Month: September 2014 (Page 2 of 2)

The chart is too big to embed in the post, but check it out here.

This chart was created by Professor Philip Howard at Michigan State University.  He has additional information and charts on his website.

I remember reading this article over the summer, and since it was brought up in class I figured I’d revisit this awful chart of just how controlled America’s food supply is by corporations.

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting Hershey Park, which reminded me of just how consolidated many food businesses are- for cheap, average quality chocolate, the American (and at this point, any) consumer has the choice between Hershey, Nestle, or Mars, which is controlled by Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Mars, all of which control far more than bars of candy. While marketing has allowed for there to seem like there are thousands of different “brands” it is in fact only ten to twelve massive companies duking it out for the billions of dollars exchanged in the market every day.

This market structure forces the consumer to surrender power in several different ways. First of all, the marketing strategy of creating sub brands makes the consumer think they have economic power at the shelves, when truly they are supporting the same company whether they decide to buy Skittles or Uncle Ben’s rice. Not only does this destroy true competition, but the consumer has no idea of what processes their food went through before ending up in the brightly colored bag or box shouting at them from the shelves. This is detrimental to the health and well being of the consumer, since the same companies are being forked over money to companies to continue to poison the people and the environment.

On a relevant topic to class, it’s shocking how many of these foods are driven by the existence of high fructose corn syrup (and in turn corn). If it weren’t for this thick, sticky product, most of these corporate giants would not have the economic muscles they are able to flex today. Without high fructose corn syrup, sodas, candies, and other products would not be the same, and would most likely be more expensive and therefore not a commodity with the rock-bottom prices the consumer is used to today.

Overall, it’s shocking on both an economic and environmental level how controlled the supermarket is by so few corporations. The patterns of horizontal and vertical integration have followed through on more than agriculture and are invasive to the market we’re used to today.

http://www.ryot.org/food-corporations-chart-all-your-food/756513

I recently watched the documentary “Fed Up” which is popularly described as “the film the food industry doesn’t want you to see”. This documentary contains interviews of multiple children directly affected by obesity as well as food regulation supporters such as Michael Pollan that provide scientific facts on the issue. The film starts out by describing the trends Americans have gone through to get healthy. “Eat less, exercise more” has been the common sense answer to obesity for more than a century. “Fed Up” argues that lack exercise is not and lack of willpower is NOT the root of the obesity epidemic in the United States, and it sets out to prove how the food industry has tricked us and why they deserve the majority of the blame.

A nutritionist that was interviewed in this film explains that it is impossible to exercise our way out of the obesity problem. It is really ironic because soft drink companies like Coca-Cola fund a lot of research on obesity. If this research is funded by the food industry, they can pretty much come up with whatever they want to keep them in business & keep a lot of people blind to this irony. The obesity epidemic cannot be completely caused by genetics; it is not, and has never been, normal for 10 year olds to die of heart attacks. Most experts say that the obesity epidemic has taken place in the last 30 years or so. When people began to catch wind of the dangers of fat-based food, the food industry responded by replacing fat with sugar. Between 1977 and 2000, Americans doubled their daily sugar intake. Processed foods are so easy to modify, and these tiny modifications become marketing claims for food companies. “Reduced fat” oreos, for example, have 10 less calories than regular ones & have the same sugar content. Poor food choices are overwhelming in school cafeterias. School lunches are super unhealthy and most are driven by soda companies. Children have no idea how bad this food is & that instills poor values in their food choices. The problem is, there are no commercials for fruits and vegetables, only junk food. This shapes the whole way kids think about food and what they think that food is. This documentary is very informative, however I do think that there’s a lot about the food industry (like farming) that this film doesn’t really go into that much. Also, I think that the people that should be viewing this documentary probably won’t. Overall, I highly recommend this documentary because it is interesting, informative, and provides some plausible long-term solutions to the obesity epidemic that our society really needs to consider.

A summary/review of “Fed Up” can be found here: http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/fed-–-what-food-industry-doesn’t-want-us-know

My all time FAVORITE food documentary is a documentary titled “Forks Over Knives”. This documentary was create in support of a vegan lifestyle. The documentary is extremely interesting (especially to those of you interested in health/science) as it shows human beings who have beaten sicknesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer through a strict, vegan diet. In addition to including these real-life stories, “Forks Over Knives” also dives deep into some modern scientific studies. Caldwell Esselstyn, a doctor of nutritional biochemistry, presented his research findings in “Forks Over Knives”. His results truly stood out to me and have made me very aware of the foods I am eating on a daily basis ever since. Esselstyn has spent many years monitoring how casein protein (the main type of protein found in dairy products such as milk, cheese, and yogurt) promotes tumor growth in rats. He injected tumors into two groups of rats, one group that consumed food with casein and one group that consumed “normal” grainy foods. After weeks and months monitoring the rats, Essylstyn noticed that the rats that had not been consuming casein had no tumor progression whatsoever while the rats that had been consuming casein had been experiencing extreme tumor growth. What was also interesting about this study was that when Essylstyn stopped feeding the rats with growing tumors casein and began feeding them grains instead, their tumors began to shrink.

“Forks Over Knives” is definitely a very one-sided documentary in that throughout the whole film, the main speakers try to convert the viewer to veganism. The main players in “Forks Over Knives” would argue that the only acceptable diet for human beings to follow is that of a purely vegan lifestyle. I am not sure if I agree with this statement 100%, though I do agree with the majority of opinions presented in the documentary. If you have 1.5 hours of free time, I strongly suggest you watch “Forks Over Knives”! The documentary is available on Netflix.

Here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ijukNzlUg

This article discusses the downfalls associated with family dinners, or slow food. Cooking is an added pressure many families are attempting to eliminate from their daily responsibilities. Parents are under the assumption that if they do not meet all food-need expectations (i.e mitigating nutrition-linked health issues), the stress of a home-cooked meal outweighs the benefits. Even for families that can afford to purchase fresh produce and proper cooking supplies, they do not have the necessary time in their busy schedules to make a meal from scratch. Many believe family dinners to be romanticized, and they forget that making food has always required effort and planning. This article briefly notes that family dinners are about so much more than just nutrition. They are about joining together, as a unit, talking, and being with each other. The pressures associated with dinner time: lack of time, saving money, coordinating schedules, and satisfying picky eaters, may seem like a hindrance, but overcoming these troubles is well worth it in the end. This is the only time many families are given to be together, and it is a time that should be cherished, even if it cannot be achieved every single day of the week.

This article reminded me of the Waters piece we discussed regarding the ethics of eating. As discussed in class, in addition to added nutritional value, slow food should be a priority amongst families. Through food preparation and the physical process of sitting down and eating, parents are able to teach their children values and skills, while opening up discussions and bonding moments. Eating should be an experience, rather than an obligation, and it should be one in which pleasure is gained.

Germane to our discussion of food economics last class and to our discussion of food justice today, Grist published an article today on the causes and effects of the rise in food prices.  As we already discussed, the rise in food prices hurts low income consumers most because we/they spend a higher percentage of our/their income on food.  There is significant disagreement on the causes of rising food prices, however.  Most agree that yields are not rising enough to outpace population growth, but there are also arguments that point to food speculation, the rise of meat consumption in China, bad weather, the growth in biofuels, and rising energy (petroleum) costs.  Certainly all of these factors are contributors, but which ones we privilege has consequences for the policies we design to address rising food prices.

http://grist.org/food/why-food-prices-scaled-the-peaks-and-why-it-matters/

The Washington Post recently published an article called “America’s Growing Food Inequality Problem” by Roberto Ferdman. He explains how the food gap between rich and poor Americans is widening; wealthy people are eating better, while poor people are eating much worse. The Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine recent published a study that showed how closely related one’s socioeconomic status & the quality of their diet is and how much this relationship has changed over time. The  American diet has actually improved from 1999-2010 due to nutrition education efforts and shifts away from certain things like soda. But, this is not true for the entire society. Obviously, Americans in the top socioeconomic tier are becoming more responsive to nutrition education while the Americans in the bottom tier are stuck in a rut. The authors of the study developed “The Alternate Healthy Eating Index”, which is a measure of how healthy foods are based off their relative nutritional values. This is where the study showed the gap; the median index value rose from 5.7 to 7.3 in a matter of 11 years. Ferdman explains that one cause of this is the price of foods. Health foods are very expensive, and people within the low socioeconomic class cannot ford this “fancy food”. Another cause is the America’s growing income gap; in 2013, the income gap was the highest its been in 80 years. The most important cause, in my opinion, is education. Americans in the low socioeconomic tiers usually have little knowledge on how unhealthy their food choices are and what the consequences of these choices may be. Low-income people have very limited access to transportation and do not have access to a variety of affordable food, so they take what they can get. Even if there are affordable good meals out there, which there definitely are, education & transportation prevent people from getting to them, which is no fault of their own.

The growing food inequality affects everyone. Obesity and diabetes, both diet-driven diseases, have a huge impact on our economy. Ferdman criticizes how federally funded food programs spend money. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spends so much money on benefits, food stamps, vouchers, etc., so why are they not doing more to nutritionally educate these people to limit junk food purchases? I thought this article was very interesting because I never really thought of food as a way to mark socioeconomic class in America. But, it is true; we are all partially defined by the food choices we make. Clothing, fashion, expensive cars, homes, etc. have always been an indicator of socioeconomic class in our society. But, as the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow, food will start to be a critical indicator as well.

One question I had while reading this article is if healthier, “fancier” foods have always been more expensive than junk food, why is the inequality increasing? Are healthier foods getting relatively more expensive? It would be interesting to see how healthy food prices have risen compared to unhealthy ones over the past 10 years.  Although the author seems judgmental, I do not think this article is meant to criticize people of low socioeconomic class. Rather, it is to point out that the gap is growing & education is essential to making good food choices and with growing income inequality it is inevitable that consumption inequality will follow-suit.

As entertaining as this article is, it explores a phenomenon in a new light. Basically, this group of “bio-hackers” are attempting to create a non-vile vegan cheese using DNA codes from cows and humans that have been copied from a data base. To clarify, somewhere along the line, the people who made the database had to find DNA codes for a certain protein in both humans and cows, so a human/cow had to be bothered for some DNA at some point. However, the animal interaction stops there. These bio-hackers in their “community lab” are getting as close as they can to the molecular structure of cheese using their own engineering and are confident that they’ll be able to have something great in the market eventually.

The interesting part of this project is that it’s not quite genetic modification, but it is a whole lot of processing. On the flip side, the people who are creating it make a good case for its environmental friendliness. Since nothing comes from cows, they cut out the GHG emissions from them and the small amount of methane that is released through their process is contained responsibly. So, this vegan cheese is technically more environmentally friendly than regular cheese.

Their whole project will no doubt be a bit much to swallow for environmentalists, vegans, and organic-crazed consumers, but it does show that technology in food can be used responsibly. Although I know nothing about potential health implications of engineering the “cheese” in the way this group is, it does seem like they may have a promising idea.

http://munchies.vice.com/articles/bio-hackers-are-using-human-dna-to-make-vegan-cheese/

One of my favorite authors of all time is a writer who goes by the name of Jared Diamond. Diamond has written many nonfiction books that cover a wide variety of topics. My absolute favorite book of Diamond’s is a book he titles “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. This book analyzes human development, culture, geography, and biology to determine why European nations were able to conquer African, Native American, and Australian tribes and not vise vera. In this book, Diamond constantly refers back to the concept of agriculture. Diamond prompts his reader to think as he explains that “agriculture is both the best and the worst invention of the human race”.

Today in class Professor Hejny briefly mentioned that the term “progress” is very subjective. As human beings we see our industrial agricultural system as progress, however, such a system has many flaws and repercussions developed countries are beginning to notice. If the idea of agriculture had never been “invented” the environmental problems that exist in our world today would have never appeared. Also, without agriculture it is likely that many human health issues such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease would not exist (or at least not be as common). Finally, if agriculture had never existed, human populations and cultures that have been exterminated (or are closely approaching extinction) would have never disappeared to begin with.

The thesis of Diamond’s book states that the invention of agriculture is what allowed Europeans to conquer other colonies worldwide. Though I would recommend that you all read “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, the book is very long and we all have a lot of school work to do! So, this article, which is written by Diamond himself, truly explains the effects of agriculture in the ancient and modern world.

READ IT: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

Do you think that agriculture is the worst mistake in human history?

Is agriculture the best or the worst invention of all time?

What is progress and where do we draw the line between thriving and failing?

A major food issue in developed countries, to the point of emerging epidemic status, is food sensitivities/allergies, something that was not a concern to the majority of society until the past generation or so. This issue has affected food production to quite an extent, as producers must take into consideration any dietary restrictions those buying their product may have.

This article describes recent research that has found food allergies to be linked to the destruction of certain strains of bacteria in the gut. This destruction if caused by exposure to antibiotics/antimicrobial agents, in which the bacteria killed are never restored. The increasing rates of food allergies are likely due to the increasing frequency at which antibiotics are administered, especially to children.

Up to this point, the only way to handle a food allergy was to avoid exposure to those allergens. However, these recent advancements provide evidence that a strain of intestinal bacteria, Clostridia, is capable of decreasing peanut allergen levels after administration/injection. This is believed to occur due to their intimate contact of the bacteria with the immune system due to their proximity to the epithelial lining, which evokes protective responses. Clostridia is capable of forming stable spores, potentially allowing encapsulation as a potential treatment for food allergies.

Having food allergies of my own, this article is very enticing. This breakthrough has the potential to change the way our society approaches food. We currently have a mind-set of omission; we are focusing on what we want left out of food (i.e. gluten-free, no peanut contamination, no sugar added), rather than what we should be putting in our food.

If we are capable of minimizing food allergies, if not completely demolishing them, then we will find ourselves in a state of change amongst the majority of households in the developed world. This state of change will give us the opportunity to actively address our eating habits and the way we think of food. No longer dwelling on what foods we need to avoid, we can nurture our relationship with food.