Analysis Of Pollan's 'Industrial Food Chain'

Decent Essays
Pollan believes the industrial food chain is a bad process to make food. One example that he mentioned was, “Basically, almost all of the cattle in the feedlot are are sick. And it’s their corn-based diet that makes them ill” (58). This quote indicates that if the cows are sick we would barely have any meat or our meat would be ill and that would cause us to feel ill. He also announced, “By giving antibiotics to the millions of cattle in the U.S. we are actually breeding new superbacteria that can’t be killed by antibiotics” (60). Oh no, super bacteria! If antibiotics can’t cure the cows we again are going to be low on meat which isn’t going to be good. We then wouldn’t be able to have 3 meals with meat in each meal per day. Lastly, he

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Michael Pollan does a great job explaining the different theories and views of the western diet. He doesn’t pin point specific foods and tell you to eliminate them but just to be vigilant and aware of where exactly your food is coming from. I think that we need to focus more of our attention on our health then we are right now. The more people that make this effort, the quicker we’ll become a healthier nation.…

    • 76 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A red barn, with green pastures and cows roaming around happily; this is what enters most our minds when we think of farms, which is naïve. The truth is 90% of our food is industrially grown, where we feed cows through plastic tubes and give them antibiotics by the pint and corn is doused with chemicals. Michael Pollan, through “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” tries to open the eyes of the American people to understand this and to question what we are eating. Similarly, artist Nathan Meltz and the Reuters article “Monsanto replacing GMO canola seed in Canada” work to answer this all-important question by further analyzing our food production. Together, these various sources let the readers comprehend conventional agriculture through multiple lenses…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Analysis of “America’s Food Crisis” The article “America’s Food Crisis” by Bryan Walsh is a mind stimulating read on Walsh’s examination of food production. No one really looks into the depths of food production as they should. In this article Walsh attempts to bring out the negatives on food production by stating facts on how it has affected us financially and health wise. Swift states that we should make smarter food choices instead of going by more are better.…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Industrial farming poses dangers to our health, In Pleasures of Eating, Wendell Berry describes the importance of understanding the connection between eating and the land in order to extract pleasure from our food. When A Crop Becomes King is like Wendell Berry's article, however it focuses on corn and corn production in our food. Unlike the two articles listed above, David Barboza’s article: If You Pitch It They Will Eat It is about the advertisement part of the food industry, and how they manipulate us to buy there products. I agree that Industrial Farming is bad for our health and that this must be fixed or modified to fix eating habits. To grow all this corn we have to use a ton of pesticides to keep animals from eating the crop.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The author, Michael Pollan, believes that feeding corn to cattle is bad for the cattle. To begin, Pollan states that, “Basically, almost all of the cattle in the feedlot are sick and it’s their corn-based diet that makes them ill” (58). He explains that since all feedlots feed corn to their cattle, most of the cattle are sick which means the cattle aren’t healthy. He also goes on to explain that, “Cattle rarely live on feedlots diets for more than 150 days…” (59). This means that the cattle on a feedlot don’t live for a long time which means there is a large amount of deaths in a feedlot.…

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Michael Pollan's piece “Big Food Strikes Back” in October 9, 2016 The New York Times Magazine begins with critique of a lack of the discussion about food system during 2008 U.S. presidential campaigns. Nevertheless, the food topic—being multi-dimensional—is inevitably a part of a larger, and more discussed, themes such as public health, climate change, and nation's' energy requirements, to name a few. Furthermore, the author in this article pinpoints the U.S. food systems' problems. The production of monocrops, which are subsidized by the government, result in high emissivity of the greenhouse gasses and have shown a negative impact on public health and ecology.…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nature has enslaved people since the beginning of time. As humans have developed they have overcome oceans, plagues, nomadism, and other organisms. Most recently scientists have created means to overcome the biological constraints of agriculture, and the plant that has contributed the most is corn. Pollan stated. “corn has done more than any other species to help the food industry realize the dream of freeing food from nature’s limitations.(91)” thesis Modern corn now is genetically changed to have the qualities wanted in corn commodity.…

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My response to Michael Pollan’s “Escape from the Western Diet” In Michael Pollan’s argument “Escape from the Western Diet” he claims that the western diet is the cause of western diseases. Pollan also thinks that the food industry and health care industry are working together. This can be concluded by the evidence provided and personal experience. Pollan provided great evidence that can be seen but hasn’t been noticed because it is something that may seem normal now.…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pollan believes supersized meals are bad. Supersized meals are making us fat. In addition people are eating “30% more”(82) than what they in the early times, which means that people are eating more and are getting fatter . Also “ our instincts tell us to eat sugar and the fat”(82) when you eat enough sugar your body becomes addicted and craves sugary food every minute of the day every minute in their day . Otherwise “they had to hunt for their food”(82).…

    • 161 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the beginning of Escape from the Western Diet, author Michael Pollan introduces the thought that nutritionism is one of the most used sciences used to categorize food today. Moreover, Pollan’s main claim is that nutritionism and the Western diet are not forms of dietary rules that we should follow. Pollan himself writes, “Scientists can argue all they want about the biological mechanisms behind this phenomenon, but whichever it is, the solution to the problem would appear to remain very much the same: Stop eating a Western diet” (Pollan 421). To me, I believe Pollan makes a very convincing point to stop eating a western diet, due to the examples he shares. All throughout the article, Pollan shares his various opinions on the western diet like how it leads to western diseases and thoughts on how the medical and food industries are affected.…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Meatless Mondays Essay

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages

    We, in the United States are meant eaters. Today’s news is often filled with the effects and causes of global warming, with the main focus being related to carbon gas (CO2) emissions, reducing oil-based and coal energy usage. By comparison, what is not well known or often reported, is the tremendous impact of raising farm animals, mostly cows and chicken, for food production, the strain on resources, carbon emission, and the corresponding toxic run-off, to name a few. By further investigating the results of these massive farm production undertakings, and how damaging their impact is to the planet as reported by John Vidal in an article published in “The Guardian”, the current way these animals are raised is more recently of interest by politicians, scientists, economists, and the UN alike. Our relationship with animals is severe and must be changed in order to help solve the human and ecological concerns, and solve the problem of the already 1 billion people who do not have enough to eat and the 3 billion more people to feed within 50 years (Vidal).…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America has made a lot of changes in the past on becoming more inventive, resourceful, and as well as industrialized. Due to the variations in how our food industries operate, small family-owned farms have rapidly vanished leaving us with large, industrialized productions that mass produce for the benefit of the Large Corporations. Americans expect to be able to have large quantities of food available for purchase at anytime and at a low price. Unfortunately in order to get that food to us at low prices, we have to sacrifice aspects of animal rights, human rights, the environment, and health.…

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Despite its publication more than a decade ago, Pollan’s argument remains relevant today as the globe struggles to find the best balance between accessible or healthy food and efficient or moral food production methods. Regardless of what course the food industry will decide to take, the power it holds over society and our future is…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From being named on Time Magazine’s top 100 Most Influential People in 2010 to writing many books about food and eating Michael Pollen goes on to explain how to escape the Western Diet in his essay “Escape from the Western Diet”. Pollen points out how the food and health industries impact peoples diets, how to escape the Western Diet and the 3 rules he proposes. Pollen has many great points but lacks convincing evidence in many of his arguments. Although Michael Pollen lacks some strong evidence he is still able to lure the readers in with solid points such as the two industries, so therefore making his argument somewhat convincing to the readers. Pollan succeeds in pointing out how industries should be blamed for people not being able to…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Global warming, the carbon footprint, the greenhouse effect, whatever you wish to call it climate change is an issue that not only affects us but every living organism on this planet. In American author, Michael Pollan’s essay “Why bother?” he presents the issue of climate change and the very reason why it is still a problem after so many years, because of people who believe “why bother.” “Why bother” refers to the mental reality of believing that one individual can’t make any form of difference for an issue. Now while this idea is not entirely false I do feel it has a rather large hole in it.…

    • 1403 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays