Corporate Influence Over the Food We Eat

Possible topics for third writting assignment:

-Profits v. Public Safety

- Obesity Rise dut to Corporate InfluenceProfits v. public safety

-food pyramid has changed; geared towards industrial gains. Omitting what we should eat ‘occationally’ from the food pyramid and replacing it with more consumer responsibility.

- Government did not fund for the new nutritional guidelines- big industries did:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0506-24.htm

The food industry. McDonald�s, General Mills, Philip Morris/Altria�s Kraft Foods, and other food titans barely waited for the ink to dry on the new guidelines before volunteering their own PR machines to �raise awareness.� The Grocery Manufacturers of America�with members like Cargill and Philip Morris/Altria�also jumped in, offering to distribute posters and guides to reach 4 million kids. America�s obesity epidemic is now the nation�s second leading cause of preventable deaths.

-Food Globalization
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/8/0/3/9/p180397_index.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=decline+in+nutrition%2C+food+globalization&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25a/007.html

http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/wimberley/Global-Food/foodglobal.pdf

How does globalization affect us as Americans? How does globalization affect
the food we eat, the communities where we live, and our quality of life?

-BSE-infected meat and hazardous chemicals are creating new health threats for consumers even in affluent countries.
- It is increasing chemical use, through conventional methods as well as genetic engineering. It is increasing transport and 'food miles', and fuelling food insecurity through climate change. It is promoting the mining of water and soil fertility by putting profitability above sustainability. It is giving primacy to trade and undermining domestic production.

- While the globalization of the food and agricultural systems has produced some benefits, such as increased varieties of foods available to consumers and new markets for producers, there are also concerns about the impacts of this ?food globalization?, including the effects that it has on local farmer livelihoods, the environment, food safety, and consumer sovereignty.

-The products we buy are not meeting health standards.
-Overuse of land leads to decreased nutrition in food.

How does corporate influence over the food industry affect our health? our diets?

Are the foods we eat less nutritious because of corporate controll over agriculture?

Taking a Handle on Corporation Influence

I found chapter five "Corporations Unlimited" the most satisfying chapter to read, but only in addition to reading chapter six "Reckoning". Joel Bakan's style of writing is insightful and compelling. Initially I felt bogged down by the repetitive support of what a corporation is and what it does. However this outlook changed once I started to read chapter five.

"Corporations Unlimited" is a telling title and fits. There is no limit as what influence a corporation may have. The youth being chained by the influence of corporate greed is inferiorating. Health and mental development of children are at risk as corporations rake in the superficial cash flow of a sensitive child's wants. Children need time to develop properly with nutritious food, quality education, creative outlets, and positively imaginative inputs. Children are the next generations to understand the basis of the corporations, and when society turns corrupt children must not submit but realize and create a new applicable way to survive.

Discouraging as the subject matter was of how far a corporation will go to obtain profit, I found a sense of responsibility and connection with the rest of society. We are all going through this together, being subjected to the hand of the market. Yet, it would be crazy to think one will submit to the destruction of a corporate physcopath. This really is a life or death situation, where to be controlled by something we've created: the Corporation, is absurdity. There is certainly a possible to devise a method of living that adequately conjoins us to our economy while maintaining basic human rights.

Fortune in the Hands of the People

"By the end of the nineteenth century... courts had fully transformed the corporation into a "person," with its own identity. The logic was that, conceived as natural entities analogous to human beings, corporations should be created as free individuals" (pp. 16). This entry in "The Corporation" is peculiar in that what is highlighted throughout the reading so far is how "evil" a corporation is. How the corporation brings out the blood-hounding, conniving, wicked qualities of humans. The real question then is: why? Why does the corporation embody a savage character yet is thought to be representative of human logic?

I agree with the courts in that the corporation should be treated as a "person". The corporation is built up from human needs, and thus need to abide by like laws. However, somewhere in the shuffle the corporation has evolved into a whiteboard; an outlet for the combined forces of human greed. The corporation has developed into a power greater than it's parts combined, which is why it needs to be treated and tried as an individual. With the outcome of people working for it leading to a new more powerful being, there needs to be a leash on this pit-bull.

The corporation without bounds is wild in character. "The corporation is irresponsible... Corporations try to 'manipulate everything, including public opinion,' and they are grandiose, always insisting 'that we're number one, we're the best" (pp 57). The corporation is having too much fun. Fed power through money, the corporation manipulates all peoples under it who lust for this fortune. The hierarchy pyramid needs to be knocked down and the pieces placed back into the humble hands of the constitute parts; the real individuals: the people.

Creative Reality

I find it ironic how the root of the "creative class" is anything but a standardized class, yet the popularity of such creative thinking has perpetrated this way of thinking into the mainstream system of classification. I appreciate how the social system has turned to value creative thinking. Indulgence in mental endeavour is no longer expressed a self-fulfilling leisure activity, but rather a cultivating method of production.

Twenty to thirty years ago, challenging the mental and contemplating ideas was not valued for the everyday individual. This line of work was left for the select few, the novelist and the intellectually accomplished. Now time has changed where such creative, outside the box thinking is encourage. Ideas that spring from creative thoughts are intertwined into our economy. People look towards products, systems, methods, and ideas that are appealing to their mental gratification. With more people finding pleasure in stimulating the brain, there are more areas of work directed precisely towards meeting these mental pursuits. This is an ongoing cycle of supply and demand.

Our society has the opportunity to expand knowledge and embrace change. No longer are we bound down by obtaining our next meal, or finding shelter. Our fundamental needs are met. Seeking new horizons is no longer exploration of the physical land, but perception of a new reality.

Generating Time; Impossible

Our brains are this gift that set us apart from other species. Yet, much like the workings of technology, when abused can produce negative effects. The brain functions much like a computer with electrical signaling of inputs and outputs. In this day and age, we are constantly receiving stimuli and commutating responses via our own technological wiring; the CNS and PNS. The hard drive is our physical components, and the software is our mental processes. The problem with this analogy is that we are not computers, we are humans! However, we have embraced the technological efficiencies and attempt to apply them to our most humanely interactions.

In the reading, "High-Tech Stress" Rifkin points out that humans function on "myriad biological clocks that have been entrained, through the long period of evolution, to the rhythms and rotation of the earth". Computers do not follow this time manner; "today's computer culture operates on a nanosecond time gradient". Nonetheless, we struggle against the machine to be compatible with this high-tech speed. It is impossible! But this is how to get "close to the machine", to be lost in a transcendence of time. Computers defy time by taking functions beyond their manual limitations. Where humans once employed manual labor, they now work to mentally control the workings of the computer.

The negative effects that come with humans trying to match the capabilities of computers lie within our terminating condition. We are not indestructible. Human beings need compliance with our biological functions. We run on a much more intrinsic, natural pattern that computer manipulations cannot mimic. Yes the implications and advancement of the technological era can certainly benefit humans. But to engulf the entirety of the human connection to past present and future and functionalize this to a desired, set time clock is abuse. It abuses humans by generating time from time itself. This time is our time, neither created nor destroyed in essence. So to push "transcended time" by ways of computers onto humans is like pouring more water into a glass than it can hold. Mentally you can envision this, but by all physical rules this cannot be. Nor can humans continuously work on a time frame set by computers.

The Acting Role of a Server

While reading "On the Front Lines of the Service Sector" I found the writing relatable. Many of the insert stories of actual service workers hit the point in describing how it feels to work an "unvalued" job. However, these jobs are necessary for the "big shots" to enjoy the comforts of either being a head employer, or receiving such service work. Working an easily replaceable job does make you feel insecure and dampers your self-worth. On top of these negative feelings, a service worker is still expected to work at top speed meeting company efficiency goals. It feels like the company is sucking you for all you're worth to increase gains. Such a demand results in high stress.

I think this writing does justice to the saying; "walk a mile in another man's shoes". Many people who have never worked in a restaurant setting expect the service to be promptly superb. The trouble with providing such a service is when there is more customers than workers to supply this service. Usually it is impossible to be at each customers beck and call when there are multiple customers. Yet to be at the customers side should they need something is what is demanded. There is a job list on top of serving tables that the customers do not see. Behind the shinny presentation there is a grimmy, hard, hectic job. The smile that the customer sees is not necessarily how the server actually feels. It is an acting job when serving table; one minute you have to smile and greet your table politely but the next minute work in elbow to elbow, pushy conditions with your c0-workers who are usually impolite and uptight. Through all this it is necessary to keep your composure, otherwise you are replaced.

And who replaces you? The boss, who usually can not perform the work of his/her employees at the pace required. Often times in a restaurant setting there is a flow that develops between the co-workers that helps each worker to juggle their many tasks. When the manager steps in, the flow is disrupted. Workers are knocked off of their routines and forced to work under even higher stress.

What is most disturbing about working a service job, like restaurant work, is not feeling like all of your hard work truly amounts to anything substantial. As in the insert, a grocery -bagger says "you're always just providing a service, the same service over and over again...nothing ever ends or begins". Without an ending to the service work there is no conformation of success, or gratitude of reaching a goal.

Technology Thinks No Black or White

African Americans have been closed off to the notion of technology as their break from confinement. The technological world was kept secret from them. Technological advances seem to touch second base, but for African Americans the strife was to get in the game. The whole idea behind technological advancements is to reach farther more efficiently. This efficiency component often throws out the human physical aspect of hard labor and appeals to the mental instead.

Now, African Americans, before the civil war, were looking for the privilege of "freedom", where as Europeans claimed this "freedom". The most basic of human needs were already met for Europeans; their physical freedom. Physically they had the freedom to obtain food, water, clothing and shelter. This laid the foundation so that Europeans may focus on expanding towards mental endeavors. On the other hand, African Americans were in the dark to this type of mental exploration, for they "needed" to secure their physical existence first.

I think African Americans value physical achievement more so than European whites, or of the like, because of this deeply imbedded drive to own their physical rights. Physical pursuits instead of mental ones, fundamental reassure people of the African American culture, thus providing yet another basic need; safety. If African Americans can feel safe and secure while taking on physical tasks, then it's no wonder they have not fully grasped the appeal of technology.

It is only a matter of time, however, for African Americans to feel fully safe in their environment. Once the time of the past is matched by the healing of the present, African Americans will be able to build mentally and technologically at the same rate as European whites, for the laws of the technological world defy the laws of the physical world. They only need be understood, and applied, there is no color discriminate.