Jay McCarthy
FOOD
Initial Thoughts
Food is not just something we need. There’s a whole sociology surrounding it. People eat this and then depending on who they are, where they come from, and who they WANT to be. When we were hunter gatherers and such, we’d just kill animals and eat them. Simple as that.
Cause and effect have changed the way we eat and the way we think about what we eat and how we eat. Such as the supply and demand for beef and chicken. Population over the past few decades has grown substantially, so the demand for food is higher, which leads to the mistreatment of animals and the use of hormones and such, which then leads to the demand for organic goods and vegetables. Which will then lead to cost cutting, thus continuing the cycle of food, and the controversy surrounding it. For such a seemingly simple thing, there are a lot of problems that come with it.
Jay,
ReplyDeleteFirst two sentences were promising and punchy. The idea of eating to fit an aspirational identity starts to be fascinating.
But then you say something boringly uninformed about hunter-gatherers and the momentum breaks.
In the second paragraph you start to suggest interconnection cycles of desires and production but only sort of gesture at them. And then the last line (the 2nd most important line in most essays) strikes me as disappointingly trite.