Pollan Responses

SUMMARY:
In Pollan's article he talks about how the food industry has changed since previous years. He talks about how the way that our food has been prepared has changed, how health conditions have become more serious about how the food we eat, changes not only our bodies, but our genetic makeup. Also how our food is prepared, based on fossil fuels, has increased over time.

SYNTHESIS:
Pollan's article compares to Glenn's because they both talk about how the main point of everything is profit. They talk about how no matter what the field is, the means of making money is the highest priority of all. We take short cuts to keep their own costs down, but have no compassion to the spending the expenses needed to care for the products. The article also compares to Porter, with how all information we have comes from previous things we have read and the information we get from outside sources. This ties in with the stats and detailed ideas and suggestions.

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK:

RESPONSE	QUOTE
This talks about how the amount and pricing of food is not the only issue we face in the food industry. It talks about how we "double talk" like Glenn's article talks about, that a secretary does what ever the central nerve tells the cells of the body to do about bad press.	"Complicating matters is the fact that the price and abundance of food are not only problems we face; if they were, you could simply follow Nixon's example, appoint a latter day Earl Butz as your secretary of agriculture and instruct him or her to do whatever it takes to boost production."
This quote makes me sick, because it makes me think that our food is actually bad for us, and that things that we are told are good for us, aren't.	"Put another way, when we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating oil and spewing green house gases."
This is a weird statement but it makes us think that if the President of the United States eats organic, wouldn't it become a bigger trend?	"Your probably thinking that growing and eating organic foods in the White House carries a certain political risk."
This makes me think of how in high school I was in a class that not only taught us about the food groups and how to be smart eaters, but we would have labs where we were taught to cook ourselves.	"To change our children's food culture, we'll need to plant gardens in every primary school, build fully equipped kitchens, train a new generation of lunch ladies (and gentleman) who can once again cook, and teach children to cook.
This talks about how if we change our food industry we would benefit greatly.	"A decentralized food system offers a great many other benefits as well."

 THOUGHTS:

I think that this article has a lot of valid points and ideas. There were a lot of facts and stats compared and contrasted throughout decades in America's food industry. The problem I had that impacted my reading the most was that it was difficult to read and hard to comprehend because it was in letter form, and because of all the facts and stats. I think that Pollan has good ideas, but I don't think that our industry will change or allow for the market to break down the way they believe it should be.