Entry 4: The Book's Structure

“But imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true account, it really cost. We could then talk about some other things at dinner. For we would no longer need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.” pg. 411

Getting towards the end of the book was really fascinating. I had become aware of so many problems that we as a community were having about how to identify ourselves and others based on what we eat, and where it all came from. Somehow the message of the book is so powerful to me and conveys a sense of willingness to accept that I have no clue of what I’m eating every day. I just know that it’s delicious and sometimes cheap. Therefore, I chose this quote because of its direct evidence referring to topics about why we eat the things we eat. The context of this quote is written to ask the reader questions that are led to basically answer them.  But not only that, the author meant to base the answers on what they learned from reading the multiple sections of each type of category. Michael Pollan has made his understandings clear within our own answers and defined what the main factors of being an omnivore are. Concluding to this, we happen to see nature as a machine adjusting it to our own advantage and making sure that we get what we want. We seek new ways to speed up production and in order to do it we put in various chemicals that not only harm the environment but fail to give us the same taste or texture that maybe an “organic” piece of food would have. Going along with that, there are also many wrong decisions that people tend to make when it comes time to produce food starting from the bottom of the food chain. An example of this mistake would likely be having artificial manure leading to artificial nutrition, artificial food, and artificial animals resulting in artificial men and women as well. This was stated at the beginning of the book and followed through all the way until the end. Reading about this brought me back to an article that I was reading the other day while I was researching nutrition facts. It was an article about examining reactions and interactions as chemical components were undergoing processing, packaging, storage, and digestion. Their overall intent was to explore new analytical techniques and understand advances in bioactive research, at least that’s what they stated as an overall result. Their research demonstrated most of their accuracy within their charts and described different components that went along with these different types of stages. Likewise I thought this quote was really beneficial to me in a sense that I got to expand my knowledge and create my own answers and perspective towards why I eat the food I eat. 

Entry 3: Authors Persona, Tone, & Intended Audience

"You are what you eat is a truism hard to argue with, and yet it is, as a visit to a feedlot suggests, incomplete, for you are what you eat eats, too. And what we are, or have to become, is not just meat but number 2 corn and oil." Pg. 84

I found this quote while I was reading through where I had stopped last time, and as soon as I finished the first part of the page I was on, I suddenly went back to read this quote again. When I read it to myself again I felt that it summarized half of what the message of the book might have been trying to reveal all along. I know that I have a long way to go in order to finish the whole book, but this quote made me see many of the different aspects that this book had to offer. One of them was identifying yourself with what you eat and how it will affect you on the outside as well as in the inside. It sounds really weird but makes a lot of sense when Michael Pollan puts it out in a certain way that you can actually relate to, and as well as demonstrating the different foods that vary with your looks. This quote mainly focused on the fact that cows weren’t meant to be stuffed with corn and oil to be healthy and strong. The reasons why they started being feed corn and oil was because farmers were looking to make their cows grow faster to an extent that they didn’t care how they managed to treat the cows, they only pleased the demand of larger produce markets that demanded meat and other produce faster. With this being said, people started becoming of what they ate. For instance a lot of people who ate meat or milk out of cows or other animals that were repeatedly feed corn and oil, were only stuffing themselves with this type of food as well. So instead of a cow stuffed with corn and oil, we became humans stuffed with corn and oil.I found an interesting article about how scientists are now experimenting with cows and other types of animals that serve us as food and produce more food. I found this result and saw it in a perspective that matched my quote which was making our food replicate and be the same so what we eat will have positive benefits to how we look and feel which is proteins and other stuff like that, but in other cases the outcome could be that the negative sides will double and never end. For example when I was reading the article that I found from genetic engineering, it stated that scientists were going to test out an experiment to see how fish can be mutated and be formed in a rather more perfect way, as they call it. Their goal was to make healthier foods but, what’s next genetically engineered humans?

Entry 2: Thesis/Purpose

“This corn-fed meat is demonstrably less healthy for us, since it contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than the meat of animals fed grass.” Pg. 75

I liked this quote because it had a lot of meaning to everything that was explained throughout the book, even though it talks about the meat and why it’s bad, there is also the part where it says that it’s cheaper and that caught my attention. It makes sense in the way that I see why people choose to eat these foods. The reason for feeding cows corn is a way so they can make more money and sell the meat for lesser prices at the store. It’s always about business and how to make more profit over spending less than what the value of the item is really worth. I think that the companies who do these types of things only think about their benefits and how they have a say in what we eat and can afford considering that now a days it’s cheaper to get processed foods that fill you up, then the organic foods that cost more and are harder to find. The economic situation is something that we are all suffering with having to make cuts and rank the prices higher in order to gain business, but that just proves that it is pushing us to buy cheaper, faster, and unhealthy meals to feed our family, but it all comes with a price that is likely to make us feel happy at the moment but later on suffer the consequences. My reaction to the meaning of this quote that I chose in my personal experience has been to grow up with these kinds of foods and seeing them wherever I go. Sometimes I wonder how there could be so many fast food restaurants that make billions upon billions of dollars every day just by having people consume their processed burgers, and meat, and anything else that might contain some product that has been grown “modernly”. I sometimes want to think that people have the choice to live a life where they can choose what to eat and for it to be healthy for them as well. But, there’s always that one obstacle that makes that impossible to some of us like me and my family. I consider my family as middle class, and I can totally relate to this in a sense that makes me mad because my natural reaction towards the processed foods is that I love them and they taste so delicious, but when I really think about what is in my meat I get frustrated and see that if I compare the prices against processed foods and organic foods, the organic foods should be cheaper shouldn’t they? I have never got this comparison in full understanding.