Quote:
Originally Posted by legion
Do research. LOTS of people died of starvation or malnutrition-related conditions in the U.S. prior to WWII. People were not healthier. They were shorter (a sign of insufficient calorie intake) and died earlier.
And yes, what is not a big price increase to some of you would mean mass starvation at the bottom of the economic scale. The poor in this country are often obese because the cheap foods have high caloric content. Force the agriculture industry to use certain methods to make you feel better about yourself, and those foods will dissapear. All that will be left is relatively low-calorie foods at high prices. It will be a double-whammy for the poor.
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This is incorrect for all kinds of reasons—and Food Inc. tries to debunk some of these myths.
One of the subtexts of the films is to promote eating fresh and seasonal foods raised or farmed in the region where you live. Or at least you should aim to do this most of the time.
Instead today your food industry is dominated by four or five conglomerates. You sit in say New York and buy a burger. The meat came from a cow in a feed lot in, say, Nebraska. The cow was fed on feed grown in Texas and shipped to Nebraska. Then it was sent god knows where for slaughtering and processing, before the beef patty was shipped to New York.
The transportation costs involved here more than negate any price advantage gained by centralizing these activities to the extent these conglomerates have—and this doesn't even begin to address the issues related to disease, hormone supplements, bulk diets—that accompany any effort to totally mechanize the process of rearing livestock.
Many restaurants here are now buying exclusively regionally—and I think this is great. I personally refuse to eat seafood from China for example. I was recently in a seafood restaurant on the Monterey pier and went into the kitchen. The prawns came from Thailand, the Mussels from China, the clams from Indonesia, the Salmon was farmed and the whitefish was tank-farmed Tilapa. This is all wrong on so many levels, it almost doesn't bear discussing. This in a place that has a "Fresh Seafood" sign outside in Neon. Feck Me!
Locally grown, sustainable food does not have to be more expensive to the consumer. That is a myth. But the system is all wrong. We have farmers in our area selling their products at prices that are less than those of the big supermarket chains. When you think of the huge transportation and processing and distribution and advertising costs etc built into the supermarket stuff—and then the pressure to return value to shareholders—the whole business of quality and nutrition becomes secondary.
There is far too much rubbish sold as food in the US. That is a simple fact. And this doesn't need to be so.
PS: And this doesn't even begin to consider the negative health consequences on consumers of eating heavily processed food full of toxins from hormones to stabilizers and preservatives etc.