Final exam q 2

Guido Gonzalez
Food Class
Final Exam Question 2
It was once said “Food in our culture is one aspect of a larger nightmare.” There is very much truth to this statement as it describes very well the way food is involved in our lives presently. Indeed, food is part of a larger nightmare that plagues society today, and this can be seen simply through observation and investigation of our surroundings.
Our food is no longer produced on the traditional farms, as we are lead to believe. It is produced in enclosed spaces and in situations often unnatural to the organisms being made into food. To begin, it is manufactured so that any crops that are grown together are all exactly the same. Machines are used to gather and ship the crops, all of which are fueled by an unsustainable energy source. The animals are raised in small cramped spaces and fed food they are not adapted to digesting, so it begins to kill them. So they are forced to live in small spaces while slowly dying. Then when they are fattened up enough, they are killed and put through a production line where they are cut up and packaged and shipped. This process is fueled by the same energy source. The production of food has become completely industrialized. It causes more waste and harm than it does profit and nutrition. This is how “Food in our culture” is at this point.
The “larger nightmare” it would seem is mass industrialism. This system consumes vast amounts of fossil fuels, whose supply is beginning to run dry. This mass industrialism is a monster that consumes more than it produces. Eventually, it will completely deplete all the energy sources that we have become dependent on, and that will cause panic. This is a nightmare because losing the energy sources we use so much would be the end of life as we know it. We would have to re-adapt to living without many of the things this energy has brought us. Food is part of it, but the whole thing is so much bigger than just food.