Food Glorious Food: Food, Foodies, Farmers Market and Handmade Food Renaissance

One kind of food that has been part of my diet is beef.  Ever since I have been born, I do not remember a long period of time in which beef was not present as one of my meals.  Beef shows up in my diet by that McDonald’s Big Mac that is so delicious to that great eight ounce steak from Outback Steak House.  The presentation of beef is evident and the list of where I eat it can go on and on.  As I live my life and eat this beef continuously all my life, I do not recall a time where I stopped and thought of where the food I was eating came from.  All I know is that it comes from a cow from a farm where it was then brought to a slaughter house where it was killed and processed to be bought by consumers which would lead to our plates.

This absent minded of thinking while eating the meat present in my diet all changed when the movie of King Corn was presented in class.  As I stated before, I just thought the simple process of going from farms to processors to my plate is how meat is transferred, but there is more than that.  I now saw the treatment of animals before being processed.   This movie showed how corn plays a large role in the beef that I eat all the time.  As the food industry grew, the idea of grass feeding cows has almost become a myth and was not done much from producers.  An easier process with faster results has come upon the feeding and the treatment of cows.  The cows have started being fed corn which allows the cows to become bigger in less time.  Corn became the main protein for cows.  The feeding of corn to cows instead of grass lowers the cost because of the abundance of cow meat present.  With the great positive of lowering meat cost, there is a downfall in the quality of the meat.  A corn fed cow has much more fat than a grass fed cow rendering it less healthy, containing less protein, and less flavor of the original meat.  King Corn shows how much of our meat is made up of corn so much of my diet is full of corn.

The movie King Corn allows me to think before what is being put into my mouth.  Now I know that my diet is mostly based on corn products which caused me to cut down on my meat intake.  Knowing that my meat is less healthy and fattier is a wake up call for me because that is a sign in which I should change up my diet with various other food which may not just be meat.  This is a wake up call for me, but it also brings upon other important questions such as how would we select food now that we know what is going into the food that we eat or how would we improve the food that we eat now that we know how unhealthy it may be.