Food Inc. Essays

Food Inc. Essays Food Inc. Essay Food Inc. Essay Food Inc. The documentary Food Inc. by Robert Kenner is a documentary about the food industry and some of the issues that have emerged with the modernization of said food industry. Robert Kenner presents his arguments in sorts of subtitle such as The dollar menu, and The cornucopia to help identify his main points. Robert Kenner also brings in some experts such as Michael Pollen and Barbara Kowalcyk, into his documentary to bring some credibility to his argument, as well as adding specific music at particular times to tug at the emotions of the viewers. In this documentary Robert Kenner not only shows what happens to those who eat the products produced by the corporate food industry but also those who help in the production. In the first segment of Kenners documentary he brings up the topic of chicken farming in the modern food industry, and how there are many dangerous or unethical changes in the food industry. He then shows that chicken are now treated less like an animal and more like a product, less like a living thing and more like an object. Kenner shows this by showing some dark chicken house in which the chickens never even see any light. Then we are shown how chicken have been genetically altered for the new demands of the food industry. Chickens would grow to their full potential in seventy two days but now they grow to their full potential in forty eight days and not only that but they are twice the size of the ones that would grow in seventy two days. He then has a chicken farmer give us information about the company they are contracted with. : The farmer then shares some of the unethical behavior of the company how the company keeps the farmers under their thumb by constantly requiring upgrades on the farmers equipment. Another example of the unethical behavior is that the company hires illegal immigrants to do a lot of their labor. During this part of the documentary Robert Kenner plays some rock music that sounds almost angry to persuade the viewer to feel angry about the way the farmers as well as the chickens themselves are being treated. Robert Kenner then goes on to show us about the applications of corn in the modern food industry as well as some of the draw backs. Kenner then has Michael Pollen author of The Omnivores Dilemma tell us about his personal experience with the food industry. Pollen tells us he did some investigating and found that a lot of our food was leading to a corn field in Iowa he then says, so much of our industrial food turns out to be clever rearrangements of corn. Corn has help make many things, things from ketchup to even tires and the reason corn is used to help make all of these things is because it is cheap to make. However because of this same reason corn is used as the sustenance for animals. Cows are have evolved to eat grass not corn, and because cows are being fed corn instead of grass it causes physiological problems. One such problem is the E-coli virus the virus can and has caused death. In tne documentary Rooert Kenner empnaslzes one case In particular In wnlcn a two year old named Kevin dies from E-coli that he had contracted from a fast food restaurant. Kevins mother Barbara Kowalcyk became an advocate for food safety along with her mother Patricia Buck to help prevent anymore cases of E-coli from emerging. Mrs. Kowalcyk and her mother are trying to get Kevins law to pass; Robert Kenner then tells us what Kevins law is, Kevins law would give back to the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meat. However in the six years since the bill was written up it still has not passed. During this time of the documentary Robert Kenner brings in a very sad slow song to convey the sadness that Mrs. Kowalcyk feels everyday over the loss of her son. Robert Kenner continues to speak about the issues associated to E-coli and how it relates to the meat packing industry. Michael Pollen tells us If you take a food lot cow and take it off its corn diet and feed it grass for five days the cow will shed eighty percent of the E-coli in its system. He then goes on to say that this doesnt happen ut rather the companies come up with radical ways to solve the E-coli problem. One such example is the Beef Products Incorporated located in South Sioux City, Nebraska what this company does is it takes all of the meat taken from the cows and put them in these containers and cleans the meat with ammonia. This companys meat is in seventy percent of the countries fast food. Also the company believes that within the next five years they will supply one hundred percent of the countries fast food hamburger meat. We are then given information about the meat packing industry its elf, and how after 1906 after Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle the meat industry was getting better, and by the 1950s being in the meat packing industry was considered a good Job. However now the way workers are being dehumanized and having to repeat one Job over and over similar to a machine a Job in the meat packing industry is becoming more and more dangerous. Lastly Kenner addresses a recent strain put on corn farmers by Monsanto Corporations. Monsanto Corporations engineered a soy seed that resist the harmful effects of pesticides. In 2008 ninety percent of soybeans in the U. S contained Monsantos patented gene this tells us that the usage of these patented soybeans is growing. Now this patented soybean is a problem because farmers have to buy new seeds each year as opposed to keeping some from each of their batch each year like they use to. If somebody is caught saving seeds they are accused of copyright infringement and are sued. At this point of the documentary a mixture of music is playing again some rock music to convey anger, as well as some slow downbeat music to convey the sadness of the farmers who are loosing money because of the Monsantos patented soy beans. In Robert Kenners documentary Food Incorporated Kenner shows us that the modern food industry has its flaws. The food industry has become a big business conglomerate in which it tries to produce as much as it can with putting very little into it. At this point the very personal relationship between the producer and the customer becomes cold and very robotic. Throughout the documentary Robert Kenner uses OITTerent persuaslve strategies sucn as Drlnglng In expert testlmonles, and music to tug at various emotions. Work Cited Food Inc. Robert Kenner Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009

Review of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Review of 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell To over-generalize, there are two types of nonfiction books worth reading: those written by an eminent specialist summarizing the current state of his or her field, often focusing on the singular idea that defines the authors career; and those written by a journalist without special knowledge about the field, tracking a particular idea, crossing the boundaries of disciplines when required by the pursuit. Malcolm Gladwells Blink is a bravura example of the latter sort of book: he ranges through art museums, emergency rooms, police cars, and psychology laboratories following a skill he terms rapid cognition. Rapid Cognition Rapid cognition is the sort of snap decision-making performed without thinking about how one is thinking, faster and often more correctly than the logical part of the brain can manage. Gladwell sets himself three tasks: to convince the reader that these snap judgments can be as good or better than reasoned conclusions, to discover where and when rapid cognition proves a poor strategy, and to examine how the rapid cognitions results can be improved. Achieving three tasks, Gladwell marshals anecdotes, statistics, and a little bit of theory to persuasively argue his case. Gladwells discussion of thin slicing is arresting: In a psychological experiment, normal people given fifteen minutes to examine a students college dormitory can describe the subjects personality more accurately than his or her own friends. A cardiologist named Lee Goldman developed a decision tree that, using only four factors, evaluates the likelihood of heart attacks better than trained cardiologists in the Cook County Hospital emergency room in Chicago: For two years, data were collected, and in the end, the result wasnt even close. Goldmans rule won hands down in two directions: it was a whopping 70 percent better than the old method at recognizing patients who werent actually having a heart attack. At the same time, it was safer. The whole point of chest pain prediction is to make sure that patients who end up having major complications are assigned right away to the coronary and intermediate units. Left to their own devices, the doctors guessed right on the most serious patients somewhere between 75 and 89 percent of the time. The algorithm guessed right more than 95 percent of the time. (pp. 135-136) The secret is knowing which information to discard and which to keep. Our brains are able to perform that work unconsciously; when rapid cognition breaks down, the brain has seized upon a more obvious but less correct predictor. Gladwell examines how race and gender affect car dealers sales strategy, the effect of height on salary and promotion to top corporate positions, and unjustified police shootings of civilians to demonstrate that our unconscious biases have genuine and sometimes tragic consequences. He also examines how the wrong thin slice, in focus groups or in a single-sip test of soft drinks, can lead businesses to mistake consumer preferences. There are things that can be done to redirect our mind along lines more conducive to accurate thin-slicing: we can alter our unconscious biases; we can change products packaging to something that tests better with consumers; we can analyze numerical evidence and make decision trees; we can analyze all possible facial expressions and their shared meanings, then watch for them on videotape; and we can evade our biases by blind screening, hiding the evidence that will lead us to incorrect conclusions. Takeaway Points This whirlwind tour of rapid cognition, its be, efits and pitfalls, has only a few pitfalls of its own. Written in a forthright and conversational style, Gladwell makes friends with his readers but rarely challenges them. This is science writing for the broadest possible audience; people with scientific training may chafe at the substitution of anecdote for study results, and may wish that the author had gone into greater depth with any or all of his examples; others may wonder how they can broaden the reach of their own attempts at rapid cognition. Gladwell may whet their appetites but will not fully satisfy those readers. His focus is narrow, and this helps him meet his goals; perhaps this is appropriate for a book titled Blink.