Food Inc. teaches future generations to question how they eat and demand real, quality food

Food Inc. teaches future generations to question how they eat and demand real food

Have you ever wondered where your food comes from?

With a tone quite similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Food Inc., a documentary directed by Robert Kenner and narrated by Eric Scholsser (who wrote Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (who wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma), seeks to challenge the way we currently eat based on where your food comes from and how your food is produced. The movie is currently playing in released theaters, but as the weeks go by, more theaters will play this movie.

As my philosophy teacher said: Real news is what people do not want you to know. The agriculture industry and meat industry do not want you to know the details made in this movie. However, food is a health, national security, and energy issue that deserves recognition from the current Obama administration, as outlined by Michael Pollan in an article he wrote in the NY Times. (I advise you that you should definitely read this article a couple of times to set up the context of the article).

I think the San Francisco Chronicle does it best by showing these facts which "galavinzed the filmmakers":

-- In 1972, the Food and Drug Administration conducted 50,000 food safety inspections; in 2006, the FDA conducted 9,164.

-- During the George W. Bush administration, the head of the FDA was the former executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association, and the chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture was the former chief lobbyist for the beef industry in Washington.

-- Cattle are given feed that their bodies are not designed to digest, resulting in new strains of the E. coli virus that sicken tens of thousands of Americans annually.

-- One in 3 Americans born after 2000 will contract early-onset diabetes; among minorities, the rate will be 1 in 2.

Given these facts, one would have to wonder: what's up with our food?

The movie's theme is: we cannot be eating the food the way we are today.

The movie explains that our food industry (aka agri-businesses) is completely owned by a few gigantic corporations which promote efficiency and profits in a growing global food economy over the health of people. I'll give a few examples the movie shows without revealing too much.

Take corn and meat. American farms like in Iowa do not have a lot of crop diversity; Corn is heavily grown in US farms as a form of mono-culuture, or one-crop field. In terms of meat, Cattle is not grown like in the movies where cattle graze in wide grassy fields and can be made meat.

Instead, agri-businesses want to maximize profit by fattening up lots of animals with fields of corn in cramped feed lots with no room to exercise (fattening increases!). It would be a lot easier to grow cheap meat than to just leave the animal in the fields grazing and growing meat slowly, but there are health risks.

First, cattle are not used to eating corn; they eat grass, and the corn will not end up digested well. Second, given the cramped space, the cattle can unknowingly eat feces that other cattle deficate out; so in other words, you risk exposing yourself to dangerous bacteria such as eColi, and the corn helps propogate that. Chicken and pigs face similar processes as well.

(a side note not 100% directly mentioned in the movie: meat companies can put antibiotics on the cattle to survive the feedlots, which means that your body can be exposed to different hormones that may not be healthy for our bodies when you eat different meats)

When feedlots of corn are gone, the bacteria may still exist in the land, but if a farmer decides to plant on the farm, other plants (i.e. spinach and tomatoes) can be exposed to harmful pathogens.

With greater growth in cheap corn (i.e. with the advent of fertilizers and pesticides), fast food companies buy this meat that was once cattle fed by corn under unhealthy conditions. The federal government gives especially subsidizes corn farms, but we are basically subsidizing fast food. The movie gives a good point: it is cheaper to buy fast food (i.e. a dollar menu at McDonalds) than to purchase fruits and vegetables at a grocery store. Government subsidies help keep corn costs down for fast food, but not for these basic healthy foods. No wonder many working-class people and minorities can easily get fast food and face health-risks more than upper-class Americans. Yet, all giant food companies care about is profit.

Since we can grow corn extremely cheaply, we now have the advent of high frutose corn syrup, which is prevalent among sodas (i.e. go to Mickey D's and get a soda) and a lot of other sweets. Not healthy for us.

Energy is a part of this problem as well. Given we need fertilizer (relying on natural gas) to give nutrients to mono-cultured corn, and pesticides (from fossil fuels) to make sure bugs who love the fertilizer don't take over the corn, our current way of eating is not sustainable. Since we have giant food corporations, you are aware that most of your food from the grocery store is not local, and truckers rely on a dwindling supply of gasoline to transport that food, from lets say, out of state or out of the country.

Government policies help keep this process alive; these giant food companies lobby extensively to make sure they can continue doing what they want. Even our government officials (i.e. former FDA chief during Bush Adminstration, or Department of Agriculture chief of staff) were once part of the food industry. Why isn't the FDA doing anything to stop this? This movie addresses these problems.

I should stop from here and let you watch the movie for yourself. The way we eat is not sustainable for our world, and poses health risks (i.e. diabetes), especially for those who cannot afford healthy food (or do not have time to cook due to busy work schedules) and have to rely on fast food for their meals. For those who can afford healthy food, it's difficult to find the meat that would actually be likely not contaminated, since a few global food companies control most of the meat, according to the above described industrial processes. It definitely is a daunting task to challenge government policy when government officals seem to be defending the food industry (and subsides for corn which feed these animals improperly) more than the health of the people.

I recommend this movie to everybody, regardless of degree / field, because this movie teaches future generations to question the origin of how our food is made so that we can demand real, healthy food.

I'm speaking to a mostly college-aged group, but all fields (engineering, i.e. industrial engineering, bioengineering, chemical engineering), public policy related fields, health fields, business fields, environmental groups, etc. have to do something about this problem, because this is our generation, and we have to think about what we can do to solve the problem. As consumers, we can choose what foods to eat (i.e. local/non-local, organic, etc.) to help mitigate the issue, but with these diverse fields and education, we have to go beyond the "powerless consumer level".

Some more info:

Trailer:




Michael Pollan: The Food Issue - Chef In Chief

Plan to Change Student Lending Sets Up a Fight

The New York Times reports that there is a fight taking place up at Congress over Obama's proposed plan to remove all federally-subsidized student loans, which have been going to banks to use for themselves to send out loans, and have the government directly have more money to give financial aid. The article also notes that this could mean increasing Pell Grants (YES!).

This is great news, given that the private loan industry is just ridiculous (i.e. variable interest rates!). Supporers of Obama's plan argue that the private loan industry has already been charging "hefty fees" to students, but opponents of the plan say that the private loan industry has already been providing reasonable service to its clients. 

Unemployed [Palestinians] in Gaza

This story is so horrific that a two-state solution, or one state solution, in Israel and Palestine doesn't seem important (or seems hopeless). Shame on Israel on being stubborn about this issue. Here are two facts this video stated:

• 70% of Gaza has become unemployed after the recent Gaza attacks from Israel's military.
• 1/4 of Palenstinians in Gaza depend on agriculture, but Israeli's government blockades on the Gaza Strip leaves the Gaza strip farmers profitless.

Having done a debate on this issue in the past, I feel that Israel's government has to be a bit practical and allow Palestinians into Israel (which will unleash economic mobility), because we are witnessing an apartheid-situation going on (the blockades are also taking place in the West Bank). Israel's governement says that this action would lead to the end of a Jewish state, but how many people in Israel actually care about that principle?   

UCLA goes Green

La Kretz Hall, UCLA's first federally certified green building, built in 2005.

When I'm trying to pick the college I want to attend (hopefully Cal), I try to learn as much about the college as I can. One of the things that amazes me is the extent that UCLA is doing to promote environmental sustainability. As an aspiring civil engineer, I can't wait to learn about how to build buildings that are under clean, energy-efficent, environmentally friendly standards, and UCLA has done that. 

Some of the facts about La Kretz Hall are astounding. The building was built out of 80% recycled steel and its carpets are made out of recycled water bottles. The eco-friendly paint in the building does not send out as much harmful chemcials as ordinary paint does. Wow!

Plus, UCLA students can expect to see in their cafeterias biodegradable plastic (usually corn/potato starch, if I remember right) forks and other organic utensils. 

One major thing UCLA does is maintain energy efficiency. I'll just quote what it does from UCLA's Magazine. UCLA uses a co-generational plant which powers 70% of the campus. Here's what it does:

"We generate energy with a pair of gas turbines, which you would call a jet engine," Johnson explains. "We burn gas in the jet engines, producing a stream of hot gas that drives a turbine that spins an electric generator, producing electricity."

The blazing heat doesn't go to waste. A heat-recovery steam generator uses the 1,000-degree jet-engine exhaust to generate steam, some of which is used to generate electricity. It doesn't end there. Part of the steam is sent across campus for heating, cooking and sterilization; the rest powers high-capacity water chillers making cold water for air conditioning. On top of it all, the co-gen's electricity is cheaper and more efficiently produced than what UCLA could buy.

Now, that's energy efficient!

For more detailed information, check here. There's also a very, well scripted video summing up UCLA's actions to promote environemntal sustainabilty below:

The Problem With Flogging A.I.G.

Protesters on Thursday outside the American International Group’s headquarters in Manhattan.

This opinion article from the New York Times address a great point I never thought off until now, given the mobs of people that are now against AIG's big bonuses: The Problem With Flogging A.I.G.

To summarize, if we criticize AIG too much (for example, there have been death threats to the executives who got the bonuses), we avoid actually helping the economy in a very suitable way while not looking through where the real problems lie.

For example, there are people actually working at AIG who actually were never part of the problem. How is AIG supposed to act if Congress is criticizing them so much? The House of Representatives has actually passed a resoluton yesterday saying people with annual incomes of $250,000 or more who work at a bank that recieves bailout money will be taxed a "90 percent rate bonus payments" (I actually don't know what the last two words have to do w/ the paragraph, but I can sense it's pretty bad). And we know executives make salaries in the millions, so how can this be an incentive for people at AIG or other bailed-out banks to fix the problem? The article mentions that many people work in "insurance divisions", which I wouldn't necessiarly know directly know what that means.

Congress wants to get this deal passed called: "Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility", or TALF. It basically gives out government-based securities, or loans, that requires Wall Street Bankers to participate. How will they participate if Congress creates this perpetual anger towards these bankers?

Yes, big banks can be bad, but banks are too big right now too fail. I've heard things such as restructuring banks to make them smaller, so that they don't hurt the economy as easily and cause a chain ripple of event. But, as of now, this is only making big banks look worse and they can't really do anything.

Now, honest by heart, I'm not an expert at this stuff. I don't watch TV very often now (or been having time to catch up on current events), so I'm not tracking this stuff down like I should be. But, it made me think: Should government be at the point of scaring big businesses away? The world isn't black and white, and all I want to do now is look for solutions.

Here's a quote I found interesting, as a soluton:

"What the country really needs right now from Congress is facts instead of rhetoric. Instead of these “raise your hand if you took a private jet to get here” exercises of outraged populism, we need hearings that educate and illuminate. Hearings like the old Watergate hearings. Hearings in which knowledge is accumulated over time, and a record is established. Hearings that might actually help us get out of this crisis. It’s happened before. In 1932, Congress established the Pecora committee, named for its chief counsel, Ferdinand Pecora. It was an intense, two-year inquiry, and its findings — executives shorting their own company’s stock, for instance — shocked the country. It also led to the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other investor protections. One person who has been calling for a new Pecora committee is Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, a Republican and key member of the Senate Banking Committee."

Supposedly, Bernake and Geithner will be speaking at a Congressional hearing next Tuesday, discussing about what they know about the bonuses.

I'm glad I did not spent my time reading up the anger people face in the media towards AIG, because it would be very repetitive. In fact, I have only read like 2-3 articles on AIG, and saw most of the criticism toward AIG (ironically, on a station I do not watch frequently) on FOX News. I'm glad this is the next article I actually read.

US bankers' face scrutiny over perks

This is hilarious, yet so messed up at the same time. I'll let the video from Al Jazeera explain it all.

As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero

This is pretty depressing. A New York Times article today states that the trend of American newspapers seems to be going toward the Internet, due to decreasing ad revenue and increasing debt resulting from the buyout of many newspapers. Given the fact that less people are reading newspapers anyway and more people are reading online (Nielsen, according to the article, states that "Daily print circulation has dropped from a peak of 62 million two decades ago to around 49 million, and online readership has risen faster, to almost 75 million Americans and 3.7 billion page views in January, according to Nielsen Online."), the fate seemed imminent. Some newspapers have resorted to cut off certain sections or pages in the newspapers to save cost, but that also loses customers who like reading those sections.

One article from Time Magazine I remember reading said that newspapers should consider charging people a price to view online news content, so that people will value what they purchase, like music (think iTunes, although I don't personally know how effective it is given music piracy). The article also mentions that this could help boost profit because newspapers, which rely on three sources of funding, newsstand sales, subscriptions, ad revenue, are already losing the latter, as previously stated. If they lose the latter when newspapers are heavily ad-reliant (like these days given more people read on the internet), the paper becomes unstable.  More people do read online, though. The article also suggests that people can pay a nickel, for lets say, a whole day's edition of the paper, or $2 per month. Not a bad idea. 

Closing newspapers raises this this issue: Where are the varying, competitive, and differing sources of news? I am grateful that I subscribe to YouTube's AlJazerra English Channel  (albeit, it's a internet source) because it gives me insight toward what goes on in Palenstine, for example, that an ordinary US newspaper might not be able to. Having different insights helps give one the bigger picture of the story. Think of 1984 - The goal of the Newspeak dictionary was to decrease the amount of words into one word under Big Brother. While the analogy might seem a bit radical, it does show you how limited expression can be if the different ways to say things (every synonym of a word, for example, has slightly different meanings) are all gone. 

Here is a graphic on the NY Times article stating the current fate of specific newspapers in specific urban areas across the United States. 

There are solutions that are out there to solve this problem, based on other news sources across the net. It would be sad if the newspapers the writers are writing from close down, which limits the solutions. 

San Francisco Lobbies for Piece of Stimulus Package

S.F. pushes hard for big slice of stimulus cash.

Can't really say much about this article, other then the fact that San Francisco and other major American cities will be lobbying in Congress (and possibly the Executive Branch, if I read right) for a piece of the stimulus package money for major public projects up. Some ways funding could be used include improving MUNI, attaining more funds for the high-speed rail plan, expansding broadband internet across San Francisco, and improving health care technology (i.e. making medical records computerized).

Writing Skills Down for SJSU incoming students

Just a few articles I found of interest today:

More than 50 percent of San José State's incoming students are not prepared to write at the college level. This is pretty sad, according to SJSU's Washington Square Magazine. According to the article, people lack that skill. Now, I can't really picture how they lack it, but the article cites a lack of emphasis toward grammar (i.e. more people go on YouTube than actually reading so that one can be exposed to correct grammar), growing class-sizes (which limits personalized  grammar education) and a growing English Learner population, as main contributing factors of this sad statistic. Fortunately, San Jose State has like a Writing tutoring section where students can get help to improve their grammar. 

The article does point out that communication and writing skills are very essential in getting and advancing in the job market. I can see why, because the work I do involves playing with words to give their intended effects - so the reader and listener can clearly understand what I mean. Unfortunately, I'm not a very concise person in terms of wording anyway. 

Forclosure-related Articles

Two articles I found of interest relating to the stimulus package, in terms of helping homeowners.

Few in Bay Area qualify in housing rescue plan - Supposedly, more than 90% of San Francisco Bay Area do not qualify for low-cost refinancing of home mortgages. In order to qualify, homeowners have to have taken a loan less than $415,000. The Bay Area has ridiculous home prices anyway.

Bailout should also help renters- A SF Chronicle opinion article notes that the stimulus plan should help the renters, which are mostly poor and vulnerable to losing their homes due to speculating landowners. 20% of homes facing forclosure are where renters live. However, only about 2% of the $75 billion helping homes from forclosure will be focused on relocating renters. That's not enough! 

A new dawn for liberalism

US president Barack Obama is set to sign the bill on Tuesday. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty

Well, it finally happens. After much debate and revisions, both houses of Congress has passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 

It's interesting that many newspapers have stated that this crisis has been one of the worst ever since the Great Depression. However, while reading the SF Chronicle this afternoon, I stumbled upon this interesting paragraph that I will quote:

The outcome amounted to the first significant fruits of November's Democratic victory, in which Obama handily won the presidency while his party expanded its congressional majorities. For the first time in 14 years, Democrats have the power to legislate without serious Republican interference, and Friday they reveled in what many described as a new dawn for liberalism.

This brought me back to a Time Magazine article that was written about a week after Obama's election victory titled: The New Liberal Order.

The article clearly defines this new era of liberalism as an end to the culture war between small-government conservatives, which was comprised of the silent majority (i.e. social conservatives or small-government conservatives) which came out during the 60s, and the very social-activist progressive group which seeked for change for the better. Unlike the disorderly, violent 60s with traditional liberalism, the new liberals want to see government regulate in a way which creates order in the economy while solving many problems in our society, whether it be social, economic, or technological issues. 

I have turned progressive myself. Ironically, there are still Republicans in Congress who believe that this stimulus plan is too risky. I still wonder what solutions they can contribute (using the private sector as an excuse is pretty bad at this time). 

The question is: how progressive can our generation get?

My US History teacher once said that American history's pivotal movements come out about every sixty years. She says: 1840 (about the time when the Democracy we have today comes out, i.e. Andrew Jackson. Although Jackson did stop being president before 1840) ,1900 (Progressive Era),1960 (Civil Rights Movement), and predicts 2020 will be the next famous year.

What will happen in 2020?

To end this post, here's the Time article's quote:

If he can do what F.D.R. did — make American capitalism stabler and less savage — he will establish a Democratic majority that dominates U.S. politics for a generation.

Small Payroll, but Big Woes on Insurance

Amberly Allen, right, at her Texas direct-mail business, is looking at whether to end health benefits to avoid layoffs.

I found this article on the New York Times talking about how the economy has negatively affected the very important factor which attracted jobs during World War II: employee-based health insurance. The recession is threatening its status, especially among small businesses, which have had to, lets say, require employees to contribute more toward their premiums, or lower the required amount of hours to work to pay for the premiums (there are some other examples I cannot think of my head).

Health insurance already costs a lot already; it's pretty difficult to decide where to save money these days. Looks like Nader's single-payer ain't the solution, at the moment.