According to an article by Michael Pollan, paying more for “fresh” food and driving for a long ways is better than paying a little less and saving time and money on gas. In the article, “No Bar Code,” Pollan intelligently describes his experience of visiting a local private farm. He had heard about the Polyface farm and wanted to try some meat. So, Pollan called up Joel Salatin, the farm owner, and asked for him to FedEx a broiler, Salatin had refused and explains that Polyface farm does not ship long distance and that is Pollan wanted to try his meat, he would have to drive to the farm. Pollan learns from Salatin that people drive for hours and even up to a half a days drive just to get one chicken from his farm (Pollan 1-2). Although Pollan thoughtfully argues that people should buy from local private farms over big companies like Wal-Mart, he neglects to address the price differences in food and gas when buying from a farm compared to buying at a local supermarket. I contend that it is important to eat healthy while saving money and time and not pollute the Earth with vehicle toxins.
At the beginning of the essay, Pollan construes a day on the Polyface farm and the thoughts of the costumers. The costumers tell how coming on to the farm to get their chicken, or eggs, tastes way better and they like keeping their money in town (Pollan 2). When Michael Pollan is conversing with the farmer, Joel Salatin, Salatin rambles on about how it is better “when buyers and seller are able to meet one another in the eye.” Also, how Salatin “finds it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food” (Pollan 1). This is important later on in the art...
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...ood that he grows. Pollan describes his day at the Polyface farm through out most of his essay and construes about how “local is not organic” and the importance of “choosing the person who grows your food” (Pollan 1 & 4). However, Pollan does neglect to bring up the time, cost, and environmental effects between buying at a local farm compared to a local supermarket. I conjecture a further investigation and inquiry on the environmental impact on the Earth and the study of gas consumption and cost differences between buying from a local farm and shopping at a local supermarket.
Works Cited
Michael Pollan. "No Bar Code." Mother Jones (May 1, 2006): 1-5. Web. February 22, 2011.
O’Hara, Sabine U., and Sigrid Stagl. "Global Food Markets and their Local Alternatives: A Socio-Ecological Economic Perspective." Population and Environment 22.6 (2001): pp. 533-554. Web.
In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability. I agree with Kingsolver that knowing the origin of food is an important and healthy benefit of developing a true food culture, but it is impractical to maintain that everyone is able to buy more expensive food. Kingsolver presents a compelling argument for developing a food culture, however this lifestyle change may not be practical or even possible for a poverty-level citizen. The following essay will summarize and respond to Kingsolver’s argument to demonstrate how “Called Home” is a model for novice social scientists.
First, the local sustainable food chain is healthy for people. In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma as people stand around to buy chicken from Polyface, Pollan records some of the customers’ quotes. In the book it says, “ You’re not going to find fresher chickens anywhere. (Pollan, 184). ” This quote shows
The Omnivore’s Dilemma 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.
After reading McKibben and Hurst’s articles in the book Food Matters, both authors present arguments on “industrial farming”, and although Hurst provides a realistic sense on farming, McKibben’s suggestions should be what we think about.
In the book published in 2006, the Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural history of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, is a non-fiction book about American eating habits and the food dilemma that many Americans are facing today. Pollan begins the book by discussing the dilemma of the omnivore like ourselves, a creature with many choices of food. Pollan decides to learn the root to the food dilemma by examining the three primary food chains: industrial food chain, the organic food chain, and the hunter-gathering food chain. His journey begins by first exploring the industrialized food industry. Pollan examines the industry by following both corn and cow from the beginning through the industrialized process. The work on the corn fields of George Naylor shows him that the industrial system has made corn appears nearly in all products in the supermarket (Pollan 33-37). Pollen then decides to purchase a steer which allows him to see the industrialized monoculture of beef production and how mass production produces food to serve the society. Following his journey, Pollan and his family eat a meal at McDonald's restaurant. Pollan realizes that he and very few people actually understand how such a meal is created. By examining the different food paths available to modern man and by analyzing those paths, Pollan argues that there is a basic relation between nature and the human. The food choice and what we eat represents a connection with our natural world. The industrial food ruins that ecological connections. In fact, the modern agribusiness has lost touch with the natural cycles of farming. Pollan presents the book with a question in the beginning: "What should we have for dinner?" (Pollan 1) This question posed a combination of p...
Michael Pollan and David Freedman are two reputable authors who have written about different types of food and why they are healthy or why they are damaging to our health. Michael Pollan wrote “Escape from the Western Diet” and David Freedman wrote “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”. Imagine Pollan’s idea of a perfect world. Everything is organic. McDonald’s is serving spinach smoothies and Walmart is supplying consumers with raw milk. The vast majority of food in this world consists of plants grown locally, because almost everyone is a farmer in order to keep up with supply and demand. How much does all this cost? What happened to all the food that is loved just because it tastes good?
More and more farm-to-table restaurants, farmer’s markets, and food co-ops are cropping up to meet the demand among consumers for healthy, local foods, as more chefs and consumers recognize the poorer taste and nutritional integrity of ingredients shipped in from far away. Fruits and vegetables that have to be shipped long distances are often picked before they have a chance to fully ripen and absorb nutrients from their surroundings. Because local food doesn’t have to travel long distances, it is grown in order to taste better and be healthier rather than to be resilient to long travel. The farm-to-table movement also helps local economies by supporting small farmers, which is a dying
“Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” is an essay written by Robert Paarlberg for the May/June 2010 edition of Foreign Policy magazine. Foreign Policy was originally founded in 1970 with the intention of providing views on American foreign policy during the Vietnam war and does more or less of the same today. Paarlberg’s purpose in this essay is to convince an educated western audience that the Green Revolution was not a failure and improved life everywhere it took place, organic food having advantages over non-organic food is a myth, and the solution to food disparity is investing into agriculture modernization. With logos as the main mode of appeal, Paarlberg’s organization effectively sets up his points throughout the essay with consistently
Walsh, Bryan. “America’s Food Crisis.” NEXUS. Eds. Kim and Michael Flachmann. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 166 – 173. Print.
In recent years, with rising concerns about sustainability and health, the locavore movement has been gaining steam. Locavores strive to eat only locally-grown and locally-sourced food, often only looking at food within a one-hundred mile radius of their home. They claim that by eating locally, they cut down on transportation emissions and encourage environmental sustainability. However, this local model is not as sharp as it seems. The locavore movement is a flawed way to approach sustainability, as it fails to take in the most important factors of sustainability and is largely impractical for huge segments of the population. Instead, the sustainability movement should look towards farming and processing factors to determine the viability
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
Environmental advocate and cofounder of Eatingliberally.org, Kerry Trueman, in her response to Stephen Budiansky’s Math Lessons for Locavores, titled, The Myth of the Rabid Locavore, originally published in the Huffington Post, addresses the topic of different ways of purchasing food and its impact on the world. In her response, she argues that Budiansky portrayal of the Local Food Movement is very inaccurate and that individuals should be more environmentally conscious. Trueman supports her claim first by using strong diction towards different aspects of Budinsky essay, second by emphasizes the extent to which his reasoning falls flat, and lastly by explaining her own point with the use of proper timing. More specifically, she criticizes many
Trends of moving toward supporting local food producers have increased over the years. People are looking for quality over quantity. “With the explosion of interest in local food, consumers now have more choices of products, labels, and ways to shop, so, many people are left wondering where to start” (Table, 2009). Buying locally supports sustainable food system, beyond just methods of food production and helps to increase food from farm to plate. Supporting locally drastically helps with the reduction of emissions and the negative effect that food traveling has on our environment.
Knox, Paul, and Sllie Marston. "Chapter 8 Food and Agriculture." In Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context. Glenview, Il: Pearson, 2013. 266-298.
The price ratio of shipping 2,000 apples 2,000 miles is the same as shipping 50 apples 50 miles (Source C), which leads many locavores astray. They tend to look at the miles the food travelled, not the “apples per gallon” (Source C) of the shipment. Also the shipment of 2,000 apples will be able to provide for more people than the shipment of 50 apples, thus making the shipment more valuable from a logical standpoint. Changing lifestyles to conform to locavorism also has a negative effect on the food suppliers overseas previously bought from, as they may depend on that person's business (Source C). foods with a ‘farm fresh’, ‘locally grown’, or ‘organic’ label on them also cost more in most cases, preying on the buyers want for local foods. While locavores may be trying to help the economy, they are really just hurting farmers that they previously bought from, and saying that being a locavore is saving someone money is outlandishly