Jessica Hasbrouck
Professor Hemstrom
English 102
Persuasive Essay
Draft 1
Fried America

As a vegetarian I have made the conscious decision to not eat beef, poultry or pork. I start my day with some scrambled eggs and spinach, or perhaps an apple and a piece of peanut butter toast. I don’t drink milk, as I am allergic to it, and thus, green tea has substituted my daily intake of liquids. I take, during the course of the day, ten or so supplements, to regulate my daily vitamin intake. I wasn’t always this strict however. I used to eat tons of fried food, drink bottles of soda pop, munch on thick Subway sandwiches and my ultimate favorite, Gelato Ice cream. My body wasn’t any better for the wear. I was forty pounds overweight, I was sick anytime a sort if illness spread amongst my peers and I was lethargic. College students especially, are at a higher risk for poor eating habits as we are following inconsistent sleeping and class schedules, are allotted in most cases small units of time to eat, and our availability to kitchens is also limited. I remember family friends teasing my fellow peers and myself at my high school graduation, “ Don’t gain the freshman fifteen,”, or, “ Watch out for the those buffet lines in the student union cafeteria,”. I feel the necessity to inform the importance of not consuming mass processed/produced food. I plan to give several facts about the daily intake of preservatives, processed meat and flours and the negative effects of sugar on the body.
If you ask any college student today what they had for breakfast or lunch, on average every 7 out of 10 students will respond with some sort of processed meal. I decided to ask, casually, all of my suite mates in my building here at Boise State about their morning eating habits. I received a few answers and wasn’t surprised as far as my results were concerned. Keep in mind, the ages and occupations of the subjects I interviewed. They were all from the ages of seventeen to twenty-eight, all students in my building are required to be full time ( taking at least 12 units), and at least half said they also held part time jobs. Average time spent outside of class on homework and projects is

one hour. Immediately, I assumed that the students I interviewed, spent at least twenty-four hours a week in and outside of class. Plus an additional fifteen hours that their jobs. I interviewed seventy students in all, which is as easy task as I know everyone fairly well. For breakfast, twelve out of the first sixteen students on the first floor had cereal, or some type of processed breakfast meal (i.e. Aunt Jemima’s Griddle Cakes, Breakfast Pockets, or Eggo waffles). The three students ate something of a more unconventional nature, like candy or potato chips, or perhaps just a cup of coffee. Interviewed the next floor up, only one person out of the next sixteen had a substantially healthy breakfast. Food and Nutrition Services (FNS), a governmentally factioned agency, released a decades worth of studies on the values of students eating a healthy breakfast in 2004, F.N.S. studies showed that,
“A nutritious, well-balanced breakfast means students won’t eat unhealthy snacks later in the day. They’ll concentrate better in class and, on average, go to the hospital less frequently, for common colds and influenza. Most importantly, they’ll start to develop the habit of eating a healthy breakfast—a habit that will help them throughout their lives.”( www.ecologyasia.com/foodfacts)
Studies also show that only does immune health thrive with the consumption of healthy breakfasts, but obesity rates are consistently lower amongst healthy breakfast eaters. Obesity is defined as being twenty plus pounds overweight according to your height, age, race, sex and activity level. Amongst the suite mates I am closest to, we all discussed the possible hindrances to eating healthy meals throughout the day. My room mate Allison Storck agreed with my original statement,
“ It’s not so much that I don’t have the time to cook myself a healthy meal, it’s just that I share a small kitchen space with three other people... we just don’t have the room to keep the dishes we use to cook, the food itself, and some dry goods to bake with.”(Stork)
I can further this statement, as I do live in these conditions. I live in the University suites, which are considered much nicer than other housing options on campus. A friend from high school, Isaac Gunther, lives in the Towers dorm facility at Boise State University. I asked Isaac what he thought about healthy eating and his personal experience with cooking as a “dorm-living” college student.
“ Cooking! I don't’ have time for cooking. You’ve seen my dorm room, I don’t have a kitchenette. Hell, I don’t even have enough plug-ins for my computer, printer and beside lamp; let alone enough room for a mini refrigerator and microwave. I don’t cook period. I eat cereal and take

out. I am also a frequent patron of the Tablerock as well.” (Gunther)
I asked Isaac what he thought about the food at the student union building. If he felt that all of his nutritional needs were met there. We also discussed the availability of nearby food sources, and how often he ate there as well.
“ As an on campus resident, my options are limited to nearby restaurants, this includes Boise State’s Tablerock Cafe. The cost of admittance into Tablerock is like six dollars, which is adequate and generally the normal price of a fast food meal. I know this for sure, considering that I’ve eaten at every restaurant in at least a five mile radius. The food at most of the places is of a mass produced quality, usually lacking flavor. Or, it is doused in salt and sugar; which I love.” (Gunther).
In the case of Boise State University something like 30% of the regularly attending students live off campus, or take weekend classes. In the case of night classes, a good chunk of the students work full-time at a job and come to B.S.U. at night to finish a degree. Not only to these students not have access to cooking facilities, they are, in general more likely to visit the nearby Fast food restaurants or the student union building in between or before/after class. This only encourages the fact that unless students pack healthy lunches or dinners for themselves, they will most likely after three to four hours of class, take part in processed food consumption.
The Student Union Building is a great representation of unhealthy living on campus. Students have all sorts of options for a meal at their fingertips: hamburgers, cheese sandwiches, soups, waffles and a sickly looking salad bar. Originally, salads consisted of lettuce, and small accents like peppers, oranges and grapes. Most commonly salads were used in small portions after an appetizer, to clean the pallet of the person. Now, as I walk up and down the Tablerock salad island, I see quite a few unsightly additions to the present salad bar. Shredded cheddar cheese, hard boiled eggs, sliced deli meat, tortilla chips. What is this a salad bar, or melting pot of random foods? As I stood there I watched girl put a pinch full of sickly looking packaged salad mix, a ton of ham, cheese, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, sesame seeds and to top it off she doused
the plate in Ranch dressing. Mind you, she didn’t use the salad plates, which were stacked neatly on the shelves under the island, she grabbed an extra big plate. I wondered how common this was, I wanted to stand there for an hour and watch students, but at second thought I considered this might concern the staff. I did observe however, that the stacks of salad plates weren’t running particularly low that day, but the line for the hamburger grill was quite lengthy. In credit to the Tablerock cafe, I did see a advertising tent on the table in the dining room, for the alternative choice menu for healthy eaters. I don’t ever remember seeing this in the buffet area, or advertised at the food lines.
Items like cheese, eggs and deli meat when mass produced and shipped to local food distribution areas, are always doused in preservatives and chemicals. This isn’t a nice gesture from your state food distribution company, this is a law to keep them from distributing rotten goods to your and yours. After working for the restaurant industry for the past five years, I know of the necessity of long-lasting food. I got onto the SYSCO Incorporated, a local Idaho food wholesaler, web site to see if they revealed any information about the spoilability/preservability guarantee of their products. I saw the SYSCO label smattered across everything in the SUB’s “healthy cafe”.
The definition of Food additives and artificial flavors, on the web site referenced the Food and Drug Administration. A very friendly looking outline stated that food preservative and additives are, “Substances that become part of a food product when added (intentionally or unintentionally) during the processing or production of that food.”(FDA,2004). The function, in lamens terms of additives and artificial flavors, can be put in five simple functions:
1) Maintaining product consistency
2) Improve/preserve nutrient value
3) Maintaining wholesomeness and palatability of foods
4) Control the acidity and alkalinity, and to provide leavening
5) Provide color can enhance flavor
Maintaining product consistency is something all too familiar for any consumer in America. Everyone has consumed ice cream, condiments such as ketchup and mustard and if you haven’t lived in a cave for the past fifty years, eaten the mashed potatoes at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Emulsifiers, or chemical additives, provide a consistent texture and prevent products from
separating. Stabilizers and thickeners provide a uniform texture. Anticaking agents enable
substances to flow freely.
Fortification and enrichment of foods has made it possible to improve the nutritional status of the U.S. population, or so food distributors say. For example, vitamins and minerals are added to many foods including flour, cereal, margarine, and milk. This helps to make up for vitamins or minerals that may be low or completely lacking in an individual's diet. The latest bandwagon trend in America is vitamin water, such as Propel, Gatorade or Red bull Energy Drinks. However, further research into added vitamins and minerals, according to the American Medical Association in 2002, states that “There is no conclusive way to prove the absorption rate or nutritional value of chemically produced nutrients...this has the same effect as drinking regular water.” (AMA 2002) All products that contain added nutrients must be labeled due mainly to the fact that the FDA cannot conclusively prove if these additives are harmful to consumers yet.
Contamination from bacteria can allow food-borne illnesses to occur. Preservatives reduce the spoilage that air, fungi, bacteria, or yeast can cause. The average life of a substance with preservatives is seven to eight times the actual survival rate of spoilable foods. This is most definitely common in meat products. Preservatives such as antioxidants help baked goods preserve their flavor by preventing the fats and oils from becoming rancid, or they are sprayed on veggies and fruit to give them a nice shine and keep the normal elements from dissolving them. Preservatives engineered by several prominent American companies are almost 90% chemically engineered,(Mitchell 41). They also keep fresh fruits from turning brown when exposed to the air.
Specific additives assist in modification of the acidity or alkalinity of foods to obtain a desired taste, color, or flavor. Leavening agents that release acids when they are heated react with baking soda to help biscuits, cakes, and other baked goods rise. Certain colors improve the appearance of foods. There are many spices and natural and synthetic flavors that bring out the best in the flavor of food. Originally McDonalds used beef fat to cook their notoriously good french fries, after discovering the health affects of massive beef fat consumption, McDonalds quietly engineered a low fat vegetable oil with beef flavored additives. This was so the flavor of the french fries remained, without the potential risk of massive illness. “The beef additives were also given a colorant, which gives them their brown crispy color, the fry friers would have to be turned upwards of 415 degrees to took potatoes to that color,”. (Schlosser 125).
The flavor industry emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, as processed foods began to be manufactured. Originally, the American food industry turned to European perfume countries to Engineer scents. Legend has it that a German scientist discovered methylanthranilate, one of the first artificial flavors, by accident while mixing chemicals in his laboratory. Suddenly the lab was filled with the sweet smell of grapes.
The act of drinking, sucking, or chewing a substance releases its volatile gases, the aroma of food can account for as much as 90% of it’s taste. The gases flow out of the mouth and up the nostrils, or up the passageway in the back of the mouth, to a thin layer of nerve cells called the olafactory epithelium, located at the base of the nose between the eyes.
“The American flavor industry brings in annual revenues of upwards of $1.4 billion.”(Schlosser 124). At Burger King , Wendy’s, and McDonalds, flavor agents have been added to many of the soft drinks, salad dressings, cookies, condiments, and most notoriously McDonalds french fries. Not only does the flavor of processed food seem to be incredibly important, the color also plays a significant part as well. “Studies have found that the color of food can greatly affect how its taste is perceived. Brightly colored foods frequently seem to taste better than bland looking foods,even when the flavor compounds are identical. Foods that somehow look off-color often seem to have off tastes.” (Schlosser 132). For thousands of years, human beings have relied on visual cues to help determine what is edible. The color of fruit suggests whether it is ripe, the color of meat whether it is rancid. Flavor researchers sometimes use colored lights to modify the influence of visual cues during taste tests during the creation of the world’s top processed foods. This sounds like a lot of energy, time and money to produce processed foods.
Testing services for candy companies in the United States have to continually change the correlation between the different flavors in their candies. A good example is that of Starburst Juicy Candies. Originally, they stuck to basic flavors like orange, strawberry and banana. However, as exposure and popularity of Starburst continued; so did their flavors and colors. A few different kinds of Starbursts are in the market today. Tropical Starbursts, Wild berry Starbursts, Creamy Fruit Starbursts and of course Original Flavor. Now clearly some fruit flavors are a lot different than the juices they emit, Raspberry juices are notoriously acidic. Pineapple flavors also cannot be replicated to give the same flavor. All of Starbursts flavors are chemically created, as well as their colors. We’ve all seen color additives like yellow no. 5, and blue no. 2.
The FDA has a list of foods generally recognized as safe (the GRAS list). Many have not undergone any testing, but they are regarded as safe by the scientific community. These substances are put on the GRAS list, which contains approximately 700 items. Examples of some of the items on this list are: guar gum, sugar, salt, and vinegar. The list is evaluated on an ongoing basis.
Safe is defined by Congress as "reasonable certainty that no harm will result from use of an
additive." Some substances that are found to be harmful to people or animals may be allowed, but only at the level of 1/100th of the amount that is considered harmful. This margin of safety is a protection for the consumer by limiting the intake of a dangerous substance. For example, some people are allergic to sulfites, and their reaction can be mild or very severe. People with any allergies or food intolerances should always check the ingredient listing (label) for their own protection.
The list of additives has been changed dramatically since the time the government began overseeing its safety. It is still important to gather information about the safety of food additives. The general public is encouraged to inform the FDA of any adverse reactions they experience to maintain data on food additives up to date.
Most of the readily available campus food centers only serve food that has been preserved, frozen, or fried. Close by we have a Shanghai Chinese Restaurant, Wendy’s, Elmer’s, McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell. Just to name a few. The placement of these facilities is no accident around campus, and most of the regular business is from students going to and from school. All of the surrounding fast food restaurants have more than one thing in common; processed food. However, I’d like to focus on their main source of business; their entrees. One of Shanghai’s most popular dishes is the Beef and Broccoli, fast food restaurant’s have hamburgers and their counterparts, Elmer’s for their Biscuits and Gravy, and lastly Taco bell is known for it’s beef tacos and burritos.
“Every day in the United States, roughly 200,00 people are sickened by a food borne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than a quarter of the AMerican population suffers a bout of food poisoning each year,” (Schlosser 195). Everyone remembers the Jack-in-the-Box incident of tainted food, several people responded to serious incidents of food poisoning, mostly children. In 1982 dozens of children were sickened by contaminated hamburgers sold at McDonalds restaurants in Oregon and Michigan, McDonalds quietly cooperated with investigators from CDC, providing ground beef samples that were tainted with E. Coli--samples that for the first time linked the pathogen to serious illnesses. In public, however, the McDonalds Corporation denied that its hamburgers had made anyone sick. A spokesman for the chain acknowledged only “the possibility of a statistical association between a small number of diarrhea cases in two small towns and our restaurants. Although the rise in food borne illnesses has been caused b many complex factors, much of the increase can be attributed to recent changes in how American food is produced.
Much like the human immunodeficiency virus responsible for causing AIDS , the E. Coli o157:H7 bacterium is a newly emerged pathogen whose speed has been facilitated by recent social and technological changes. E. Coli was first discovered in 1982 and HIV was discovered a year later. Studies show that E. Coli has been responsible for some human illnesses thirty or forty years ago (Schlosser 197). The rise of huge feedlots, slaughterhouses, and hamburger grinders seems to have provided the means for this pathogen to become widely dispersed in the nation’s food supply. American meat, in it’s entire history, has never been so centralized. Only thirteen large packinghouses now slaughter most of the beef consumed in the United States. The meatpacking system that arose to supply the nation’s fast food chains--an industry molded to serve their needs, to provide massive amounts of uniform ground beef so that all of McDonalds hamburgers would taste the same--has proved to be an extremely efficient system for spreading disease. While medical researches have gained important insights into the links between modern food processing and the spread of dangerous diseases, the nation’s leading agribusiness firms have resolutely opposed any further regulation of their food safety practices.
“For years the large meatpacking companies have managed to avoid the sort of liability routinely imposed on the manufacturers of most consumer products. Today the U.S. government can demand the nationwide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves,” ( Mitchell 86). Many skeptical food policy critics say that the lack of regulation can be linked to the sizable contributions made by the cattle industry to the republican party; but that’s all a stipulation. Now, with the smaller areas for slaughtering, packaging and shipment; the opportunity for meat to be affected on a macro level is highly probable. This isn’t just assumed to be some bad chicken or potato salad at a community barbecue; it’s a bad shipment of beef to all local food distributors. Not only is E. coli a concern now, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus; have a likelihood of being nationally distributed.
These recently discovered food borne pathogens tend to be carried and shed by apparently healthy animals. Food tainted by these organisms has most likely come in contact with an infected animal’s stomach contents or manure, during slaughter or subsequent processing. A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken at processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, and 53.5 percent were contaminated with Clostridium perifigens, ( usda.com/healthinquiries). All of these pathogens can make people sick; food poisoning caused by Listeria generally requires hospitalization and proves
fatal in about one out of every five cases. “In the USDA study 78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material. The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms; coliform, aerobic plate counts, sorvitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat,”( Schlosser 205). Efforts to eradicate E. Coli have been complicated by the fact that is an extraordinarily hearty microbe, that’s extremely easy to transmit. It probably doesn’t help that its resistant to acid, salt, and chlorine either.
The cattle now packed into feedlots get little exercise and live amid pools of manure. Massively produced cattle raised and sold in feedlots account for 92 percent of beef sales, 18 percent is accounted for by independent cattlemen. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, visited several feedlots across this nation during the production of his novel. During a section of the book, Schlosser discusses a conversation with a feedlot official. Schlosser mentions a specific comment that seems very controversial. “ ‘ You shouldn’t eat dirty food and dirty water,’ the official told me. ‘But we still think we can give animals dirty food and dirty water.’”(Schlosser 202). Feedlots have become an extremely efficient mechanism for “ recirculating manure,” which is unfortunate, since E. Coli can replicate in cattle troughs and survive in manure for up to ninety days. Far from their natural habitat of open range fields and pasture, the cows in feedlots become prone to more illnesses. And what they’re being fed can often contribute to the spread of disease. The rise in grain prices has encouraged the feeding of less expensive materials to cattle, especially substances with a high protein content that accelerates growth. About 75 percent of cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes --the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle--until August of 1997. The FDA banned such practices after evidence from Great Britain suggest that they were responsible for a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. These are serious accusations, and yet Schlosser, and other authors like Deborah Mitchell, use and quote credible FDA and USDA information in their books.
The pathogens from infected cattle are spread not only in feedlots, but also at slaughterhouses and hamburger grinders. “The slaughterhouse tasks most likely to contaminate meat are the removal of an animal’s hide and the removal of its digestive system. The hides are now

pulled off by machine; if a hide has been inadequately cleaned, chunks of dirt and manure amy fall from it onto the meat. Stomachs and intestines are still pulled out of cattle by hand; if the job is not performed carefully, the contents of the digestive system may spill everywhere.” (Mitchell 97). The increased speed of today’s production lines makes the task much more difficult. A single worker at a “gut table” may eviscerate sixty cattle an hour. Performing the job properly takes a fair amount of skill. A former gutter of a slaughterhouse told Deborah Mitchell in a personal interview, “ ...it took me six months to learn how to pull out the stomach and tie off the intestines without spillage. At best, he could gut two hundred consecutive cattle without spilling anything,” (Mitchell 103). Inexperienced gutters spill manure far more often. At the IBP slaughterhouse in Lexington, Nebraska, the hourly spillage rate at the gut table has run as high as 20 percent, with stomach contents splattering one out of five carcasses. The consequences of a single error are quickly multiplied as hundreds quickly move down the line. Knives are supposed to be cleaned and disinfected every few minutes, something that workers in a hurry tend to forget according to Mitchell’s source. A contaminated knife spreads germs to everything it touches. The overworked, often illiterate workers in the nation’s slaughterhouses do not always understand the importance of good hygiene. Mitchell’s source said that often in the IBP plant that gutters have been known to drop meat on the floor and the place it right back on the conveyer belt.
Months after both Mitchell and Schlosser released their books, the National Academy of Sciences, and the USDA launched the Streamlined Inspection System for Cattle (SIS-C). The program was designed to reduce the presence of federal inspectors in the nation’s slaughterhouses, allowing company employees to assume most of the food safety tasks. According to the Reagan administration, the Streamlined Inspection System for Cattle would help the USDA shrink its budget and deploy its manpower more efficiently. “Freed from the hassle of continuous federal inspection, SIS-C also enabled meatpacking companies to increase their line speeds. Despite the fact that IBP had, just a year earlier, been caught falsifying safety records and keeping two sets of injury jogs, the meatpacking industry was given the authority to inspect its own meat. The Monfort Beef Plant in Greeley, Colorado , was one of the original participants in the program. According to federal inspectors there, the meat produced under the Streamlined Inspection System “ had never been filthier.”(Mitchell 278). At SIS-C slaughterhouses, visibly diseased animals--cattle infected with measles and tapeworms, covered with abscesses--were being slaughtered. Poorly trained company inspectors were allowing the shipment of beef contaminated with fecal material, hair, insects, metal shavings, urine, and vomit.
Americans are eating more poultry as well. As beef consumption dropped steadily, peak consumption dropped steadily, from peak consumption of around 90 pounds per person per year in the mid-1970’s to about 62 pounds in 2000 intake of chicken and turkey rose. Much of the increase in poultry consumption was due to all of the controversy of red meat’s high fat and contamination content. Studies have shown however, that not just beef feedlots that produce highly questionable meat. The poultry industry somewhat a house of cards. All individual poultry pieces have to be individually packaged, so that the high contaminated juices that are filled with bacteria, will not effect any other food product. There have been several accusations my People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), about the living conditions of chickens. An investigation in 2001 to a prominent Wyoming Chicken farm showed several shocking results. Most of the chickens were horribly obese, to the point that some of their legs had broken. An inspector spoke with Deborah Mitchell about that day, “ Most of the injured chickens became bumps in the road, others just walked right on them. Just imagine, being so large that your legs snapped on your own weight. The animals had to be suffering,” (Mitchell 345).
Antibiotics are routinely fed to chickens to make them produce more meat and to help ward off the many bacterial diseases that are spread throughout the greatly overcrowded conditions under which chickens are kept. ( Even so-called free-range chickens exist in free-range chickens are not enforced.) These antibiotics are then found in the chicken you eat. A commonly understood fact of the American Scientific Organization is that, the more chicken/antibiotics you ingest, the more the bacteria become resistant to the drugs, and the less effective antibiotics become when you need them to treat a bacterial illness. The pesticides you ingest from eating chicken originally come form the feed the chickens eat. Pesticides tend to accumulate in fat, so you can expect to find higher levels of pesticides in the skin, dark meat, and organs. Health risks associated with the pesticides fed to chickens include cancer, nervous system damage, birth defects, and other problems.
“One of the pesticides found in chicken feed--arsenic, used to control intestinal parasites--is a known carcinogen, and has recently raised concerns among experts. Chronic exposure to arsenic (10 to 40 micrograms per day), the mean level of chicken consumption exposes people to 3.6 to 5.2 micrograms per day, is associated with respiratory, bladder, and skin cancers.
The greater interest to me isn’t the placement of the restaurants, but the health effects of the food they serve. Throughout my essay I discuss Fast food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The book digresses on the world’s infatuation with fast food, from its origins in 1950s southern California to the global triumph of a handful of burger and fried chicken chains. In a meticulously researched and powerfully argued account, Eric Schlosser visits the labs where scientists re-create the smell and taste of everything - from cooked meat to fresh strawberries; talks to the workers at abattoirs with some of the worst safety records in the world; explains exactly where the meat comes from and just why the fries taste so good; and looks at the way the fast food industry is transforming not only our diet but our landscape, economy, workforce and culture. His work was great fuel for my work, as well as Deborah Mitchell. Food production now has not become a business of freshness and taste; it is a game of numbers. How many cases can we get a away with? How high of a dose of antibiotics and preservatives can be placed in food before physical results show up? Our economy and meat companies have to complete with overseas competitors for large contracts, but does this mean that contaminated meat can go uninspected, and then served to us? I have just decided to avoid the problem all together. After reading these novels, learning of the effect of preservatives, additives, and antibiotics on the body; I choose not to even risk it and I don’t eat meat.
Consuming large amounts of sugar and corn syrup not only encourages obesity, it effects the glucose levels in the body; putting a startling 56% at a higher risk for Diabetes. We must take an active role with our bodies, we can’t just mindlessly consume food that “tastes good”, or food that is easy. College students are a prime example of what could happen, I did interview people who ate very well, and I know several others who work out several times a week. Laziness is what gets us. America is the country that has the highest obesity rates, and yet we spend more money on diets, gyms, and corrective surgery. Now, the attitude is that if we reach the point of severely obese, we can just get liposuction or our stomachs stapled. Proper eating habits are taught at home, and practiced there. In the daily hustle and bustle our own individual health is at risk, if we just stuff ourselves with fast food, microwavable meals. Of the infomation I came upon, we are also eating contaminated food, tainted meat, and unnatural chemicals. I bet most people don’t even know the affects of the food flavors, colors, and additives on their bodies. And, as long as companies make a profit, who’s to complain? Suddenly I don’t feel like a consumer, the swelling of my fellow humans seems to remind me of something. I guess I’ll just quit complaining and step up to the trough like everybody else.
Works Cited


Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation, New York: Houghton and Mifflin Company, 2002.

Storck, Allison, Personal Interview, Boise,ID, May 1, 2006.

Gunther, Isaac, Personal Interview, Boise, ID, May 10, 2006.

Davies, Dr. R, Food and Drug Administration,< www.healthline.com/health/general>, 2004. Retrieved on May 15, 2006.

Mitchell, Deborah, Safe Foods, New York: New American Library,2004.

USDA, Food Investigations and Policy Reforms, <usda.com/healthinquiries>, 2006. Retrieved on May 21, 2006.