Food Inc. - 91-122, 169-177

There seems to be an interconnectedness going on within our food production and many of the issues concerning it. Food production, agriculture, the environmental effects, American mind-set are just a few of the reoccurring elements discussed in the book Food Inc. The real magnitude of the issue really takes hold most when you realize that all of the problems are linking. In the chapter titled, "The Ethanol Scam: Burning Food to Make Motor Fuel" the reader learns about how our government has created a catastrophe by supporting ethanol fuel production. The government did this because corn is cheap, it is also subsidized by the government. Corn is cheap because we have made agriculture and food production dangerously "efficient". By making our food so "cheap" we have changed the way we think about food. American consumers have become detached from their food and thus governments and companies has been able to step in and support their own capitalistic needs to make money, whether or not it is what is good in the long term. It really feels like a great, big, endless cycle.

I, as a reader, was so happy to get to the chapter titled, "Why Bother?" This chapter offers some challenges to the average mind-set. Whether or not this chapter will fully sway a person's stance is a matter of opinion. I felt that this chapter was uplifting and hopeful in trying to give reasons why the "you" and the "I" in this scenario is so very important. I suddenly want to grow a garden . . . even though the deer will eat it. It does seem to me that the severity of the situation is not equally paralleled to the solution. It ultimately comes down to saying, "what I do does not matter and that is OK. But I am going to do it anyway because it is the RIGHT thing to do". In the end the real solution to this expansive issue is a drastic change of mind-set in this country's people.