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.