How planting your own food makes better food and a better you

"Eat well-grown food from healthy soil." -Michael Pollan Food Rules

Planter Boxes at University of New Mexico's Lobo Gardens

The food cultivation process in America has drastically changed in the last few decades. Preservatives and hormones are regular additives to our produce and animal products and we are straying further and further away from the traditionalist view of farming. Below I wrote an essay analyzing the current food industry based on the film Food Inc and how we need to reshape this process to fit a more traditionalist view of farming and food cultivation through the observation of Netflix's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

An essay on the current food industry in America:

The food industry has become one of the most profitable industries in our modern economy, however the food industry has also become one of the most unethical industries and the practices involved in it are a detriment our bodies’ health. Food Inc explores how the process of food cultivation and creation has changed for the worst in recent years and it also exposes unethical practices within the food industry. The contrast to this modern plight is the ways in which more traditional cultures approach food. This is seen in the Netflix original Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, where a chef from Iran explores another culture’s food and she get the opportunity to experience a more traditional way of food cultivation and consumption. The stark contrast between the two brings light to how we currently can change our habits regarding our food.

Food Inc presented three main criticisms of our modern food industry. These three criticisms were: the over production of meat, modifying corn to use as feed for animals or to splice into processed food, and the issue of misleading advertisement. The movie painted a picture of the process of how the food production industry works in our modern society. It is an extreme case of skewed supply and demand. When there is not enough supply to meet the demand of food, farmers had to take short cuts in order to meet this demand. This meant modifying the animals so that they would be turned out faster and also bigger. This means that the demand for more meat that was being made by restaurant chains and the consumer in general, was being met but it was at the cost of the health of the animals and of us. Even though the issues are prevalent with this method of production that we are adhering to, we continue doing because of the false advertising that used on these modified food products.

This false advertising would include food with misleading nutrition labels, images that promote natural healthy ideas that are adhered to a food product riddled with chemicals, and commercials that mislead the consumer into thinking they are eating the best version of food that they can get. This issues that the industry is facing are strictly feeding into economic benefit.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat was a stark contrast to the criticism that was Food Inc. This documentary focused on Mexican eating culture, specifically in the Yucatan, and it explained the traditions they have in the ingredients they use and how they put them into their food. This showed a completely different process to the factory production and un-ethical practices shown in Food Inc. In Mexican culture the grow their own fresh peppers and tomatoes to put into salsa and corn to make, by hand, into corn tortillas that they use for their tacos and many other dishes. The image of the woman going to the community mill to grind her corn by hand to make into tortillas was very different from the image of hundreds of chickens crowded together in Food Inc. The comparison of these two shows how far American culture has strayed from the traditional way of cultivating food. Even looking at The Good Life and how they created their food by hand and it was made carefully and nutritiously, grown from food within their own community. The people in The Good Life and the community in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat were proud of the food they made, and they were happy eating it and sharing it with their family and friends. We need to reevaluate our role in the food industry and be conscious of what we are buying and what market we are feeding into. If we do this, we can make strides towards a way of cooking and cultivation that has life in it.