Write a two page reactionary essay to the movie Food Inc. Use the following questions as a guideline to fuel your essay (do not just simply answer them).
-What was the most surprising thing you learned from the movie?
-Which issue(s) discussed in the movie Food Inc. are the most important in your life?
-Which issue(s) discussed in the movie Food Inc. are most important to our society as a whole?
-What can you do as an individual in regards to the issues above?
-What do you realistically plan to do in regards to the issues above?
-What can you do to change our food system? What are some solutions to the food problems?
-What is the relationship between the cost of your food and the cost of your doctor bills?
-How are cheap cars and cheap food related?
-Below are some quotes to inspire writing:
“There is this deliberate veil, this curtain that’s drawn between us and where our food is coming from. The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you’re eating because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.”
“You look at the labels and you see farmer this, farmer that. It’s really just three or four companies that are controlling the meat. We’ve never hadfood companies this big and this powerful in our history.” – Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation.”
“
The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000, but the image that’s used to sell the food … you go into the supermarket and you see pictures of farmers. The picket fence and the silo and the 1930s farmhouse and the green grass. The reality is … it’s not a farm, it’s a factory. That meat is being processed by huge multi-national corporations that have very little to do with ranches and farmers.”“All those snack food calories are the ones that come from the commodity crops, from the wheat, from the corn, and from the soybeans. By making those calories really cheap, it’s one of the reasons that the biggest predictor of obesity is income level.”
“Cows are not designed by evolution to eat corn. They’re designed by evolution to eat grass. And the only reason we feed them corn is because corn is really cheap and corn makes them fat quickly … The industrial food
system is always looking for greater efficiency. But each new step in efficiency leads to problems. If you take feedlot cattle off their corn diet, give them grass for five days, they will shed eighty percent of the E. coli in their gut.” -- Michael Pollan, author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”“I understand why farmers don’t want to talk because companies can do what it wants to do as far as pay goes because they control everything. But … something has to be said.” -- Carole Morison, a courageous chicken farmer
“We reduced funding for the FDA and rely increasingly on self-policing for all of these industries, and now we just have really lost our system.” -- Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colorado), one of the champions for food safety in D.C.
“We put faith in our government to protect us, and we’re not being protected at the most basic level.” -- Barbara Kowalcyk, a heroic mother whose 2 1/2 year old child Kevin died from E. coli.
“The irony is that the average consumer does not feel very powerful. They think that they are the recipients of whatever industry has put there for them to consume. Trust me, it’s the exact opposite. Those businesses spend billions of dollars to tally our votes. When we run an item past the supermarket scanner, we’re voting.” – Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm