Whats wrong with school lunches - Essay Example

Part The main parts of Ann Cooper talk en d "Whats wrong with school lunches” was the dramatic changes on how foods changed into schools on thats unhealthy. The government particularly USDA is allowing it. Big business is the biggest culprit of this change where we now live in a country where most of us dont decide on what we eat. It is big businesses such as Monsanto and DuPont who now control much of whats in our grocery stores, much of what people eat. And thats really, really a problem.

Organic food that we should eat particularly children is now not affordable in school districts and the children are induced to eat chemical ridden foods that make them sick because of what is fed on them. The situation has gone so bad that children born in the year 2000 are now likely to have diabetes in their lifetime. It would be one out of every three Caucasians, one out of every two African-Americans and Hispanics. And unless we change the way we feed our children, this will just get worst.

The stakeholders in this issue are everybody and not just children and parents. The other issue brought up in this talk is the big money spent by big business and USDA to promote unhealthy foods which could have been channeled to growing healthy foods.Part 2 Anne Cooper’s talk is very much related to the documentary of James Brewer “Food Inc”. They have the same format of being shown in video and almost have the same argument except that Food Inc. included everybody in the equation and not just children.

It talked about the shift in America’s eating habit and the way it is produced by big business is more disturbing that we think. The food that is now presented to us by big business is not produced the way that they are presented to us and borrowing from Kenner’s words “US does not jibe with the pastoral imagery often depicted on the packaging, but rather involves giant firms operating huge factories with brutal conditions” (Brewer, 2010). These brutal conditions meant that food are no longer grown the way they were but became industrialize that it can be likened to a factory.

It was detailed in the Food Inc. documentary that chickens never saw daylight in their lifetime where cows are fed with corn and antibiotics standing all day in a cake of manure. The advent of this unhealthy food can be traced back to the idea of selling foods that are cheap, convenient and tasty to respond to the customer’s preference of a delicious and cheap food albeit unhealthy. This materialized when McDonald brothers had a very successful drive-in restaurant and decided to cut cost and simplify.

They fired all their carshops and got rid of the things on the menu and mechanized the entire food preparation. This basically brought the factory in the restaurant kitchen and revolutionized how to run a restaurant. This proved to be a huge success that it inadvertently altered how and what we eat. The industry in raising beef was also changed. Compared to the 1970s where the top five beef packers controlled only some 25 percent of the market, the market now is monopolized because the top five beef packers controlled more than 80 percent of the market which could already qualify as a monopoly that contributed further to the deterioration of the food that we eat.

Food Inc’s argument was almost the same with Ann Cooper’s “What’s wrong with school lunches” because both talked about how our food is changed and this change is not necessarily healthy and that unless we revert back to eating organic, things will just get worst. ReferencesBrewer, James (2010). Food, Inc.: What the food industry doesn’t want you to seeKenner, Robert, Elise Pearlstein (Producer). Kenner, Robert (Director). Food Inc.[Motion picture]. United States: River Load Entertainment. 2008.