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Essay on Pleasures of Eating

Decent Essays

Aundrenee Nash
Writing 121
Chris Jensen
May 10 2013

The Pleasures of Eating Summary and Response

In “The Pleasures of Eating” Wendell Berry wants the reader to recognize that eating is a cultural act. He believes we are eaters not consumers and that we should have more knowledge about the food we eat. Berry wants the reader to questions where the food is coming from, what condition is it produced in and what chemicals may it contains. He has found that the food industries blind us to what we are consuming and the effect it has on us. At last Berry believes that we must eat responsibly to live free.

Berry first begins with eating as an agricultural act. We think of food as an agricultural product rather than think of ourselves …show more content…

Like any politics it involves our freedom. By giving someone else the control we, “neglect to understand that we cannot be free unless our food is free” (Berry 232).

Our food wars a much make up as actors (Berry 232). Berry expresses that the food industry wants little to do with our health but more to do with volume and price of their product. As scales increase, diversity declines when this happens so does health. From there the dependence on drugs and chemicals becomes necessary. Food advertising leads up to believe that what we eat is good, tasty, healthy and guaranteed to give us a long life (Berry 233).

Industrialism is a trap. Berry believes how to escape this trap is to recognize the food problem as a whole and how eating is inescapable. In order to participate in the agricultural act you must; participate in food productions, prepare your own food, learn your foods origin, cut the middle man when you buy, learn about industrial food companies, good farming and gardening and learn from observation and experience. Berry takes pleasure in eating meat from non-suffering non-farm raised animals. As well as, fruits and vegetables that lived a plentiful life. He believes eating should be an extensive pleasure and the more we participate in agriculture and gain knowledge the more we live, “free from mystery, from creatures we

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