Food #6, Response to Pollan 1

Unfortunately, I do find that I must agree with what Michael argued on American food culture. We do not have one. And as a result, we cannot be stable. More evidence to support this includes a common occurrence in everyday life. If you sit at home, and think about what to eat, the choices are almost never American foods. You go through take out menus, which include Chinese food, Mexican food, and so on. I think that the only "American food" would be the cheeseburger, or maybe the food of a diner.

For the most part, my family does not pay attention to what the world around us tells us to eat. We will watch the news and see the newest "findings" on what to eat and what not to eat, but we rarely let them affect us. If anything, they will influence one or two meals. We go mainly based on what we were raised eating, which is a relatively balanced meal. We also think that a lot of the ways food is portrayed in the media and ways we are told to eat food is wrong, such as in commercials, where they are obviously just going to promote their own product.

The danger that America faces is that most households are not like mine. They are much more easily convinced of what to eat based on what the TV says, which encompasses the news reports on food (that change every other week for some reason), the commercials (that focus on buying their product over another for flawed reasons), and scientists (who can only make money by being on TV because they are discredited otherwise). This makes people have irregular eating habits that are unbalanced and leave them dependent on more of the same food that caused the problem. It causes a problem in America and contributes to rising rates of obesity and diabetes. What I would propose is that the packaging for food be transparent in the front, to see the food, all the ingredients shown in picture and list form, so people can actually see the stuff that they call "food", and that dietary limits be applied through an outside force (government if need be). A lot of people may be so ignorant even after these facts and then need to be forced to eat healthy, the morals behind this I still have to decide on.