Many people go grocery shopping without knowing what the food contains and how it was produced. The majority of food we buy is processed or food that has been manufactured. It would be nice to eat food that is neither processes or manufactured, but that won’t happen unless we do something about it, In Wendell Berry’s essay, “The Pleasures of Eating,” Berry’s argument is about how we should eat responsibly. According to Berry, we should pay more attention on the food we consume, by knowing how it’s produced and also where it comes from. Not only does he argue about that, but he also states how in order to eat responsibly, we should grow our own food and prepare them on our own. By growing our own food we’ll know how it was produced and we’ll be dependable on what has been added to our food. I agree with Wendell Berry, because by paying more attention to our food and eating responsibly we’re protecting our bodies from dangerous chemicals and we avoid sickness. …show more content…
Many people buy food without knowing what it contains. “And they ignore critical questions about the quality: how fresh it is? How pure or clean is it and how free of dangerous chemicals?” (Berry, 1) Just like actors, our food wears makeup and that makeup contains anonymous materials. As we should all know “our entire food has undergone a process of cornification.” (Pollan 1) People feed the animals corn, if the corn diet that the animals are having ruins their digestive systems they feed them antibiotics. So, when we eat the meat we’re also consuming the antibiotics that they were fed and of course we wouldn’t like them in our bodies, nor the anonymous materials that cover our foods. When we’re aware of what our food contains, we’ll realize that we’ll have to do something about
“Food as thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating,” is an article written by Mary Maxfield in response or reaction to Michael Pollan’s “Escape from the Western Diet”. Michael Pollan tried to enlighten the readers about what they should eat or not in order to stay healthy by offering and proposing a simple theory: “the elimination of processed foods” (443).
Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we
In the article, “The Pleasure of Eating” by Wendell Berry, Berry was right about the fact that there should be a “Food Politics”. This article talks about “eating responsibly” and “eating agriculturally”. If you haven’t heard of these terms, they vary in Berry’s article. So “Eating responsibly” and “Eating agriculturally” basically means that everyone is expected to see and know about what they are eating. Nonetheless, not all fruits and vegetables are healthy. You might need to spend some time to take a look at the brand, price, and the facts about the products. Imagine, if Berry came to your dinner table? How do you get or purchase your food? What will you serve him? If Berry were to show up to my dinner, the best
In “A Half-Pint of Old Darling”, by Wendell Berry, being honest is an important factor in a relationship. Miss Minnie and Ptolemy Proudfoot are a prime example as such when they keep secrets from one another, but then fix some things with the truth. They head over a major road bump that is eventually solved after being honest with one another. It seemingly makes their relationship stronger when the story concludes. Most of the secrets are kept in fear of hurting the other, which ends up happening one day when Tol sneaks Old Darling alcohol into their buggy. It is seen that hiding the truth means one is not being honest to his or her self, as well as to another. In this story, secrets leave speculation as to just how well Miss Minnie and Ptolemy Proudfoot’s relationship really is, and if things end up changing after a huge mistake.
In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan challenges his readers to examine their food and question themselves about the things they consume. Have we ever considered where our food comes from or stopped to think about the process that goes into the food that we purchase to eat every day? Do we know whether our meat and vegetables picked out were raised in our local farms or transported from another country? Michael pollen addresses the reality of what really goes beyond the food we intake and how our lives are affected. He does not just compel us to question the food we consume, but also the food our “food” consumes.
The Pleasure of Eating Wendell Berry, an environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer, tells consumers to eat “responsibly”. Consumers should realize that eating is an agricultural act. An act that gives us freedom. Meaning that every time we make choices about what we eat and who we purchase from, we are deciding what direction our food system moves. Berry states that to make a change, we need to make individual choices to live free.
Eating is an instinctual habit; however, what we decide to put in our body is a choice that will affect our way of living. In “The American Paradox,” Michael Pollan, a professor of journalism at University of California, Berkeley, disapproves of the way Americans have been eating. The term “American paradox” describes the inverse correlation where we spend more of our time on nutrition, but it would only lead to our overall health deteriorating. According to Pollan, our way of eating that had been governed with culture, or our mother, was changed by the entities of food marketers and scientists, who set up nutritional guidelines that changed the way we think about food. Nutritional advice is inaccurate as it is never proven, and it is not beneficial
In Wendell Berry’s “The Pleasures of Eating,” this farmer tells eaters how their separation from food production has turned them into “passive consumers” who know nothing about the food they eat, or their part in the agricultural process (3). They are blindsided by a food industry that does not help them understand. Berry argues that the average consumer buys available food without any questions. He states consumers that think they are distanced from agriculture because they can easily buy food, making them ignorant of cruel conditions it went through to get on the shelf. Humans have become controlled by the food industry, and regard eating as just something required for their survival. Berry wants this to change as people realize they should get an enjoyment from eating that can only come from becoming responsible for their food choices and learning more about what they eat. While describing the average consumer’s ignorance and the food industry’s deceit, he effectively uses appeals to emotion, logic, and values to persuade people to take charge, and change how they think about eating.
Michael Pollan discusses two categories of food: one is real food (the kind our great-grandmother would recognize), while the other is “edible food-like substances”. The category that needs defending according to Pollan is the real food. This category of food is minimally processed, fresh (will eventually rot), and includes mostly things that are taken straight from the source (the ground, tree, etc.). When one walks into a store, they should look for and pick the foods that are more “quiet”such as fresh produce than the ones that have more labels that say they are more healthy, or better for you.
American society has grown so accustomed to receiving their food right away and in large quantities. Only in the past few decades has factory farming come into existence that has made consuming food a non guilt-free action. What originally was a hamburger with slaughtered cow meat is now slaughtered cow meat that’s filled with harmful chemicals. Not only that, the corn that that cow was fed with is also filled with chemicals to make them grow at a faster rate to get that hamburger on a dinner plate as quickly as possible. Bryan Walsh, a staff writer for Time Magazine specializing in environmental issues discusses in his article “America’s Food Crisis” how our food is not only bad for us but dangerous as well. The word dangerous could apply to many different things though. Our food is dangerous to the consumer, the workers and farmers, the animals and the environment. Walsh gives examples of each of these in his article that leads back to the main point of how dangerous the food we are consuming every day really is. He goes into detail on each of them but focuses his information on the consumer.
Alice Waters, in her 2007 article “Farmer Bill Should Focus on Healthful Foods”, instead of focusing on the farming techniques themselves, makes a more pointed inspection over the products and produce
When we think of our national health we wonder why Americans end up obese, heart disease filled, and diabetic. Michael Pollan’s “ Escape from the Western Diet” suggest that everything we eat has been processed some food to the point where most of could not tell what went into what we ate. Pollan thinks that if America thought more about our “Western diets” of constantly modified foods and begin to shift away from it to a more home grown of mostly plant based diet it could create a more pleasing eating culture. He calls for us to “Eat food, Not too much, Mostly plants.” However, Mary Maxfield’s “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, argues differently she has the point of view that people simply eat in the wrong amounts. She recommends for others to “Trust yourself. Trust your body. Meet your needs.” The skewed perception of eating will cause you all kinds of health issues, while not eating at all and going skinny will mean that you will remain healthy rather than be anorexic. Then, as Maxfield points out, “We hear go out and Cram your face with Twinkies!”(Maxfield 446) when all that was said was eating as much as you need.
Fast food consumption is taking America by a storm and it is for the sake of our lives. Fast food relies heavily on industrialized corn because of how cheap and easy to grow it is. With that being said, animals are being fed with corn rather than being fed with grass. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Rich Blair who runs a “cow-calf” operation s...
Berry does not hesitate in using harsh words and metaphors like “the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot”(Berry 10). This provokes the readers to feeling horrible about industrial eating. He uses our pride while pointing to the lies of the make-up of industrial foods. He plays on human self-preservation when writing about chemicals in plants and animals which is out of the consumer’s control. He tries to spark a curiosity and enthusiasm, describing his own passion of farming, animal husbandry, horticulture, and gardening.
He says this has partly stemmed from the fact that food is so heavily doctored in media and advertisement that we fail to appreciate the individuality of it. He also states that most consumers wouldn’t want to know where their food came from as it would just make them feel bad. He then goes on to start providing solutions for the problems we face. One major way to eat responsibly is for one to grow their own food. This allows one to become acquainted with how food is really produced and really appreciate it as a labor of love. Another key thing Berry mentions is the preparation of one’s own food. One should be able to cook as it is cheaper and again makes one closer to what they are eating. A last main point is one properly learning the history of their food. He states this is all important because one can then truly enjoy all parts