Industrialized Food Model

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Recommended: Compare organic and conventional farming

Emily Cox
Ms. Leone
English 3 Honors Period 5
March 23rd, 2015
The Truth about the Industrialized Food Model National health, public safety, and worldwide wellbeing are being threatened by the current practices being used to produce the American food supply. Most Americans don’t know where their food comes from. Many are somewhat aware of the harmful practices surrounding the production of the food they consume, but are apathetic to deny a sense of personal responsibility. Among these questionable practices are the deregulation of genetically modified organisms, harmful additives, inhumane treatment of animals, and environmentally harmful agricultural practices. The for-profit, modern day model of “food efficiency” functions recklessly with …show more content…

These organisms are made in a laboratory, using a technique dubbed ‘gene splicing’ to create an advantageous organism. The process involves isolating favorable genes in other species (sometimes animals, sometimes other foods) and merging the gene with the DNA of the desired organism (Smith, 2014). The resulting organism is not found elsewhere on Earth- thus allowing corporations to patent their organisms as technology (Woolsey, 2012). The end objective of a genetically modified organism could possibly be for higher nutritional content, higher yield, or any number of reasons. However, the most common purpose for genetically modifying foods is for cheaper or more convenient production for the farmer, such as a food with a higher tolerance to insecticide or herbicide or that is more adapted to mechanical separation. As of 2014, there are no GMOs on the market intended to increase nutritional content for the consumer …show more content…

For this paper’s purpose, additives refer to any ingredient added to a food item that is not naturally occurring in the food or end food product. Many of these additives are indeed safe, but some are generally recognized as safe (the FDA’s favorite phrase) despite mounting evidence against many of them. These potentially harmful added ingredients can seep into the average person’s diet because of their legal status and deregulation. There are almost too many of these debatable ingredients to list- artificial colors, flavors, emulsifiers, preservatives, bleaching agents, among many more are commonplace in our food supply. The prevalence of these potentially harmful ingredients could also raise questions about the combined toxicity of these ingredients. Some of the most common controversial additives are trans fats, artificial sweeteners, and hormones and antibiotics in mass-farmed agricultural

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