Monday, January 18, 2010

Farmer in Chief

From reading the news article “Farmer in Chief” by Michael Pollan, I began to reflect upon my families' eating pattern. Out of my immediate family, I am the only one who cares about the type of food we eat. My parents rather spend the same amount of money on a lot of junk food, than on a minimum amount of healthy food. They put quantity over quality because they don't realize that it takes more junk food to fill them up than healthy food does. My brothers on the other hand would rather eat junk food due to its low cost, easy accessibility, and taste. Changing my families' awful eating habits is a challenge, but they are slowly warming up to the idea in hopes of losing some weight. I am also encouraging them to cook a meatless meal once a week so that we could help the environment in some way.
The idea of encouraging students to pursue farming as a career really struck out to me. Throughout history, people were influenced to leave their farms and try to get a better job in the city. In order to save our diminishing farms, we have to reverse the order now. I felt that it was a really good idea to create farming college majors so that students can have a farming career. The education is essential so that the new farmers would be able to produce the best crops. I believe that the pay should be pretty nice as well especially since it is physical labor. This would also open up plenty of job opportunities for families across America - and since the farms would be local, the produce would be fresher.
Another idea I really liked was excluding “junk food” food stamps. I feel that people don't buy healthy food because they are always concerned about the prices. If we lowered the cost for fresh fruits and vegetables, and or raised the prices of junk food, people would buy healthier things!
An interesting quote that John O'Reilly said was “Why is it that poor people in different countries are so thin, but poor people in America are over weight?” I personally believe that junk food should be very limited to the public. Everyone says that we should have the right to eat what want, anytime we want, as much as want. I feel that people abuse that sort of freedom. I believe that if we can not control our junk food intake, that we should be “fed” by a higher power. America just reminds me of a bunch of five year olds who only want to eat a lot of sugar, and we need a responsible adult to let us have some, but know when its time to stop. We can not do it on our own, for we have obviously shown that we can't. Sure it would suck if we can not have McDonalds whenever we like, but if the government limited junk food, it is for our best interest. We would lose weight, decrease our chances of heart failure and diabetes, and overall, become a healthier nation.

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