Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

This book is truly something. Paul Farmer, raised without the ideals of the American dream, is one of the very few people in this world and mostly in this country, who truly cares about the world and is actively trying to make it a better place. Here is a man who will risk his life to do justice to a people whose livelihood America completely destroyed.  Farmer doesn’t care about anything but humanity, and helping it in this helter-skelter world.  

I think if you asked Kidder, in an elevator to sum up the book, you’d probably get an earful and end up at a diner drinking coffees and discussing a whole slew of practices of today’s world that are truly horrifying. But here it is not really Kidder who struck my sever intrigue, but Farmer, whom I’d love to sit down and talk with. His interesting and uncommon childhood made him a particularly wonderful man.

“As Farmer was leaving the shelter he heard Joe say to another resident just loudly enough to make Farmer wonder if Joe meant for him to overhear, ‘That guys a fuckin’ saint’ it wasn’t the first time that Farmer had heard himself called that, when I asked him his reaction he said…’I don’t care how often people say you’re a saint, its to that I mind it, its that its inaccurate’ this was seemly I thought, resisting the edification. But then he told me’ people call me a saint, and than I think, I have to work harder, because a saint would be a great thing to be.’ I felt a small inner disturbance. It wasn’t that the words seemed immodest, I felt I was in the presence of a different person from the one id been chatting with a moment ago. Someone whose ambitions I hadn't yet begun to fathom.”

I think this book spoke to me so much because it’s exactly the kind of thing I want to do with my life. I want to be a writer, but above that I want to be like Farmer. He had great opportunities in his life and he saw great injustices across the world. He used his privilege to help people of Haiti who are completely un-self-sufficient because of things America did for its greed. He gave people there a second chance and a new life and he did it with great sacrifices on his own part, because he understands that that’s what it takes to make a difference. He didn’t do it for monetary gain; he did it for universal gain, and knowledge and wisdom. I don’t know about being a doctor, and saving people everywhere, but I want to do something like that for the earth. An earth mostly destroyed by America, that we are all part of, and that by poisoning and killing our planet we in affect are doing just that to ourselves. You cant save people in a world that is dying. 

HW 19

Everyone wants to be healthy, weather its most important to you or not. Even if you don’t take great or even good care of your body, it’s a natural human instinct to keep healthy. The dominant social practices around illness and dying in America subdue this instinct into a consumerist coma.

I remember running around the isles in the health food store with my sister as a little kid. And today I take care of my self in even more wholistic ways. My mom is as always a huge fan of homeopathic remedies, herbal teas, vitamins, and sleeps, taught me these ways from the beginning. As I grew older and began to take care of my self I kept that natural health ways I had learned and also expanded on them ever more, with yoga and meditation.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time in hospitals and with doctors, burses, and other sick children, I am very appreciative of medical advances that have been made. With out them I might be alive today and I certainly would not look the way I do. Sometimes science does have the answers. But it will never have them all. In my opinion a wholistic way of being healthy is the best way to stay in touch with the earth, your soul, and the sprit world, and being in touch there is the best way to stay healthy and avoid illness. While antibiotics can cure your cold, emanation and yoga could keep you from ever even getting that cold.  Threes a scientific cure for almost everything, but why would you want to bring your body even further form nature. Well, that’s just not natural!

I am medical-breakthroughs. Everyone diagnosed with an AVM (Arteriole-venous malformation) before or in the same year as me, is dead.  I don’t think ill ever know for sure but maybe it was my wholistic upbringing that saved me, or my contact with the spirit world. Ill never knows, but ill continues to live this way and hope I continue making breakthroughs. Over the years I have watched the treatment methods get better. But science still has no answer for me. Im not saying im a religious person at all, but in my soul I know I will be all right.

About three years ago my grandpa sustained brain damage. The doctors told us if we took him off the feeding tubes he wouldn’t last the week. Everyone knew he didn’t want to live like that, and no one wanted to subject him to that kind of pseudo-life.  We decided to bring him home. Not only did he live the week, he lived for almost two more years. When he got home, he got better. He was able to join us at the dinner table, and even if he could barely remember out names, he could still brighten our days, and we his.

I remember in the weeks before he dies, all he could talk about was going home. His usually mostly incoherent and constant talking began to feature his mother, and lost war comrades. My grandpa slowly began to slip away into the world of the dead, and just like that, he was gone. 

HW 18

This thanksgiving was a hard one for my family. We have had two deaths in the last three years and my uncle just died so no one was really in the thankful celebratory mood. (Besides the idea of thanksgiving sickens me anyway, just be thankful on this one day and than for the rest of the year you can go back to your self absorbed ways. a holiday for the neocolonialist capitalist imperialist motherfuckers. being thankful on this day they invaded a land of prosper stole all of their resources and virgins with advanced weaponry killed them all off put the remaining few on reservations with no options and took claim of their land and distorted it in every way they were against.) But I digress. 

This thanksgiving was a rather odd one for me. Seeing as I am thankful for very little, and seeing as I no longer eat tainted meat, which is the only kind of meat readily available, I don’t really eat meat anymore, so no typical thanksgiving foods for me, although I did enjoy the non meet ones a lot, and I also really enjoyed seeing my not blood family who I haven't seen all together in ages. 

We didn't watch football, we watched comedy. And we laughed and laughed, while admittedly it is still being plugged in to electronics I think its better than watching other people exercise... that turned into the usual discussion of the revolution, and where the hell it is, and how we need to get there. I brought up this class, to much awe and excitement from the crowd, who are probably the reason I, my whole life, have thought teachers should be revolutionary gardeners and not tentacles of the government. 

HW 17

This unit could not be coming at a more ironic time in my life, seeing as I will be missing a lot of it to be in the hospital. I have been hospitalized 16 times in 10 years, so by now I’m used to it. That doesn't mean I don’t hate it however. That doesn't mean I can’t smell the death and taste the fear when I’m in a hospital. It just means I have grown accustomed to those things as a part of my life. I've probably been accustomed to them since the tender age of 6. I think all that time being in the hospital, trying to think about anything else but the present, or looking deep inside your self past your lifetime into your own soul, brings you to a level that most people today couldn't fathom.

I almost died a bunch of times. The first time I was three, I slipped off my floating device and quickly sank to the bottom of the pool. I remember sitting there, on the floor of the deep end, and the overwhelming blue that was surrounding me. I wasn't scared at all, I didn't even really understand what was going on. Soon my mom had leapt into the pool and dragged me out again. December 1, death 0.

But just because I had cheated death, doesn't mean I wasn't keenly aware of it. In-fact from then on, I could always feel death, just steps behind me, seeking me out. But I remained hidden.

Another time, I was probably 10, I woke up bleeding which I had also grown used to. But this morning was different. I opened my mouth and it was like a fire hose in reverse. What was gushing profusely was hot and red. My blood. I swaggered to the bathroom where my memory ended. Years later, when I had gathered enough courage to relive that moment in my head, I found my memory didn't really stop there. It just moved. When I remember that day it all goes up to that moment, and then I pass out from blood loss. My best friend is in the kitchen helping my frantic grandma dial 911. There I am bleeding out ever so quickly, my whole family is gathered around me. The paramedics come, they rush in and clear out the room. How come I can remember all of that so well if I was passed out on the floor? I’ll tell you: because I was watching it. I saw it all happen from above. My soul left my body and it hovered there, and it decided that it had way too many plans to start all over, so it went back.

I think it’s comparable to enlightenment, if it isn't actually enlightenment. And its too damn bad that everyone can’t reach this level. That’s what we need to fix the world.



You can believe me or not. You can think I’m conceited or not. But I know what I lived. I know I’m much more in touch with my soul than most people nowadays are. I know death is looking for me, and I know I will keep outsmarting it till I’m good and ready.

THATS AN AWEFUL LOT OF ICE CREAM!

 

watch this to learn more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67DvoH2H3E&feature=related

PAPER OUTLINE

Thesis-  he way America is run on a greedy capitalist mindset ends in most of the public living behind an iron curtain and slowly dying while the rich, on the other side of that curtain weighting it down with their fat wallets, get richer.



When Americas capitalist mindset of getting the most for the least spilled over into agriculture, horrors ensued, horror craftily hidden from the public until they were so subdues by the abundance of foods and processed corn, most people didn't care when the nightmarish truth came out. most people still dont even know this truth.

Americas normal food ways don't look so normal upon further inspection, and most people would be shocked and horrified to learn where their food is really coming from. even "organic" foods. 

most Americans shop at the supermarkets.

93% of Americans dont know where their food comes from.

there are many laws to protect the secrecy of the food industry.



When you really look at where most of Americas food is coming from you'll probably be horrified at the hellish conditions. 


business men control out food and douce them in chemicals

The way we get our copious amounts of food for so cheep makes it lose some of the natural healthiness it would provide.

Animal cruelty

an example of an alternative

HW 11- Final Project 1

after reading the Omnivores Dilemma and watching Food Inc. fully informed of everything unsaid, i was horrified. when i began reading the book i was shocked but not at all surprised at corn industry and how nearly everything Americans eat is corn. and it's all because a bunch of greedy corporate fat cats wanted to make more money that they already had. of course growing up with a very open and liberal mind in America i already knew that is how things work here and i also already had a good idea of the iron curtain covering the food industry, but i really had no idea what was behind it. i guess i knew a lot more than most people to begin  with, i knew about CAFO's and hormones and antibiotics and the life of those animals, to an extent, but learning and seeing what i did in the book and movie repulsed me to the point of no return. when i was a kid at summer camp there was this cow, Daisy i named her (i know what a cliché cow name but give me a brake i was 10.) we had rescued her from a nearby farm, she was caked in feces from head to toe, and riddled with pneumonia. since cows have always been my favorite and back then i always wanted to be a Vet i would go see her every day. we couldn't clean her for a while or shed die of the cold before she even dried so we waited for her to get better. ell i waited, no one els really had hope for her but still every day id go and walk her around the grass for a bit, let her feast, and even animals need company. eventually she got better and she lived at the camp for the next 5 years i went there. Daisy is what made me stop eating meat back then, and now i cant help but wonder of maybe Daisy came from one of those CAFOs, tossed out because they had tainted her meat with sickness... but its the thought of hundreds of thousands of other Daisy's, and pigs and chicken and maybe other animals, who weren't lucky enough to get sick, that have made me once again stop eating meat.
i have no problem with eating meat, its part of nature and its quite delicious, but i do have a huge problem with the way we eat meat in america. the industrial food system that is just brutally and wrongly disgusting. Im becoming a vegetarian for me, not because i think it will help cause, but because i don't want to be a part of the gruesome food chain that is industrial agriculture, and while i know that is marginally impossible, i don't want to take part in eating the beings that suffer the most due to it.
my mother, who always tried to buy us organic food even with its costs and had tried to avoid feeding me and my sister junk food (aka corn) until it was really no longer possible, was with me on my feelings about the food industry. i asked her what she thought those cage free chickens actually did with their days. she said what most people would, and what the businesses want you to believe, all grass and sunshine. but no. i told her what they really do with their dark and crudely numbered days.

but just not eating meat and trying to avoid processed and genetically modified corn as much as possible simply isn't good enough. sure maybe your helping yourself, the the problem is still getting worse and worse. i think you teaching about this stuff, the whole normal is weird basis you your course, is one of the best steps I've seen toward change. if every teacher in america was teaching this, and every student in america really learned it, maybe it would be able to undo some of the brainwashing thats been so successfully corrupting my generation. if it was commonly taught in schools, what out government really does for us, maybe the youth wouldn't just brush you off ac crazy when you spoke of how much we needed change. maybe they would care more about getting things done and fixing out crumbling country, instead of worrying about video games and celebrities. Im hoping to be more than just radical ideas. Im hoping to make a difference, and inspire people to do the same. Im hoping to spur the rebirth of revolutionaries.

OMNIVORES DILEMMA VS. FOOD INC.

both the book and the movie begin with the idea of a national eating disorder. Omnivores dilemma proceeds to evoke more deep and personal emotions, and tells you your about to learn a hell of a lot about food production in america and you might not like it. as the book and the movie continue they both talk a lot about one commodity in particular that dominates food production in america; corn.
here the book also succeeds in evoking something deeper than the movie, by not only going back but begging us to look forward with thesis that are simply undeniable. the movie touches on these things but i think the sheer greater amount of information about the food industry that made the book so much better in this area. this wasn't true for everything such as slaughter houses and animal treatment where images got across a very strong point. but i do think the book was stronger in enforcing its ideas.
i had watched the movie last year, before reading the book, and it didn't really resinate with me as much. after i had gained all the information the book had offered me, i could not only not stop telling everyone that everything was corn, i could properly understand all the arguments that i had heard in the movie when i was more naive about them. the arguments that had plagued me, but i hadn't even known the half of it.
seeing the movie with out all of that knowledge left me confused and angry and a little bit wiser about the food industry, yes. but not very different. reading the Omnivores dilemma has changed my life. i now know if not fully, a whole lot more about the food industry than before. and i am inspired to change, if only to help my self. and i an inspired to get other people to want to change as well. the movie did none of that for me. it introduced things that got me wondering, but the book just told me flat out about every last detail. thats why i prefer the book. i feel like watching the movie is the lazy persons cop out, and their not getting all that knowledge that that might really appreciate more and might be able to help them more.

CHAPTER 18


hunting is a deeply spiritual experience. there are many ways to analyze it but when i was in the forrest i felt in tune with the woods, with nature. when it first came time for me to kill a pig, which i had given myself many justifications about, i wasn't ready. my chamber had no bullet. could i have been unready on a deeper psychological level? probably, but i didn't want to get into it. i had the chance to redeem my self and this time i was ready. i took the pig down. that would be a lot of meat. but the




CHAPTER 19


now comes the gathering part of my journey. i set out into the forrest knowing very well that i did not know my way around the mushroom, which is what i was foraging for. even if i was a  mushroom expert, i still could never be completely sure this was a mushroom that was safe to eat, or if that mushroom would send me on a wild trip? after much effort i found such a mushroom expert who was willing to take me with him, though very reluctant and cautious to protect his mushroom spots. but finally when i had gathered my mushrooms it was a very satisfying experience.

Growing Sprout, or not... :(

even though my sprouts didn't grow, i have some idea of that feeling you were getting at. i have caught and killed the fish i ate for dinner and ate potatoes freshly picked from a garden i know is truly organic. i have walked into the field and picked a watermelon and ate it while it was still hot from the sun. eating like this, knowing and being able to appreciate everything that went into your food. its a level of awareness that makes food taste that much better. and probably the organic (really organic not USDA organic) does just taste better. when you eat blindly you taste blindly. not to mention you ingest things out of the context of nature. and eating should be one of life's most important experiences.

CHAPTER 17


so if you take everything into account, is it really ok to eat animals? i believed so,and it took the words do many animal rights activists to sway me, their arguments, especially Singer in Animal Liberation, are compelling. they say that if all humans, who are in reality not all equal deserve equal rights, why don't animals? because there not humans, one might argue. discriminating against them simply for nor being human is speciesist, once white people would say that same things about black people. thats where they got me. but im willing to admit im a speciesist and i continue eating meat. for a time, but the argument gets to me. finally i am convinced and rather reluctantly, convert to vegetarianism. now i have to deal with the vegetarians dilemma; in most  social settings either the vegetarian guest or the non vegetarian host, is put out. someone's going to feel bad. but it's just so appalling!  in todays food production industry in America, all the animals suffer greatly. life in a CAFO is no life at al. exploiting animals like this. some people say predation s a savage way of being and that history will condemn it just as slavery or the inferior treatment of women. is it possible that human have evolved past the need to kill and eat animals to survive? But is it really perdition or is it the way we do it in America, thats appalling? predation is necessary for most ecosystems and is better for the groups as a whole. for example the bison who was shaped through evolution by the native americans hunting them which also in turn was good for the planes grasses. there are ways, like pollyface farm, where you can raise and kill an animal whit out disrupting the natural or karmic cycle. in-fact animals typically found on farms entered into their relationships with humans because we can provide for them what they need and they can provide for us. we also give them the benefit of a swift and painless death, instead of the gruesome one that would await them in the wild. in a vegan Utopia of Pollyface farms all of, the idea of eating meat is perfectly acceptable, even to Singer, and part of nature. but we live in an industrial society, run by greed, in which we exploit the very animals we rely on, and frankly its disgusting.

CHAPTER 11


the cows are grazed on fields of grass, and rotated through these fields which in turn keeps the grass healthy.  after the cows graze the chickens go over the field spreading the cow manure and cleaning it so it can fertilize the grass also helping with the grasses health. in other words the animals do the work. all of them rely on one another to keep everything running smoothly. even the grass and the forest is part of it all.

CHAPTER 12


most slaughter houses wont even let people onto the  kill floor, Joel's slaughter house doesn't even have walls. the people who buy his food have the option to stop by and see their meat being killed. they have this option because it is don't humanly and while most people wont take up this offer the mear fact that it is an option shows Joel and his farm's integrity. the animals are killed quickly with little to no pain and they do not suffer as animals in conventional "farms" (really factories) do.

CHAPTER 13


Food from a farm such as this is likely to cost more than the conventional stuff and some people just aren't willing to pay that. but why is the question? in a  nation that spends spends spends why is food the only thing we are not willing to splurge on? when you take into account all the unnecessary things americans pay for, like t.v.,  cell phones, cars, etc. how come they  are not willing to pay  a bit more for food which is quite necessary and truthfully will cost the much less in the long run?

CHAPTER 14


The government and the food industry would like us to believe that food is food. chicken is chicken and beef is beef. in other words the processed (and tortured) chickens you buy in the supermarket is just as good as the chickens raised on a farm like Pollyface. this is just not true. when chickens come from a place like that where they get all the nutrients they would get in nature and not only does this in turn give us the nutrients we need from them but it also tastes like it should. conventional food is grown on chemicals, hormones and corn and even fed bits of other dead animals. Polyface chicken is raised on  grass sun and bugs.


CHAPTER 15


there is much more behind being a hunter than meets the eye . because society has moved away from nature there is no longer enough protein in the world to accommodate should the human population suddenly decode to return to its hunter gatherer roots. society has also installs taboos that keep us safe while in nature. like my fear of poisonous mushrooms thanks to my mothers immutable warnings as a child. to hunt or forge these days most people,such as myself,  would need some sort of field guide to navigate the natural world. after searching for this kind of field guide i came across an Italian friend who was perfect or the job. now all i had to do was take the course and get my hunter ID and id be catching my own dinner in no time. providing i could shoot and kill it. 


CHAPTER 16


the omnivores dilemma is an almost archaic problem that has come back at america with force. the problem of what to eat should become less of a problem if you have a hole human culture as a guide to what's good. with the development of society the omnivores dilemma should fade into the background. but today in America is is very much the foreground of every meal. being such a young nation that never had a strong culture around food, instead adopting things here and there from immigrant cultures that populate america. in France with their deep rooted food-ways people are much more aware of what they eat and what is good to eat and are much less plagues by the omnivores dilemma. since the omnivores dilemma is so prevalent in america and there was no set cultural food-ways, it was easy for people looking to make money to convince people that had the mericle answer to the omnivores dilemma. this lead to a new era of franticness about food. everyone has their own opinion about what you should eat. but none of it really looks that healthy when you get down to it. maybe e should learn from france? 

CHAPTER 6

once drinking was an epidemic in america. today its obesity.  this is also due to the over production and use of corn. you can stuff things with more calories, and things that humans are programed by evolution to like, then you would ever find in nature. thus people take in more calories and in turn get fatter.  we also consume a ton of HFCS on top of all the sugars we eat, also adding to the fat problem.and since theres so much corn all the corn based fattening stuff is the cheapest stuff you'll find. all causing most Americans to be over weight. many also have type 2 diabetes which comer from overloading your body with glucose.

CHAPTER 7

fast food with its very distinctive taste, is full of corn. everything on McDonalds menu, even the salads, have corn (and not corn your seeing as corn, some genetically modified form of corn.) and its what most americans eat .

CHAPTER 8

theres that "stuck in the past" idea of a farm, but it really works. much better than the industrial farms today. it is a symbiotic relationship that benefits everything on the farm from the people to animals down the the grass. and there is no waist. and certainly no chemical waist. and everyone is happy and healthy. so why is this idea considered so farfetched?

CHAPTER 9

when you think of organic food theres this image of happy farms with happy animals. Organic usually gives the consumer the idea that their avoiding the industral food industry. thanks to the united stated government this is no longer true. A hippie organization trying to make organic food redily availible to everyone eventually was bought out by the big corperations and now what is said to be organicly farmed food is in reality a cleverly descised, behind nearly uncomprehensible words, factory. and in these "organic" factorys essentially the only difference between them and the conventional farms is no antibiotics in their corn food and the option(2 weeks before slaughter) to go outside into the fresh air sunlight and grass, which is never taken advantage of.

CHAPTER 10


in an industrial world that even now dominates organics there are few farms that operate with really organic standards of nature. one such farm is Pollyface farm run by farmer Joel Salatin where i spent a week getting to know the ways of truly organic farming. Joel would call himself a grass farmer because everything on his farm starts with the grass. its all by natures standards; grass and sunlight natural non chemical fertilizers and humane treatment of animals. the animals here are really happy because they get to live like they would in nature. the whole farm is an intricate ecosystem where everything relies on everything els and the balance is key. and because of the natural ways of this farm everything tastes like it should. the chicken tastes like chicken and the eggs are delicious. and naturally organic foods contain more of what their supposed to to keep is healthy.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

CHAPTER 1


when you walk into the supermarket, everything around you cam from corn. from the produce and meat, to even cleansers and toothpaste. everything we eat was at some point processed corn. and if we are what we eat than america is processed corn. perhaps the corn rather ingeniously conquered and now dominates us? none the less, america is the only country where you need expert help to ascertain the origins of your food.
americans thrive off "corn" that, since it was originally discovered, has evolved into something entirely different, and is essentially the original capitalist. because it cant multiply alone do to a freakish genetic modification, it depends on humans to plant it and by making its self appealing to humans it was essentially able to take over. since it is so easy to hybrid and quick to modify corn has become something entirely different from the zea maze that was first found. since corn grew to american capitalist standards, like solders, able to withstand the massive amounts of chemicals poured upon it, fast and far, genetically modified or chemically enhanced corn makes up most of what america eats.

CHAPTER 2


americas farm country is no longer green pastures and grazing animals, but rather miles and miles of enhanced corn. corn that isn't even able to feed the families who live on the farms and grow the corn. they farm tons of corn, kept healthy by over fertilization with synthetic nitrogen to insure crops. and even so the farmers can barely live off the money they make. on top of that the synthetic nitrogen discovered by Fritz Haber in 1909, invariably chancing history, then runs off into the river which runs into a larger river which serves as the drinking water for the next town. Haber came up with these synthetic nitrogen not a moment too soon, for scientists had already come to realize that nitrogen limited and once they were gone the human race would come to a halt. before humans could manufacture it the amount of nitrogen in the soil limited the amount of corn that could be grown but science squashed that, and now corn runs ramped.



CHAPTER 3


due to government policies and big corporations, the farmers who grow and harvest the corn not only cant eat it but make hardly enough profit off it to sustain their families. the only way Naylor is able to have any money is by using his ancient machinery.  and the corn their growing isn't really corn, in-fact it's not even called corn. its corn 2. a generic, cheep and highly over produced commodity that becomes virtually everything americans consume. and the big corporations like Cargill, who controls most of this corn train, wont let outsiders near the corn to "protect it."
or themselves?



CHAPTER 4


cows. hybrid to have all the qualities they need to make it on the feedlot. are for a few short months of their unnaturally short lives, fed on what they should be, grass. as for the rest of their lives which had diminished from 4-5 then 2-3 years old and now stands at a miniscule 14-16 months. to go from 80 lbs to 1,100 lbs, in just this short matter of months, seems impossible. but not when they are fed on a steady diet of excess corn, fat and protein supplements, and antibiotics. when naturally they have evolved to eat grass and only grass and grass has evolved to accommodate them as well. and while animals on a farm creates a closed ecological loop, you rarely find animals on farms anymore, creating two new problems one of which; feedlot pollution, is never remedied. so these cows born to be eaten spend their few months of life eating things they shouldn't be eating (including other dead cows and things no herbivore should be eating) and living in their own and their neighbors filth. pumped full of antibiotics to keep them all from drooping dead in these hellish conditions, most cows on feedlots are still sick in some way, anyway if their not sick,  their certainly not happy. not only are cows not meant to eat corn, but humans really shouldn't be eating corn-fed beef either.  some scientists say that its not americas red meat based diet that makes us so unhealthy rather our corn fed beef diet which doesn't have the healthy qualities that a healthily raised on grass cow's beef would have.


CHAPTER 5


not only things that can obviously come from corn, come from corn. scientists have found ways to go into the genetic makeup of the corn and turn it into something els entirely, thus humans have taken control of nature in another way. once you get to this point you can create nearly any food you can imagine. and you can replace all those real things in the supermarkets with corn synthesized to taste like the food you think your eating, thus saving corporations money because of the over abundance of corn in america. 

HW 5 - Dominant Discourses Regarding Contemporary Foodways in the U.S.

            Everyone’s talking about it. Food is being discussed everywhere, all over the TV, the newspaper, on the radio, and Internet, even the subway! Everyone seems to think we need to start eating healthier and, well those people who don’t aren’t really out there screaming in the streets about how we should eat more junk and food from hell! No there sitting behind their huge lavish desks and smoking cigars and scheming, scheming of new ways to keep their pockets fat. That is to say, I think the dominant discourse on food is that Americans need to start eating healthier.

            So great, we’ve got all theses PHDs and doctors and all sorts of other people telling us we need to eat healthy. And still McDonalds is making a fortune! Now I wonder why that is…  Because Bush screwed out economy to hell and everyone is broke! And since everyone is broke everyone can’t afford the healthy food, they have to buy the cheapest one and be thankful just to have food. This is the majority of America; and their not going to go without just to eat healthy. Then again, those people also probably don’t have healthcare and when they get sick from all they junk they eat, they’ll probably die. 

The problem there goes way deeper into the government than Bush, much deeper. It goes way back. How did we even get here?  Why did out government turn on us? When did they stop worrying about the people and start obsessing with their wallets? Was there ever a change? Or is that how America was founded, on greed? Pretty much, yes. Columbus was greedy; he stole the land and murdered, raped, and enslaved the natives to build America.  And he gets a national holiday! So now we see how we got here, we were always here. The American government has generally always been greedy, steeling from even its own people to be rich, to get the American dream.

But I digress, more on the topic of food, not only our government her in America is greedy but so is out mindset. And because everyone eats food, of course Americans found a way to exploit that to get rich. Cause that’s what America does. So now we have bad eating habits and bad food production, a broke majority, and all the rich people telling everyone they need to eat healthy. Meanwhile if they do get sick cause of the food they probably don’t stand a chance because no one will pay for their treatment, certainly not the government, who seems to be the cause of all the problems from the very start!

I realize this went sort of off topic, but it is on topic, cause it’s all related. It’s all stemming from the same seed. America’s greed. And it doesn’t look like its going to get better any time soon. In short, were screwed. 

HW4: My families foodways

            My Grandparents were raised during the Great Depression when food was scarce and anything was welcome, so their eating habits probably were inconsistent and limited. When my mother was a child, my Grandpa had made a ton in the stock market and he was a successful Broadway accountant, so they lived well, I’m sure my mom never went hungry as a child.  My Grandma mostly cooked Jewish/Russian foods, seeing as her mother had come on the boat from Russia, and that’s what my mother was raised eating.  I don’t know if other people in America were really eating unhealthy yet at that point but my mom wasn’t because she was only served home cooked, family recipes.

            That healthy eating as a child is probably why my mom raised me and my sister to eat fairly healthy. I remember ordering out a lot not so much home cooked, but I do remember not being allowed to eat junk foods and really unhealthy things. When we got older and would go places with out or mom we would eat all the junk we could, but the habit of good eating was already instilled in us. As a preteen/ teenager going to lunch around SOF and having a limited amount of money I ate a lot of pizza, not the healthiest stuff, but not fast food.

            My Great-grandma and my grandma and my moms eating habits defiantly influenced mine. I seems that people who were raised on eating what ever they could get and not what was healthy would continue that habit, since I was raised to be healthy, probably because I am still close to mu fully Russian ancestors, who raised my Grandma, who raised my mom, who raised me, so the less American way of eating is still in play.  

            Presently, I would rather eat something organic and healthy than any thing else. Especially knowing now where all the food we get comes from, all those hellish “farms” and slaughterhouses. But we cant even know for sure if what were eating isn’t from one of those places. We can’t know how much pesticides were sprayed on our foods, or just how much genetically modifying is really going on. It makes me want to just stop eating! But of course that would be counter productive…

My Fridge

HW3: Green Market Vs. McDonalds

Today talking to people in both McDonalds and the Union square green market I got some more insight into what I had already believed. Upon walking into McDonalds the atmosphere is one of greasy food, hurried eating and slightly off smelling people…everything on the menu is hundreds of calories. When we approached people to ask them some questions one gave us a rather nasty attitude and the other said it was convenient, that’s why the ate there. Just as I had suspected. Also these people didn’t look like the wealthiest of people, dressed in slightly dirty old clothes and not looking cleanly groomed. In union square you get a lot of homeless people, junkies, kids and teens, and as someone who had spent a lot of time in both union square as a whole and in that McDonalds, those are the people you see most often in that McDonalds. They go there because they can afford it, its right there, and to taste buds that haven’t had a lot of organic food it tastes good.

The people we saw in the farmers market were just the opposite. They were all mostly friendly and gladly answered our questions. Generally, again based on my previous experiences in Union Square, the people I described in the previous paragraph avoid the green market going around the square to avoid the crowds. The people who were and usually are shopping there are more well dressed, groomed, and grown than those who go to McDonalds and this probably has to do with why they are there buying organic food instead of that fake junk. In the grand scheme of most people income the green market is probably affordable, but to the many people who don’t have money it is an unattainable option.

If healthy food was offered at affordable prices to everyone, even those homeless junkies and kids could eat healthy with out emptying their pockets. This would not only probably lead to healthier homeless people and I in turn less un acknowledged deaths on New York’s mean streets, but also a healthier generation of children and in turn and healthier future.

When you go other countries you can taste the difference between the American foods.  In France even the McDonalds tastes healthier. Less fatty and greasy and salty and sugary. Even McDonalds! It really makes me wonder why they are poisoning America? And I quickly find the answer. It’s these capitalists. But do they not realize, that all that money will mean nothing if society should die! If they continue to force this poison upon us to fill up their pockets and garages and closets. How come a 17-year-old girl and figure that out and these supposed leaders cant?

HW2- FOOD

            It’s an interesting affair, today’s food industry. Here in America you see people mostly eating fast foods and various other unhealthy things. Most people would say they eat that because its what they can afford. My whole like my mother has struggled to keep the food in the house organic but nowadays you don’t really know what you’re getting. You never really know if this chicken grew up on a farm or if it was raised in a dark warehouse crowded by way too many other chickens in unhealthy conditions surviving off hormones and antibiotics. I think it’s usually the former. It utterly disgusts me. I like eating meat, I was a vegetarian for two years and I got tired of it, but when I think about where this stuff im eating is coming from I want to give up meat again.

            It also really bothers me that it’s not even really and option in this country, to have clean healthy 100% organic foods, no GMO’s and antibiotic raised cows. If you want to eat healthy which probably isn’t really healthy at all you’ve got to spend a ton of money, which brings me back to my first point. Most people go for those fast foods and disgusting options because that’s what’s readily available to them so its what they eat. That disgusts me even more, on top of all the things America isn’t doing for its people (who aren’t rich white men that is) Americas people are not being provided with acceptably healthy foods.

            I will admit that I am not the healthiest person, but I do try to eat healthy and I personally think organic food tastes millions of times better than the fake steroid stuff. This summer I was on a friends 100% organic farm. We walked out into the field as the sun blazed on our shoulders, I put my hand over my eyes to block it and squinted to the other end of the field where we were headed. It seemed like miles in that heat. We walked along the rows passing eggplants and cucumbers and all sorts of delicious smells and sights. We came to our destination finally, drenched in sweat and utterly parched, at the melon patch. We walked up the rows scanning the leaves for a big green pill-shaped watermelon. We found the perfect one that even looked juicy and was hot from the sun. Impatient to eat it we set off in search of a knife, back through the field to the house. Before we had so much as cleared a foot outside the field the melon fell, breaking in two. It looked so juicy and ripe and red and delicious that we didn’t even stop to think before sinking in out teeth right then and there and devouring the whole watermelon as the juice dripped all over us and quenched us of out heat and thirst. I think that was one of the most delicious things ive ever eaten. Except maybe some home cooked gourmet French food, but everything’s delicious there.

I guess it partially comes from living in a city but I’m sure most people in America still eat that unhealthy GMO crap and fast food, unless they live on or around a farm or in the middle of no where. I just really wish that there was that good farm stuff available everywhere. I hate that for most people in America that good stuff just isn’t even an option…