Hefei Yang
English 1001-23
Jeff Scott
Analysis of Michael Pollan’s article
Michael Pollan’s essay, The Food Movement, Rising, is separated into three parts which are “Food made Visible”, “Food Politics” and “Beyond the Barcode”. Pollan mainly discusses the cheap food politics and some of these food safety scandals, the environment and health problem problems, the appearance of obesity in America, and fast and junk food compared to local food. I agree with Pollan that health is the most important thing all the time. However, people in our modern economy need convenient and cheap food at the present, although sometimes the quality and health cannot be ensured. As far as I am concerned, what we can do is to try our best to make healthy food with the environment in mind. Producing food for a reasonable price, health, safety, and low pollution should be the best choice for modern society.
Cheap food accompanied with the reform of food production is required because of the modern economy and society. As Pollan states, “Cheap food has become an indispensable pillar of the modern economy. But it is no longer an invisible or uncontested one” (2). As we know, the most important thing for people to survive is eating. Most people in the world are not wealthy and full of ability. The recession affecting unemployment has swept across the whole world in recent years. It has influenced how much family’s income is spent on food. The decline of family income makes the United State family want to buy cheap food. The author writes, “companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s pay their workers so poorly that they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of nonvirtuous circle driving down both wages and the quality of food” (2). This causes the cheap food to become more common, and makes the overall cost of cheap food to come down. Hence, low cost will bring low-quality food and people will start to notice the unhealthy problem, although cheap food brings a lot of benefits. Therefore, cheap food politics and its reform are required to meet the customers and society’s demand.
Cheap food politics with its safe risk and scandals let people start giving more attention to how the food is produced. As there has been an increasing number of the world’s population every year, more food is necessary to be produced. In the recent years, some producers start to ignore the safe risk to stabilize the low-cost. Food safety scandals have already been world’s problem like the mad cow disease which was found in England in 1986. The mad cow disease happened because “cattles were routinely being fed the flesh of other cattle…” (2).As we know, cattle are herbivores and they cannot be fed with meat. When people eat them, it may cause brain-wasting disease even death. The reason why producers do this kind of things is to lower cost. For example, dairy products are added with melamine in China several years ago. This element can replace other things to make the food which looks like full of protein with cheap cost. Their desire of profit also makes them speed up the animal’s growth with the terrible condition and do not treat disease. A case, “The 1993 deaths of four children in Washington State who had eaten hamburgers from Jack in the Box were traced to meat contaminated with E.coli 0157:H7, a mutant strain of the common intestinal bacteria…” shows the danger of these food. So, the safe risk and scandals cannot be ignored.
The environmental problem in the food production must be noticed and improved by everyone. In my opinion, it is an indirect element in the food system and can be easily trivialized during the production. Producers still can make the safe and healthy food without causing the pollution. I think most of the businessman will decrease this part of cost as much as they can to earn more profit. And customers would think that it does not have relationship with them. But we forget that most of our foods are grown in the natural environment. The raw materials of food will not be clean anymore when it is polluted. Otherwise, Pollan argues that “the more urgent problem is environmental: the food system consumes more fossil fuel energy than we can count on in the future and emits more greenhouse gas than we can afford to emit, particularly since agriculture is the one human system that should be able to substantially rely on photosynthesis: solar energy” (3). The fossil fuels are extensively used in both chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As the population continues growing up, the fossil fuel consumption will never decrease. Our earth cannot receive so much greenhouse gases which are emitted from the fossil fuel such as oil, coal, natural gas, etc. The greenhouse effect influences us nowadays. Photosynthesis which is a great method to absorb greenhouse gas has already been using in everywhere, especially in the agriculture. Sustainable development is an urgent, serious and high-cost job. People must spend more money on the environmental problem because food system is a cycle. The pollution can move to everywhere and will affect ourselves in the end. Make the low-pollution food should be an important goal.
The appearance of obesity and healthy problem make people worry about the food health. In the modern society, people’s life style is becoming busy. More and more adults and children are getting used to eat convenient and fast food. Childhood obesity becomes more common. Some restaurants such as McDonald, Pizza Hut, KFC are becoming the first choice when people feel hungry because of cheap and delicious. For example, people know the food like fried chicken are not good, however they still want to eat. And organic and local foods are more expensive than fast and convenient food. Whatever Organic and local foods are sold in many places in the world right now like Wal-Mart, an important thing is that they need to have consumers. Pollan emphasizes that “One important impetus for the movement, or at least its locavore wing—those who are committed to eating as much locally produced food as possible…to create new economic and social structures outside of the mainstream consumer economy” (4). Due to the increasing of the people living quality, locally produced food will become more popular. Although most people are still not wealthy, they will want to pay for the healthier food. When people have a deeper idea about health, the organic and local food will have their market. People will realize that health can never be brought by money and it will push producers to make healthier food.
In conclusion, cheap food politics, food safe risk, the pollution problem during the production, and the food health are mainly talked about in Michael Pollan’s article. The problems on food associate everyone as eating is related to each person. I believe no one want to eat unjustified price, unhealthy, unsafe, and high pollution food. Establishing a trustworthy and clean consumer market of food is everyone’s responsibility. It cannot be come true by just a part of people.
Reference:
Books, Michael PollanThe New York Review of. "The Food Movement, Rising | Michael Pollan." Michael Pollan. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2012. <http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/the-food-movement-rising/>.