IFS Paper

“Good afternoon, welcome to Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins, how may I take your order?” “Yea, can I get a sausage egg and cheese combo, with an extra large coffee, light on the half and half with about 5 sugars, and also throw in a chocolate sprinkled donut as well.” “Would you like any then else with that sir, maybe one of our new freshly made cookies or biscuits?” “Hmm… no it’s okay, maybe next time though.” “No problem, well here is your order sir, and you have a nice day.”
Day after day, shifts after shifts, I repeat these opening words to brand new customers, some of which are locals, which I know their order like I know the back of my hand. What really surprises me every single day, is how can people eat these kind of food knowing the facts that they know, from commercials, to doctor visits. How can anyone, eat a sandwich, which its eggs are processed and freeze dried ready to warm up and serve? The meat patties which are combinations of different animal intestines, and probably the only thing that is not genetically modified - the cheese. As I watch people order the same thing every single day, injecting a large amount of sugar and calories into their body, I can’t help to question, is this why a large amount of people in the US are obese, and even though people are trying to change their eating habits, is this why it never works?
The Industrial Food System – IFS is based upon machinery allowing them to produce a large amount of their products thus leading to mass production. The IFS is also based on machinery where the products comes into no human contact, everything is done by machines. According to Martin Heidegger, he states that: “Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.” When I read that I felt that Heidegger was trying to get across the fact that the way we produce our food is like a natural disaster. Not only is mass production going to be Earth’s downfall I started thinking about Peak Oil and how that is going to affect our future. I start thinking about how almost everything we do in our life, getting our groceries for our dinner, going to the movies, exporting and importing foods, all depends on oil and the industrial life. However as we keep on using up the oil that is limited in our life, pretty soon we are going to use it all up and then most people are not going to know what to do then because they are so wrapped around the idea of allowing machine to do manual labor.
Michael Pollen states: “Very much like a pre-modern city, however, teeming and filthy and stinking, with open sewers, unpaved roads, and choking air rendered visible by dust” In this quote Michael Pollen is describing a feedlot. A feedlot is an environment that is very uncomfortable and very filthy where animals live. Feedlots are designed to be huge, however they use up as much room as possible therefore stuffing animals tightly together as possible. The conditions that animals endure in feedlots are terrifying compared to animals raised on a farm. Not only are the living quarters horrible for the animals but the way they are killed are even more gruesome. Based on a movie called “Daily Bread” cows are literally dazed first with an electric gun, and then they are lifted and transported ready to be killed and washed. However according to the movie, the people who kill and clean the cows, are mostly illegal immigrants therefore they do not have the necessary training to properly kill and clean an animal so therefore some of its excrement drip onto the conveyor belt where other animals are being transported. And that is literally how people are eating “shit” in their food.
I guess all in all not many if not all people do not know the process in which their food is being prepared and what exactly is on their plate. The people who eat at fast food restaurants constantly might actually be eating “shit” or maybe spit… who knows. I know that it is almost entirely impossible to convince everyone to stop eating fast food based on the information I picked up, but it is always worth a shot to convince most people if not all. And who knows, maybe if one person is convinced, that person can convince others, thus leading to others, and maybe someday, everybody!