For the past week I have been pretty set on my "why" question that guides my junior theme being "why do Americans eat so much fast food even though they know the health risks associated with fast food?" I did and still feel that the question is very broad and has a lot of possible areas for me to look into with my research.
Yesterday, while reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, the issue of how cheap the fast food is struck me as another possible topic. Why is fast food as cheap as it is? The book brought up some very interesting issues including government subsidized corn, which is very prevalent in fast food and just about everything these days, and how the cheap corn is good for the consumer but bad for the corn farmers.
The book also explored how even the cows are being raised much faster then ever before. Rich Blair says: "In my grandfathers time, cows were four or five years old at slaughter... Now we get there at fourteen to sixteen months" (52). This remarkable speed can be attributed to the diet of corn, tallow, food supplements, and lots of drugs.
These advancements do have a nasty side. Cows were never meant to eat corn meaning that they are always sick. "Cattle rarely live on feedlot diets for more than 150 days" (59). This is because the cows system couldn't handle eating corn for any longer. The other part of feedlots that disturb me is that the cows have the ground up remains of other cows mixed into their food. This could lead to several diseases in the meat that we eat.
This is what led me to wonder why we as Americans turn a blind eye to some of the darker things happening in feedlots so we can get our food at a cheaper price?
I think the biggest reason people are okay with questionable farming practices is the distance there is today between consumers and farms. Most Americans live in cities far from where their food is produced, and are never really exposed to the farming system except by books like the one you mention. This means people never really think about how their food gets to the supermarket, and allows practices like the ones you describe to continue.
ReplyDeleteI think that another large issue is that some people do not have a choice. I was recently watching something on television that dealt with how financial troubles have forced families to eat fast food because it is so cheap. Even though these families know that there are serious health risks to eating fast food so frequently, they are stuck and therefore do not have the luxuries of shopping at grocery stores or purchasing organic foods. To answer your question I agree with Joe. Although i will read or hear something occasionally on the issue, because i am so unfamiliar with the whole system it never really crosses my mind when I order something at a fast food restaurant.
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