Food Inc.

Reflection: Food Inc.

Healthy Environment for Children

Anthony Antolak

March 20, 2014

After watching this movie I looked at every type of food different. I also promised myself that I would not go to McDonalds anymore. They are the largest purchaser of beef, apples, chicken and pork. The food industrial system began with fast food (drive thru). Vegetables are produced year-round, rather than seasonal like it used to be. Food Inc. can help spread the message that our food system needs serious overhaul, then more power to it. The next time you tuck into a nice T-bone, reflect that it probably came from a cow that spent much of its life standing in manure reaching above its ankles. That's true even if you're eating the beef at a pricey steakhouse. The next time you admire a plump chicken breast, consider how it got that way. The egg-to-death life of a chicken is now six weeks. They're grown in cages too small for them to move, in perpetual darkness to make them sleep more and quarrel less. They're fattened so fast they can't stand up or walk. Their entire lives, they are trapped in the dark, worrying. All of this is overseen by a handful of giant corporations that control the growth, processing and sale of food in this country. Take Monsanto, for example. It has a patent on a custom gene for soybeans. Its customers are forbidden to save their own soybean seed for use the following year. They have to buy new seed from Monsanto. If you grow soybeans outside their jurisdiction but some of the altered genes sneak into your crop from your neighbor's fields, Monsanto will investigate you for patent infringement. They know who the outsiders are and send out inspectors to snoop in their fields. Cattle have been trained to eat corn instead of grass, their natural food. People are even getting E. coli poisoning from spinach and lettuce. When farmland comes on the market, corporations outbid local buyers. Your best hope of finding real food grown by real farmers is at a...