicken at the grocery store is killing you, your family, and the environment? Despite that you grew up eating meat and accumulated the thought that you “can’t live without it,” you CAN go without consuming meat. If you were to give up meat, even for a while or better yet all together, you would not only be helping the earth, but also your health, and even our future generations to come. Believe it or not, eating meat causes huge side effect to your health. Factory farming even causes more pollution and chemical fume releases than cars. On top of that, it is wiping out vast sums of land and is causing deforestation, which is even causing plants and insects to become extinct every day. Factory farming and the consumption of meat is bad and should be limited or stopped altogether.

My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki highlights the horrors of the American meatpacking industry melding imaginary personal lives with real political issues. It begins when a struggling Japanese-American documentary filmmaker, Jane Takagi-Little, accepts a job working on My American Wife!, a television program for a Japanese audience sponsored by BEEF-EX, an American meat lobbying organization. As Jane travels across the United States for the program, she feels compelled to look closely at the meat industry that her work supposedly promotes. What she discovers shocks her: mass-produced meat is often unsafe for those of us who eat it, and especially for the people who produce it. As the novel continues it’s easy to see that there are cultural issues

Did you know that the meat you eat everyday can kill you? People consume meat everyday, and don’t know how it can affect their health. Research shows that red meat is increasing the chance of eight major diseases. Those diseases include cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, strokes, diabetes, infections, kidney disease, and liver disease. Red meat is also full of nasty growth hormones and cholesterol.

You can’t have your cake, and eat it too; well in this case meat. Although, meat products provide us with various nutrients that solely this protein can equip us; is the added hormones, increase in risk of cancer, and

Many people question the ethics of the meat industry as they face the challenges of production and quality to serve our growing population. As consumers become more informed on the industry, new data is being released to show the health benefits of animal protein in the human diet. Based upon this new data, many people are questioning whether they should cut meat out of their diet completely and are looking to find a way to eat meat as ethically as possible. For some concerned with the ethics of eating meat it strictly comes down to killing animals, but it can also start with how the animals are treated. While there is no way to make any industry completely ethical, there are ways to make informed choices which can lead to a more ethical approach to the industry and its consumers. As demand increases and society becomes more informed on the meat industry, people are finding that there are ways to consume meat ethically.

Meat has more of an impact on our environment, than any other food that we consume. Meat consumption is increasing in America, and with so many mouths to feed there is a greater demand for it. Massive production leads to the purchase of poultry and allows consumers to get it quicker for a less price (buzzle.com). But although the low prices make consumers happy and allows them to buy the produce, sometimes large quantities at a time, it is proven to be poor in quality and a risk factor for human health. Animals are kept in a confined area with very little space to move, because of the animals leaving conditions they experience stress, boredom and aggression. In order to curb the aggression and conceal the disease that result from poor leaving conditions and to stimulate the growth of animals the animals are given drugs. Farmers get payed more for large breast and thighs, so as a result they breed the animals to be heavy, and the chicken’s bones cannot hold up the amount of weight that the chicken has. Some cannot stand due to the excessive weight and some of their legs break. Since the produce is not natural it results to poor quality items. Due to diseases with in the confined areas animals such as cows, chickens, and pigs are injected with antibiotics in order to make them vulnerable to disease (icanimal.org). It is possible for the animals to catch infections, and spread these infections to other animals due to the unsanitary leaving conditions (buzzle.com). All these factors contribute to poor quality meat which can result to health problems for the

The cattle industry produces vast amounts of strain in the environment. It is energy inefficient, pollutes water, occupies many acres of land, and deteriorates the health of the people who abuse its consumption. The government subsidizes this industry. Therefore, the price paid for meat doesn’t reflect the environmental hazards involved in the process. In order to protect our health and the health of the environment we should pay close attention to our food choices and make sure we don’t support industries that degrade it.

Today, society has entered into some truly interesting yet important times. None more so that with regards to the origin of the food provisions people consume. Bringing a debate to the forefront of mainstream attention, in regards to the mass consumption of meat, and the ethical dilemmas faced with the current model of harvesting of meat, in particular the harvesting of beef cattle. Concurrently major scholars and research institutions, are developing studies and examining the current state of health to humans whereby they are comparing those who regularly consume meat, to those who abstain from animal products to varying degrees. While studies are in the infancy stages, enough progress has been shown to offer some basis of debate. Considering the health of the consumer of beef, or the people who eat it, offer two general yet major stakeholders in the debate of meat, and the first tiered look into the ethics of eating meat. Aside from the health of the consumer, the practice of which the animal is farmed is quintessential to the well being of the animals while influencing the economics of the industry. Modern animal harvesting, or the life cycle of the animal, offers a commercial source to a large portion of the country, affectionately known as the Heartland of America or the Midwest. All the while non-traditional animal friendly farms, where a multitude of animals live in cohabitation of each other, that convey the impression of an animal product-producing utopia, while an

In recent years the trend towards eating less meat has increased because the technology that has so successfully increased meat production is an unnatural method. The use of chemicals and the unnatural living conditions the animals are kept in, which in many cases are appalling, are designed to force growth. People are now becoming increasingly concerned about their intake of chemicals and fat via the

Every time people consume processed meat, they are putting carcinogens in their body, which results in serious health complication. A recent study that states that there is “limited evidence that the consumption of

Thanks to UN reports, it is known that meat consumption has bad side effects on the environment, there are much emissions in the breeding, slaughter and transport of the animal. What is less known is the flesh effects on health, which has become a major problem in our society.