My Relationship With Food (FINAL ESSAY)

Kyle Willett

3/16/11

ENG 151

Food In My Life

Any color. Any taste. Any smell. FOOD. Food is the one substance in this world that has constant variety. The variety of food is just one of the many reasons why I love it so much. Throughout my life, food has been very important from mashed carrots (baby food) to bagel bites in my dorm room, food is one thing that I look forward to everyday no matter what. When I first heard we were going to be learning about food in this class, I cant say I didn’t get a little bit excited. In high school, I took two cooking courses and when I arrived at Ohio University I enrolled in a nutrition class, so this English class wasn’t the first time I have seen food and school come together. Therefore, I really enjoyed that segment of class and especially enjoyed hearing Warren from Snowville Creamery come in and talk to us about the dairy industry. Warren talked about how sustainability is very important for the business and how the food business used to be very sustainable until more recent years where cooperation’s have dominated. However, it isn’t too late to switch back to the old ways of sustainable, healthy farming, with free graze livestock.

“There are no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, it's kind of a notional tomato. I mean, it's the idea of a tomato”-Michael Pollan, FOOD INC.

This quotes perfectly represents what our current food system has become, an idea of food. In today’s society, there are millions of unnatural chemicals and pesticides that our food is contaminated with and it is viewed as perfectly normal. If an American farmer from the 1800’s saw our food process today, he most likely would argue that what we produce isn’t food at all. The preservatives that are in our food today could technically be viewed as poisons. For example, earlier this year, a New York artist took named Sally Davies, bought a single McDonalds happy meal that consisted of a small plain burger and small fry, nothing else. After 6 months of leaving the ‘food’ out in the open and photographing the burger and fries everyday, there was literally no change in the food besides the feel of it. The burger became as hard as a rock and the fries followed in suite, but she said there were still a few fries that you could bite without breaking your teeth. In conclusion, I really can appreciate what Sally Davies did because what better way to show that our food is not actually food by having a hamburger rot for 6 months, but show no change. In addition, this is McDonalds were talking about! A part of every American, McDonalds is a huge part of our culture and society. Everyday, millions of Americans will indulge in the fake fries and micro waved hamburgers. We as a country can no longer sit back and watch our food be tampered with so much to the point where we wouldn’t even dare ask what is in it. In conclusion, Mike Pollen says it best when saying that our current food really isn’t food at all, but an idea of what food is suppose to be. However, there is hope for change in today’s society with movies like food inc. and motivated farmers like Warren, I truly believe America will soon rip the food power away from the large cooperation’s.

My relationship with food has been very romantic throughout my life. Food was one of the very first things I ever took interest in. I remember being the happiest little kid alive when my mom would take my brother and I to McDonalds after a dentist appointment as a little kid, or being the happiest teenager alive when my mother would cook her amazing Maui flank steak for dinner. I even cooked my own food from time to time because I took two separate food courses in high school and I very much enjoyed both of them. However, when I came to college, one of the first classes that stood out to me was food and nutrition, but this class should actually be named ‘Enzymes and confusing bi-proteins’. Although this class didn’t work out, it was still cool to see that my college was offering a course on food and it was promoting health! Which brings another subject to light, health. Health and food are almost directly related, as food is our main source of our essentials. However, I could write another three pages on how health in America is corrupt and it would become a long, complex argument. Overall, food has had a huge impact on my life and continues to impact me everyday.

In conclusion, food is everywhere in our world whether you choose to take an interest in it or not. We as human beings can literally not live without food and even if we could life without food would be terrible. Food comforts us in a way no other substance can. Food in itself is a culture and will continue to be a huge part of our culture until the day we are wiped off of this earth.