On Friday, April 25, 2014, I attended the event Global Climate Change Symposium organized by the

Do you know what is in the food that you are fueling your body with? Eating locally grown food or growing your own food allows you to know exactly what is in your food and where it is coming from. Award winning author Barbara Kingsolver ditched her urban life full of pesticides and GMOs, and uprooted her family to a farm where they were going to eat all home or locally grown food for a year. The Kingsolver family documented this one-year food journey in their non-fiction book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Barbara Kingsolver wants to educate, persuade, and inspire her readers to live healthier lives by first forcing them to question the food they are consuming. She uses allusion, figurative language, and rhetorical questioning

a. We have been influencing climate change for some time now. Through the industrial revolution, a growth in the size of the population, and our daily activities, are releasing green house gases. Green house gases affect the earth by, absorbing the reflection of sunlight once it hits the earth. This causes the atmosphere, the oceans, and the surface of the land to warm up.

Global climate change is more than just raising the concentration of GHG’s in the atmosphere, it’s a serious health threat. Dr. Howard Koh, of the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, has stated that global warming is a threat to human health because of an increase in respiratory and allergy aggravation,

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.

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.

Journalist and novelist Michael Pollan writes about the trials and tribulations surrounding food in North America and raises questions regarding Western diet, which is mostly comprised of refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup and corn in general. He reiterates that chemically generated food is creating disease in North Americans; If we eliminate these factors and adopt the eating habits of less industrialized places in the world will we in our lifetime see rates of heart disease, type two diabetes and obesity decline dramatically? The western diet has evolved drastically in the last sixty years, so much so that people have become codependent on the government, dietitians and food agencies regarding their health and what to consume. The land is suffering from pesticides and singular plant farming, the alternative to this is to buy organic but at a higher price. Media has influenced the consumer to read the label and accept and trust the daily vitamin percentages on the box, as this is what is best for them. Money is the key factor in all of this and the government, scientific research and media know that, therefor the public is in for a shock when they realize that the very labels that are supposed to save them have fooled them.

As seen in the film Fed Up, obesity in the U.S. can be traced back to changes in food production. The novel Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard describes an alternative food system option in which family farms and farmer’s markets become once again important components of the U.S. food system. The American food system has evolved

In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan goes undercover as a “food detective” to find out what we should be eating. But are people doing anything to have a more sustainable healthy lifestyle? We can influence healthier eating, both individually and collectively, by doing things such as encouraging more “Beyond Organic” farms, changing prices for the foods we eat, and even trying to eat healthier in order to encourage and model to our family and friends. In this essay, I will show you how there are many things we can do to making healthier choices for ourselves and even our whole

It’s no secret, Americans love their processed, energy-rich foods. And undeniably, this love affair has led to an obesity epidemic. In spite of the evidence against processed food, however, there are some who believe the problem may hold the key to the solution. David Freedman, author of “How Junk Food Could End Obesity,” criticizes Michael Pollan for his argument in support of unprocessed, local foods due its impracticality. Freedman’s criticism is based on the idea that “It makes a lot more sense to look for small, beneficial changes in food than it does to hold out for big changes in what people eat that have no realistic chance of happening” (Freedman Sec. 1). He contends that processed foods already play a big part in our diets, so instead of trying to expand the wholesome food business, we should try to make processed foods healthier. Freedman’s argument, however, overlooks many negative effects of processed foods and conventional farming. Michael Pollan’s wholesome food movements takes into account not only the obesity problem, but also the quality of the environment and the rights of farmers. Although Pollan’s solution to obesity may not seem the most efficient or time effective, the trades offs it provides in terms of environmental sustainability and the well-being of farmers outweigh the loss of efficiency.

Did you know that one in every four childen in the United States is obese? But by buying and eating locally grown you can hopefully prevent yourself from getting obese. In the novel, Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat, written by Michael Pollan, he talks about four food chains- industrial, industrial organic, local sustainable, and the hunter-gatherer food chain. In the Industrial food chain, people would grow their genetically modified crops on a monoculture farm and they would spray artificial fertilizer, pesticides, and other harmful chemicals on the plants. When growing organic foods on a monoculture farm in the industrial organic food chain, people would using natural fertilizer and would not use pesticides, antibiotics,

The Effectiveness of Forks Over Knives In his documentary Forks Over Knives, Lee Fulkerson sheds a light on the main cause to heart diseases and diabetes through the help of Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who have spent many years researching the negative effects of consuming refined, processed, and animal based foods. Fulkerson also seeks guidance from Dr. Lederman and Dr. Pulde to show, through example, what a whole food, plant-based diet can do from people who are struck with these life-threatening diseases as well as someone, like Fulkerson, who lives life without any major diseases but can still benefit greatly from the diet switch. With the use of statistics, research and science, real-life examples, and visual aids Fulkerson

Making the Change In a cartoon comic “Climate Change” by Darryl Cunningham, Cunningham talks about what is happening to the planet and what changes affect the habitat around it. “The earth’s atmosphere keeps the planet warmer than it would be if it didn’t have an atmosphere. The main gases that contribute to this effect are carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor... Since the industrial revolution, the quantity of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased sharply.

This article critically examines the ways in which individuals could help reduce the impacts of global warming. The author challenges that every individual could significantly minimise the effects of global warming by adopting to a more responsible lifestyle.

After the visit to "Wayne Bradley's" farm, Peter Singer and Jim Mason share some very important information on the experience with farming. Singer and Mason together examine negative impacts that individual Americans food choices have upon farmers, they believe should be the basis of dietary basics. The negative effects of much agriculture on animals, human health, and our environment as they have little faith that the American government will actually take the initiative to force the food industry to change without a lot of pressure, with this being said consumers, such as Mr. Bradley, force for reformed market behavior through demand for the food product, animals. Singer and Mason spend considerable time at Mr. Bradley farm to expose the

On Friday, April 25, 2014, I attend the event Global Climate Change Symposium organized by the West Valley College Global Citizen and Suitability Committees from 1:00 to 2:30 PM. In this event the speaker was Dr. Daphane Miller, MD., family physician, writer and Associate Professor in the department of Family Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. Dr. Daphane Miller is also a family physician. One thing that I believe that is sticking to know first and foremost is that she is a doctor. She sits at her office three days a week and she sees patients all day long and she takes care of them, one of her many prescriptions to her patients are good eating, among other things. The mayor focus on Dr. Daphane speech was Farmacology since she said once “if you care about your food, you ultimately have to find out and care about how it is grown and where it comes from.”