How has the modern food industry impacted today's workforce?
The majority of grocery stores all across the world contain shelfs full of various products composed by the modern food industry. Most of the items to behold aren’t necessarily “food.” Most of these items are industrially processed. What is considered to be common household goods like crackers, cereal, cookies, even yogurt are crammed with various chemicals that will let it sit on the shelf for a long time all while containing enough salt and sugar to make it taste good. Noone in particular set out to dominate the diet of the majority of the world, it was a gradual change that began when humans became more innovative with agricultural technologies. There’s an estimated 3000 ingredients
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Food is fuel and the type of nutrients we put into our body determine our cognitive abilities. Different types of food have different scores when it comes to their individual nutritional value. Eating a processed cookie for a snack will affect the brain’s processing differently than an apple will. Everything we eat is converted by our body into glucose which provides the energy our brains need to stay alert. When running low on glucose, attention ability and perception skills are altered. Different foods are processed in various ways. Therefore, the modern food industry has impacted today’s workforce negatively by outputting processed foods into the majority of …show more content…
The accessibility to the use of these technologies and cheapness has opened the window of opportunities for industry to take over modern products. As well as technologies ability to manipulate natural processes and defeat what has already been provided by the earth. Through successful marketing and cunning techniques various types of technologies have been used for the worse, connecting this back to the ethical lense. Derek Thompson, senior editor of the Atlantic specializing in legal, political and journalism studies mentions, “The hope that machines might free us from toil has always been intertwined with the fear that they will rob us of our agency.” By including this in his article, he establishes the message that with new technology, people can lose their drive to complete hard work because of the disingenuous claims technology has made itself out to be. An economic lense perspective was found in my research as it looked at corresponding themes in how the government has been using new technology in agriculture for their own profit. Food Matters, is a documentary including multiple different types of doctors and agricultural workers and their perspective on the modern food industry. Furthermore, it examines how processed foods made in modern factories are taking away people’s health and ability to complete actions we once could with real food. Demonstrating that, “nutrition must
Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
The article highlights and includes the documentary Food, Inc. which exposes the inability of the profit system to provide safe and healthy food for the vast majority of the population. Eric Schlosser investigating journalist quotes, “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000…now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are deliberately hidden from us”. Schlosser also quotes, “Birds are now raised and slaughtered in half the time they were 50 years ago, but now they’re twice as big”. He believes they not only changed the chicken, but they changed the farmer implying that capitalism has taken the place for the need of small scale farming. In addition, Michael Pollan also a journalist believes that the vast array of choices which appears in everyday supermarkets is nothing but an “illusion of diversity”. The advancement of technology and how consumers react to products has been further developed and continues to be in this generation. Food scientists are now genetically modifying and engineering products to satisfy and manipulate consumers to desire more of these unhealthy product choices. The biggest advance in recent years has
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
Alice Waters, in her 2007 article “Farmer Bill Should Focus on Healthful Foods”, instead of focusing on the farming techniques themselves, makes a more pointed inspection over the products and produce
People all around agree that technology is changing how we think, but is it changing us for the better? Clive Thompson definitely thinks so and this book is his collection of why that is. As an avid fiction reader I wasn’t sure this book would captivate me, but the 352 pages seemingly flew past me. The book is a whirlwind of interesting ideas, captivating people, and fascinating thoughts on how technology is changing how we work and think.
Food Inc. is a documentary displaying the United States food industry in a negative light by revealing the inhumane, eye opening, worst case scenario processes of commercial farming for large corporate food manufacturing companies. Food Inc. discusses, at length, the changes that society and the audience at home can make to their grocery shopping habits to enable a more sustainable future for all involved.
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
Today’s world is full of robots that vacuum the floor and cars that talk to their drivers. People can ask their phones to send a text or play a song and a cheerful voice will oblige. Machines are taking over more and more tasks that are traditionally left to people, such as cleaning, navigating, and even scheduling meetings. In a world where technology is becoming increasingly human, questions arise about whether machines will eventually replace humankind altogether. In Ray Bradbury’s short stories, “The Veldt” and “August 2026,” he presents themes that technology will not only further replace the jobs of humans, but it will also outlast humankind as a whole. Although this is a plausible future, computers just cannot do certain human jobs.
In summary, both the article and the novel critique the public’s reliance on technology. This topic is relevant today because Feed because it may be how frightening the future society may look like.
Sandler, Ronald L. Ethics and Emerging Technologies. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2013. Print.
In the short story, “The Machine Stops”, E.M. Forster issues a warning to mankind about our growing dependence on technology. However, this message is mostly misguided because the future he predicts is extreme and unlikely given the current conditions in the world. The setting Forster depicts, where humans have lost core characteristics, is unrealistic, and as a result, the problems that arise are irrelevant to today’s society. Ever since the dawn of our existence, humans have sought to better their condition.
In The Matrix, technology dominates society. The push to automate and link the world is a perpetual theme of modern society. As technology rapidly advances, implementation of computer-driven robotic devices and software programming has inundated the world and changed human perspective. There is a cost to pay when redefining the population with AI technology. This cost is identified in Barlett and Byer’s, “Back To The Future: The Humanistic Matrix” “The Matrix metaphorizes our willingness to fantasize that the ‘freedom’ rhetoric of e-capitalism accurately reflects our
And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper in quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the procedures of the instantaneous food system are left unchanged due to the obliviousness of the consumers and the dollar signs in the eyes of the government and big business. The problem begins with the mistreatment and exploitation of farmers. Farmers are essentially the backbone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production (CSS statistics).
According to John Horvat, an author in The Wall Street Journal, " The proper use of technology is that it should be a means to serve us and make our lives easier. A key requirement is that we should be in control." Although, the problem with today`s society, is that we are not in control. Instead of technology serving us, it is now the other way around. Society has been more dependent on its technology in recent years, than it has ever been in the past. Those who are against the up rise of the technology industries, believe that technology has taken away ...