Hw # 7b

Chapter 6:

Précis: Comparing 1820 to modern day America, drinking half a pint of whiskey every day was normal then. And today eating huge portions is also seen as normal due to the serving size some genius invented in order to sell more, leading to the rise in obesity. Another reason is that the cost is these foods are cheap because of the cost per calories. And corn is the cheapest energy on the market so of course we end up eating a lot of it in our diet. Especially with the huge portions being served to us in processed foods.

Gems: "It turns out the price of a calorie of sugar or fat plummeted since the 1970s. One reason that obesity and diabetes become more prevalent the further down the socioeconomic scale you look is that the industrial food chain has made energy - dense foods the cheapest foods in the market, which measured in terms cost per calories." - pg. 107

"While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the market will continue to be the unhealthiest." - pg. 108

"Researchers have found that people (and animals) presented with large portions will eat up to 30 percent more than they would otherwise." - pg. 106

Questions/Thoughts:

Why is the President, the very own government letting us eat these cheap calories when it is unhealthy for us?

I believe that not allowing fast food restaurants to super size foods would help decrease obesity, because it is what led to the increase of obesity.

Chapter 7:

Précis: Family day at McDonalds I inspect the number of corn we intake in a single meal even include our transportation and the amount would fill and overflow the back trunk of my car of kernels. But the question is whether or not so much corn intake is really as bad as we think. The idea of McDonalds also has huge impact on why we eat it; to me it brought memories of my childhood and the smell brought comfort. But these cheap calories seem to have a consequence because in long run it can cost more to one becoming obese or get heart disease later on in life.

Gems: " The myriad streams of commodity corn, after being variously processed and turned into meat, converge in all sorts of different meals I might eaten, at KFC, or Pizza Hut or Apple bee's, or prepared myself from ingredients bought at supermarket. Industrial meals are all around us, after all; they make up the food chain from which most of us eat most of the time. " - Pg. 109

"I loved everything about fast food: the individual crunchy all wrapped up like presents; the familiar meaty perfume of the French fries filling the car; and the pleasingly sequenced bite into a burger - the soft, sweet roll, the crunchy pickle, the savory moistness of the meat." - pg. 111

" No I could not taste the feed corn or the petroleum or the antibiotics or the hormones - or the feedlot manure. Yet awhile " A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts" did not enumerate these facts, they too have gone into the making of this hamburger, are part of its natural history." - pg. 114- 115

Questions/Thoughts: The numbers given of how much corn we intake is huge compared of what one thought of before.

These cheap calories have a cause and effect I believe, they may be cheaper for those in low economic class but these people can later pay a higher price of becoming obese or having heart disease later on.

Chapter 8:

Précis: Visiting a Polyface farm and doing manual work the visual picture of the happy farmer and the leisure work disappears in my mind. After spending a day with Salatin I learn how he believes he is not a chicken farmer or cattle rancher but a grass farmer! To him and his farm the most important part is the grass because there everything else connects, the animals, their food and in the end the animals we eat. He believes they are better than the organic farms to him organic is just something else government owns. While unlike his farm it is just for him and his community, none of it can be exported. Soon I’ll find out whether this is true or not...

Gems: " Grass," so understood, is the foundation of the intricate food chain Salatin has assembled at Polyface, where a half dozen different animal species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the theme of symbiosis. Salatin is the choreographer and the grasses are verdurous stage; the dance has made Polyface one of the most productive and influential alternative farms in America." - pg. 126

" A great many animals, too, are drawn to grass, which partly accounts for our own deep attraction to it: We come here to eat the animals that ate the grass that we (lacking rumuns) can't eat ourselves. " All Flesh is Grass." - pg. 127

" We never called ourselves organic - we call ourselves 'beyond organic.' Why dumb down to a lesser level than we are?" - pg. 132

"A ten- thousand - bird shed that stinks to high heaven or a new paddock of fresh green grass every day? Now which chicken shall we call 'organic'? I'm afraid you'll have to ask the government, because now they own the word." - pg. 132

Questions/Thoughts: The author says he will investigate whether this farmer was telling the truth that this farm is better than organic farm. Wonder if it is? And if it is why then is organic seen so highly?

Chapter 9:

Precis

Gems: "In several corners of the store I was actually forced to choose between subtly competing stories. For example, some of the organic milk in the milk case was " ultrapasteurized," an extra processing step that was presented as a boon to the consumer, since it extends shelf life. But then another, more local dairy boosted about the fact they had said no to ultrapastueurization, implying that their product was fresher, less processed, and therefore more organic. This was the dairy that talked about cows living free from distress, something I was beginning to feel a bit of myself by this point." - Pg. 135

" The organic movement , as itwas once called, has come a remarkably long way in the last thirty years, to the pointwhere it now looks considerably less like a movement than a big business." - Pg. 138

Questions/Thoughts: Happy cow = real good steak

How with so many choices in Supermarket like Whole Foods can one make right decision in what to buy?

Chapter 10:

Precis:

Gems:" Curiously, we seem to like grass less for what it is than for what it isn't - the forest, I mean - and yet we're much more likely to identify with a tree than a blade of grass." - pg. 184

" Grass farmers grow animals - for meat, eggs, milk, and wool - but regard them as part of a food chain in which grass is the keystone species, the nexus between the solar energy that powers every food chain and the animals we eat." - pg. 188

" Joel pulled a single blade of orchard grass, showing me exactly where a cow had sheared it the week before, and pointing out the finger of fresh green growth that had emerged from the cut in the days since. " - (talking about cows grazing) - pg. 190

Questions/Thoughts:

Grass for a farm is like what corn is for us essential, ( well for us it has become) and this chapter really helped me understand why the farmer called himself a grass famrerand learn a little about /joel's past of how he comes from generations of farmers and how his father's dream and hard work was taken away. Would this be why he doesn't follow government so this one day won't happen to him?