Locavore Movement

Improved Essays
Locavore Essay In this day and age, there's always some kind of new trend, some kind of new getaway destination or new health craze. A dietary choice that's been attracting people for over a decade is the locavore movement. Based on eating fresh, close-to-home foods, this eating choice focuses on finding organic, locally farmed food to give the eater a more nutritious, environmentally conscious meal. Being healthy, sustainable, and eco-friendly, this diet seems like a dream come true, a solution to health crisis and the economic recession. But the locavore diet is just that- a dream. The benefits that the movement claims to have are minimal to none. The locavore movement is based on solving issues that aren't problems and isn't sustainable in urbanized, modern-day America. One of the big appeals of locavorism is the bushel of health benefits that comes with the diet. On surface, it makes sense that locally grown foods that are fresh and ripe, grown by small farmer, would be healthier for a person. Organic has become synonymous with healthy, after all. Nutritionist, Marion Nestle considers these nutritional issues “red herrings” (Source B). If a person is choosing to be a locavore, then they are intentionally choosing a diet full of fruits and vegetables. A diet full of produce is going to be healthy regardless if it's grown locally or found in “the global …show more content…
But that's it. The supposed nutritional benefits, reduction of emissions, and economical gains created by the locavore movement are pale in comparison to the drawbacks of the movement. The lack of practicality makes the movement ineffective at achieving the goals it set out to accomplish. While this information shouldn't stop a person from eating healthy, it makes them think twice about what really happens from farm to table and how trends can effect a

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Locavore Dbq

    • 168 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Locavore Why do people care about food? Why care where it comes from? Why care about buying a small and sickly looking tomato that they can get from their supermarket as compared to the big, succulent, bright red tomatoes that is grown locally? It just might be the environmental implications or maybe better nutrition that people want out of their food.…

    • 168 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent 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

    Encumbered by highly advanced agricultural inventions, the American diet has evolved into a dilemma producing detrimental health affects for our nation. While a plethora of food choices, from chicken nuggets to Twinkies, may appear to be a dietary utopia; the technological advancements in the food industry have produced food-like products rather than authentic food. This nation-wide eating disorder has kept Americans in a cyclical process of attempting to achieve a thin figure while still gaining pounds. Through the course of his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan investigates four meals: a meal from McDonalds eaten in the car, an organic based meal from Whole Foods, a meal from an organic, sustainable farm, and lastly, a meal that Pollan hunted and gathered himself.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    David Martirossian Over the past few decades, the locavore movement has received a considerable amount of attention and gained many supporters. The entire premise to this movement is simply eating locally grown or produced products. However, some people have expressed disagreements and worked towards debunking the claims made by locavores and their supporters. There are many issues that must be taken into consideration when assessing the locavore movement as it is associated with nutrition, community, sustainability, and economics.…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the new information age, many people are informed the important of food and heathy life style. Knowing this, many food producers hit their consumers with many bright image of the healthy local grown food. They try to create a mental association of local and healthy food, while in reality they are two different concepts. By definition the local grown food is the food grow and process in the proximity of 50 miles, which has nothing to do with its healthiness. The advertisers create this belief to make consumers buy more of the local food, but the consumers are still getting the same products.…

    • 1479 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Limits on what should be considered local need to be decided, research of farmers markets or other producers must be completed thoroughly, the carbon footprint of those they’ll receive food from needs to be evaluated and the true benefits of such a lifestyle need to be weighed against the extra effort. Then, and only then, should a community go through such a drastic change. With careful researching and a solid plan, a community may flourish after assuming a locavore lifestyle. However, there is considerable evidence that undermines the locavore movement as a whole and leaves it pointless at best. The broad idealism of the locavore movement resembles the Progressive Movement of the late nineteenth century.…

    • 1212 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Changing human diet can be a controversial topic and to change this omnivore’s mind one needs to present facts as cold as a fresh cut of meat. Marjorie Lee Garretson’s “More Pros Than Cons in a Meat-Free Life” is an essay that tries to persuade the reader to a vegan lifestyle under the guise of vegetarianism using few cited sources and trying to make the reader feel bad about the way they currently eat. “More Pros Than Cons in a Meat-Free Life” is a college level essay written by Marjorie Lee Garretson about the potential positives to vegetarian lifestyle. The essay first focuses on the health benefits of switching to vegetarianism which is done in three sentences claiming decreased cancer rates and longer life expectancy without any…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Even though these people know what is going on, they still do not change their lifestyles. But they have good reasons, according to Michael Pollan’s reasonings in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan explains how the food corporations have “push[ed] our evolutionary buttons, fooling the omnivore’s inherited food selection system “ (107). Even though humans are not meant to eat these foods, the sensory apparatus in within humans have evolved to always crave these processed foods. It has even gotten to a point where “people with limited money to spend on food would spend it on the cheapest calories they can find” (Pollan 108).…

    • 2977 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Improved 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
  • Improved Essays

    The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, and published in 2009 made quite an impact on the food industry and nearly everybody who so happened to read it. The book details what happens behind closed doors of supermarkets, how the food is made, how the animals soon to be meat are handled and treated, and asks the question, how do we know if what we’re eating really is healthy? Chapter 8 of the book: The Modern Omnivore, highlights this question, among others, especially what we’ve been asking ourselves… what is the omnivore’s dilemma? The omnivore’s dilemma is that modern Americans have such a large variety of food making us uncertain about what should and should not be eaten. What food is good food?…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Locavore Synthesis Essay

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Locavore movements have become the new craze of the past decade. Consequently, locavores have helped improve the environment within communities and the economy of the small farm industry, but the nutritional value hasn’t improved like people want it to. Becoming a part of the locavore movement can help the environment tremendously in many different ways. “Eating local is better for air quality and pollution…”(Source A) Travel time is cut which is less pollution from the trucks that transport the goods. The travel time usually outweighs the purpose of buying organic foods since the air is not benefitting from it.…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    As I walk into my local Stop & Shop or Market Basket I am overwhelmed by my choices. I look at some of the products and sometimes I find pictures of small farms with wide green pastures. That is how the industrial food system wants us to interpret it, although I know this is far from reality. Most of these industrial farms do not even have animals, and the ones that do are simply awful. In the essay “The Future of Food Production, the author, Sam Forman mentions that as soon as food production became industrialized, the concern for the environment and the livestock diminished.…

    • 1220 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Toulmin Method

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Writing a written argument is an act which many people recommend you master. The Toulmin method facilitates the way one analyzes an argument. Stephen Toulmin gives us the basics to this method which allows many people to respond to the argument given and also leads one to improve the argument made. Toulmin’s method invites one to examine the claim, reasons, qualifiers, evidence, warrant backing, rebuttals for any counter-arguments, and exceptions of an argument to decide the effectiveness of an argument. In the article titled “The Locavore Myth: Why buying from nearby farmers won’t save the planet,” James McWilliams argues that although the Locavore movement has brought attention to industrialized food, the movement does not prevent damage…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Forks Over Knives Analysis

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages

    This film offers the opposition of this topic virtually no time to give their side of the story. I believe that to have a successful argument, the audience should have the right to hear both sides of the story before they start making their own ideas. Connie Diekman, food expert, was only given a small opportunity to explain why eating animal meat is important. This film also does not offer any negatives that could come from switching diets. They fail to mention how prices of these organic food might make it impossible for certain families and students to make the switch.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The documentary Food Choices: How Our Diet Affects the Environment produced by Michal Siewierski and Kaiser Permanente, a non-for-profit health plan, while different non-fiction forms of communication that share a common mission of providing important information on the effects of the food we eat and how changing our diet can improve our lives. The documentary Food Choices advocates the benefits of eating a plant-based diet and begins by discrediting long believed myths about eating land animals and the advantages of doing so and makes the connection between food choices that the consumer is making and the environment. Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care consortium that has started to embrace the concept of disease prevention…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays