Final:Past, Present and future of food.

Isabella Soteldo

Final: Discuss past and present of food. Predict future of food. Reference class notes.


Food is one of the most essential needs humans need to survive. As long as people, animals or plants that need it exist, food is always going to be there. From cave men hunting gathered, to natives hunting gathering as well, to the machines that the industrial food system works with, humans have always tried to get food for survival, or in our case now, just for money or obesity.
The men or women that we know were the first at “collecting” food were cave men by hunting their prey, then as humans developed we have improved our ways on hunting or gathering food in a way that allows us to get more food in a faster way, not minding the consequences. Of course as our technology advances the way we gather food gets even more productive; faster, uses more and more oil. Even though, oil is useful and it is helpful to make food, it does help us in a big way. But when did consuming oil become such a big deal, and when did it become a “crisis” that people talk about? It all started in the Green Revolution.
The Green Revolution is a term used to describe the transformation of agriculture in many developing nations that led to significant increases in agricultural production between the 1940s and 1960s. The Green Revolution introduced many new aspects to industrial agriculture such as : pesticides, irrigation projects, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer which are used now a day and are also used with the help of oil.In fact, an article by Danielle Murray “Oil and Food” states “ World fertilizer use has increased dramatically since the 1950’s. China is now the top consumer with use rising beyond 40 million tons in 2004”. With the Green Revolution every statistic went up, including the one that says when we will run out of oil. Since then, oil has been a major need in the Industrial Food System.
Every time we eat we are eating oil. According to Danielle Murray the following is the percent of oil used in food production, 21 percent of overal food system energy is used in agricultural production, another 14 goes to food transport, 16 percent to processing, 7 percent to packaging, 4 percent to food retailing, 7 percents to restaurants and caterers, and 32 percent to home refrigeration and preparation.
Right now specially in the United States people are suffering from obesity because of food and how we eat, Michael Pollan said “You are what you grow” and I think that that best describes the relationship our society has right now with food. In Michael Pollan’s article “The way we live now” he states that the most reliable predictor of obesity in the United States today is a person’s wealth. For example there was an experiment conducted by Drewnowski; a researcher in Washington University, that if you go to a supermarket with a dollar, you can buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips, but only 250 calories of carrots.
In the present food has helped and killed our society in many ways, it has always been there ever since the beginning, the only thing that has changed about it is how we grow it, make it, trnsport it and cook it. Also, since there have been many “useless” foods created, such as gummy bears, cookies or any others that are harmful to our health and does not provide us with anything else but pleasure and gluttony.
The way I think food is going to be in our fututre is in either one way or another. The first way, is that people will become aware of how the industrial food system and how people are consuming food affects our environment and that this way of living might not be sustainalbe for our future, in fact there might not even be one. The second way is since a lot of humans specially in this society are very ignorant of what is going on around them and are unaware of anything that is is going on, even though some might be aware but not really care, their ignorance will drive them to a point where is too late to make any changes and when they can not really do anything much about the problem. At that point I feel like the only way to survive is to open their minds and think, but if not there really isn’t another alterantive. Food will end, because humans will end.
In conclusion, Food has always been there ever since the beginning of time, it is still here and hopefully it will be here in the future. The way it has been made, transported and consumed has changed a lot, it has also affected our environment in many ways, and if we really want our food to always be here, there has to be a change about how our society and the Industrial food system does things.