Much more than one thing...

“One thing to do about food: a forum” presents multiple solutions to our nation’s current food industry. The overall trend away from industrialized farming is a solution shared by many of these authors. The three main issues that are focused on are eliminating the purchasing of factory farm products, making the public aware and increase desire to become involved in the policy, and ultimately finding a solution to the childhood obesity epidemic. To have the public reduce their consumption of factory food, they need to become aware of the processes associated with industrialized food production. Due to the billions spent on marketing the taste benefits of the product, little attention is placed on the conditions in which the products are made. But does the public even want to know this? Does the public even care? We have authors like Schlosser emphasizes the importance of knowing what is behind what you are eating, but does the public really want to know? Some of the public is fully content with trusting the FDA and keeping the rest of the details in the dark. Our society has created documentaries and novels describing the secrets of industrialized food industries, but has this caused a significant change in the people of America? Even after watching Supersize Me, I am still guilty of my craving for McDonald French fries. So maybe public awareness isn’t the solution.

Similarly to the beliefs of Wendell Berry, there needs to be a label on the problems associated with food. The most common terms we here associated with food are hunger and obesity. Even though they are opposite problems in many ways, there ability to gain public attention is significantly similar. When people hear of such a problem, especially dealing with children, they feel a sense of responsibility to change. Even though there are many more problems just these two, I believe that our society needs to label food problems with an issue that they are compassionate about. Maybe it needs a label like childhood obesity that will eliminate the advertisement targeted at children who do not know the difference between fact and persuasion.