what we eat

Food. Such an important activity of day to day life. But do we pay any attention to what we eat?... I don’t think so. Yeah we do know what we want to eat today. And some people even think of being health conscious and so eat veggies and stuff..low fat stuff etc.

But we don’t know where the food comes from do we?... in America today when we go to the supermarket to buy our groceries we have a ton of choices.. really if you look into a Wal-mart or Kroger, you see 50 different varieties of bread alone. Why is that?.. have we really wondered ever??

I saw a movie today.. an eye opener really!! Wow !! that was something..

Do we know that corn is like the backbone of what we eat today?. Corn farmers get such subsidies from the government that it is actually cheaper to buy corn than to produce it. And there are some multinational giants that produce genetically altered food products, be it bigger tomatoes or pesticide resistant soybean or chicken with bigger breast portions, and get patents for such items and then the farmer who grows these items doesn’t have any control over how he goes about his business.. it is essentially like being an agent of the multinationals. There are actually 4 or 5 big companies that run the show. High-fructose corn syrup, the ingredient in almost 90% of food items we eat, is derived from corn… it is so good for the industry that it can be used as a sugar substitute and a preservative combined! It is great for the coke that we drink or the Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup that we eat in the morning but it is not very healthy for us. It can also be processed to many other ingredients that are used as emulsifiers etc. The presence of this ingredient in our food has caused the young of America and all over the world to become obese rather soon…. The incidence of type II diabetes is on the rise among young people whereas a few decades ago diabetes was a condition known to happen only to people who were older.

Meat that we eat be it chicken or pork or beef is “processed” nowadays in huge factories. Where carcasses are hung on a hook conveyor belt and cut into pieces by men and machine both. But do we know what the animals are fed??... in evolution cows and buffalo have been considered herbivores.. animals that eat grass and other vegetation. But nowadays corn plays a role even in that area. The animals are fed corn-meal rather than grass cause it is cheaper to feed them corn than let them graze on pastures which have already been cleared for land development. So what happens now is that because the animals have not been naturally known to eat JUST corn their digestive tracts are infected with bacteria that grow due to the fermentation that happens when corn is mixed with digestive juices in the animal’s body. Such infected meat and milk-products come into the market and then there are outbreaks of E. Coli and the like… people have died from these causes and will in the future…

How can all this change?.. it is only up to US, WE.. we are the consumer and if we don’t buy such products they will soon go out of demand and we will start eating healthy again. It is much cheaper to buy the burger at McDonalds or BK or anywhere else than to buy fruit and vegetables in the supermarket. And it is even more expensive to buy “Organic”… why??.. because we let these giants take advantage of us. We see a bargain and we buy the shit that will actually cause us more harm in the long run. According to research and statistics, there are more people who fall sick today than there were 50 years back. Because food is a major reason. Going “ORGANIC” is the “rich” way or the “gay” way they say but everything in the past was organic, wasn’t it? Organic being no additional ingredients added like growth hormones or antibiotics or genetic alterations.. just plain simple naturally grown stuff like it used to be. Only now it is more expensive. We should all think about it.

I have decided from today onwards that I will buy organic, animal products at least. I will buy organic milk (cows fed on grass rather than dry corn) organic yogurt (because that comes from organic milk) eggs, meat etc. I will also actually try to buy from a farmer’s market if I can find one close by. I don’t want to pay Wal-mart or Kroger $5 for my chicken so that in the long run it will cost me more to get the problems out of my body.

Think about it… change is necessary.

Here is a movie that I think everybody should watch. Its called Food Inc.

And here’s a website that we can all go to and choose to change OUR lives.

www.takepart.com/foodinc