Good Eats [Big Paper]

Countless times have I said, “Yo I’m hungry. I want something to eat.” I sought for food whenever my body felt weary, because of its calories and its ability to rejuvenate its consumer. And it would not be foolish to assume that most of America does the same. Rarely, do we view food as something pleasurable, rather than something necessary for survival; both of which are true. This alienation of Americans and the food we eat, I would say, is the result of our disconnection with nature. Our view of the world around us is directly correlated with our food-ways and our view of our foods.

“Ask one of those eaters where their steak or soda comes from and she’ll tell you ‘the supermarket’”(Pollan, 34-35). As depicted by this quote from The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Americans go around not knowing, nor wondering where our foods come from. Whenever we think of the place to get food, we simply think of a supermarket. In America, the vast majority does not gather their own food from the Earth. Instead, we exchange green pieces of paper for the sources of energy for our bodies that represent an “equivalent value.” We do not wish to understand how exactly nature provides these resources nor understand the process that the food went through to be placed in our refrigerators. We do not wish to grow our own foods from the Earth nor make the effort to create something meaningful within our foods. That is because, as Jared Diamond says, “We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat.” Americans do not work with nature for their foods, and therefore do not appreciate food as much.

Being that we get our foods from the supermarket, our foods come from corporations through mass productions of each particular food. And of course, being that corporations are corporations, their ultimate goal is maximized profit. Our food has been industrialized for the convenience of the people and the pockets of the big businessmen. Within any industry, “profit is the name of the game,” as said in the Meatrix. And to the food industry, nature is just what produces the pieces necessary to win this game. In order to maximize their profits, any industry feels it is necessary to take advantage their access to nature. Thus technology, such as GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) , are used. In the case of corn production, having a “higher yield” is the goal of using technology. "The higher yield of modern hybrids stems mainly from the fact that they can be planted so close together, thirty thousand to the acre instead of eight thousand in his father's days" (Pollan, 37). By having a higher yield, the farmer is able to take advantage of the land that he has, and is able to maximizing his profit off of something other than himself.It allows the mass productions of different foods and the exhaustion of any resource the Earth provides to each individual farm. The perspective of the “producers” of our foods on the Earth we live on is that it is a source of wealth. And to the farmers, food would to be nothing more than their income.

Within America, there has always been an artificial separation between “humans” and “animals.” This separation causes the alienation of humans from nature, which will lead to the alienation of humans from their food. Between humans and animals, humans particularly the ones found on the land labelled as America views themselves as the more superior. According to my mother, whatever beings that has its back facing the sky is meant to be eaten by humans. It has always been man versus nature.The music video for “The Cows with Guns,” depicts this exact differentiation. We do not accept the fact that we are part of nature, and are animals as well. By neglecting this fact, we neglect our animalistic instincts to hunt and gather. Instead, we turn to what Jared Diamond calls, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” agriculture. Just as we have domesticated crops and animals, humans have also taken control of nature itself for the mass-production of various commodities. And as we all know, this mass production ultimately leads to the packaged-foods which we, the people purchase and use to rejuvenate our bodies, without ever wondering the whole process of how the food ended up in our stomachs. Separating ourselves from animals, we never strive to have a direct connection with nature through the foods we eat. Therefore, nature and food will always remain as another alienated aspect of life that humans will never get to truly experience.

As we continue to disregard nature, we will continue to mindlessly eat our plastic-sealed foods, never quite understanding the full pleasure of real food. As humans, we do not work with nature so that both will have a sustainable lifestyle. Humans will continue to use nature as object to gain pieces of paper that were created by nature. Our instincts as animals will continue to be neglected, as we drift further away from our ancestry. And we will continue to eat GMO’s that have been purchased in the supermarket, and inflict the downfall of both humans and nature. Meanwhile, nature will continue to be depreciated and exhausted by the beings that it surrounds. It’s whole existence will continue to be reduced down to figments, which provides a sense of “value.” The alienation between humans and nature has resulted in the alienation of our foods. However, if we were to become more intact with nature (and possibly produce our own foods), the alienation of our foods would gradually decline as well. We will begin to understand that our foodway- the consumption of food, the interpretation of food, the non-numeric value that we give our foods, the production of food- is wrong. As results that come hand-in-hand with this comprehension, humans will end animal cruelty, the Earth will possibly live past the year 2100, a greater appreciation for food will be achieved, and New Yorkers can pick food from Central Park without being pulled over by a park ranger. But for now, food will remain as how "Our Daily Bread" portrays it: a long and boring process that we go through in order to survive in both this world, and in our society.