The Ethics of Eating
For much of this last semester, we studied food. This was not, unfortunately, just us sampling food and talking about how good it tasted. We used our time instead to dive into the opaque world of food ethics. We based our studies on several articles and videos produced by people from all sides of the industrial food debate, as well as the influential book The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Pollan’s book is a thorough investigation of the industrial, the small farm, and the hunter/gatherer food chains. We learned through this project how everything from chips to soda to hamburgers in an industrial food chain is directly or indirectly derived from commodity corn, and how that industry has been detrimental to the land, the farmers, and the animals. We learned about how industrial organic can be just as harmful to the environment as non-organic industrial, as the organic-certified pesticides are often worse than their non-organic counterparts. We learned about how the slow-food chain of small local farms if done right, can yield more food per acre than industrial organic through inter-species symbiosis. We learned about the benefits and pitfalls that come with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. After we had learned these things, we had to create an outline of our own food ethics, encompassing our thought processes around what we eat and when we eat it
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CLICK HERE TO FIND MY CHEMISTRY OF FOOD PROJECT!
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Project Reflection:
One of the unique things about this project is that it was interdisciplinary. At the same time that we were studying food ethics in humanities, we were also studying the chemistry of food in chemistry class. This meant that at the same time that we were analyzing how ethical it is to eat meat, we were also exploring what happens when you cook meat at different temperatures. I think that this was a great way to do this because it allowed us to get the full picture of food. Going into the project, I knew next to nothing about the industrial food chain and exactly nothing about food chemistry. Now I no not only the constructs of the different modern food chains and the ethical considerations that need to be made about what you eat but also how that food actually benefits you chemically and also how these things connect. In chemistry, we learned about dietary fibers, and how these are not actually able to be transformed into energy by your body, and then we discussed the morals of fast-food chains purposefully putting more dietary fibers into their food so that they can get each person to eat a greater quantity before they feel full.
The piece of knowledge from this project that will stick with me the most is the overabundance of corn in the American food system. Throughout the history of our country, corn has been more heavily subsidized than any other crop. In this way, corn has been removed from both the laws of nature and the laws of the free market. Geneticists have specialized corn so intensely that the modern strain - although hugely productive - would never survive without the constant care of humans. It also doesn’t have to be afraid of extinction, as our entire food system depends on it so much. It is immune to the laws of the capitalist free market as well because instead of farmers making only as much corn as is in demand, the government will buy every extra bushel for a small surplus, driving the cost of corn down so low that farmers are barely able to feed themselves. This has had a not insignificant impact on how I look at the food I eat, as I now know to look for all the names that processed commodity corn has taken on and I try to avoid eating too much of it.
The piece of knowledge from this project that will stick with me the most is the overabundance of corn in the American food system. Throughout the history of our country, corn has been more heavily subsidized than any other crop. In this way, corn has been removed from both the laws of nature and the laws of the free market. Geneticists have specialized corn so intensely that the modern strain - although hugely productive - would never survive without the constant care of humans. It also doesn’t have to be afraid of extinction, as our entire food system depends on it so much. It is immune to the laws of the capitalist free market as well because instead of farmers making only as much corn as is in demand, the government will buy every extra bushel for a small surplus, driving the cost of corn down so low that farmers are barely able to feed themselves. This has had a not insignificant impact on how I look at the food I eat, as I now know to look for all the names that processed commodity corn has taken on and I try to avoid eating too much of it.