Obesity+in+America+Benchmark+Essay

It is a well know fact that obesity in America is rising at an alarming rate. The explanation for this is simple. People don’t know what they are eating. This is due to the veil being dropped on the food industry. As it became more industrialized the less and less we knew about what we are actually buying at our supermarkets.

Eric Schlosser, author of __Fast Food Nation__, had this to say of Americas food system, “America’s current system of food production – overly centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies and fossil fuel – is profoundly undemocratic.” This quote almost sums up the entire anti-food industry argument. What consumers are eating is genetically altered facades of the real thing, for example, chickens. Today’s chicks can be fully raised in one and a half months instead of the natural three. Also, the chickens that are raised on “chicken farms” are 30% larger than chickens were in the 1970’s. What we are eating may look like a chicken, taste like a chicken and even smell like a chicken, but they are nothing more than genetically altered facades with added hormones and chemicals.

However there is another side of the story. Our economy is down and everyone is hurting, including these large companies. As a result, they cut back on employees, cut back on expensive fresh ingredients and add cheap artificial preservatives, cut back on land, but increase product output. This is precisely the reason these companies dropped the veil on the public. If the consumers knew what they were eating they probably wouldn’t eat it. In the documentary, “Food Inc”, a food company executive referred to chickens as “food” or “product,” not “living organism” or “animal.” They treat these helpless animals like inanimate objects, not living things.

In my opinion, the food companies are wrong in what they are doing. However, I understand where they are coming from. These horrible executives have families like our own, that they are struggling to provide for. What they need to realize is torturing animals and laying off workers is not the way to do it.

In conclusion, the food industry is making very poor decisions in how to handle the economic downturn, such as blocking out the public eye as to how their food is actually produced. The consumer has a right to know what they are feeding their families.