Reading Kingsolver
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Push-factors and Pull-factors - Oil is used in many different ways during food production. Each citizen consumes about 400 gallons of oil for agriculture, this is about 17% of the nation’s energy use. synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides use oils and natural gas along with their manufacturing. To get the seed to crop takes up a fifth of the oil. The actual distribution of each crop takes up the most amount of oil. Any piece of food in the U.S. may travel up to 1,500 miles. The process of harvesting such as producing, packaging, and shipping outweigh the calories that we consume.
- According to Kingsolver, Americans no longer have very accurate or usable knowledge about how food is produced. Throughout generations, overall knowledge has just been lost. An example that Kingsolver starts with is how in America school starts around Labor Day and ends around June. Children now have no idea that this was to free up children’s lab0r when it was needed on the farm. Older generations had an intuitive sense for agriculture basics. Some of these could include when certain crops come into season and how to preserve each one, along with what is to be expected with each season. Kingsolver made it a point that most people these days cannot answer questions about agriculture that were once very common knowledge. We also have convinced ourselves that this information is not important because we do not have to worry about it in our everyday lives. Knowing how food grows has promoted people who are “label-readers”. Many people do not like the thought that most of our food is grown in dirt, it can disgust them to know this fact. People just do not know where food comes from or how it is grown (such as how an editor insisted pineapples grow on trees when they really grow from the ground).
- Kingsolver explains how our drift from our agricultural roots is a consequence of migration from land to factory. The processes that are used as well as the tools that are used drastically changed so that things are more industrialized. The government had rewritten rules so that funds did not protect farmers, they guaranteed a supply of cheap corn and soybeans. Before, these plants were only used to feed animals and humans but were used in huge bulk to make high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and thousands of other chemicals. Animals used to roam free, but are now locked up in tight spaces with hundreds of other animals. The food that is produced industrially is was more processed than before, with animals and crops that are not raised or treated in the way that nature intended. Farmers now produce 3,900 calories per U.S. citizen, which is two times what we need, as well as 700 more calories a day than what was grown in 1980. As farmers produced more calories for us to eat, the industry figured out ways for us to ingest them when we did not want to. Products used to be in smaller quantities, such as how bottles of Coke used to be 8 ounces but are now 20. Humans have a weakness for fats and sugars, and the industries take advantage of this. While before we only ate lean foods whenever we found them, now we are constantly having fatty and sugary foods advertised to us over many platforms trying to lure us in.
- Food culture is essentially the culture behind food. They are generally similar throughout the years, they can also be what is associated with each country. Food culture is dependant on what country it is in, as “culture” is in the name. It uses people’s taste for food and the quality thereof as well as where it comes from. Kingsolver says that a strong food culture keeps the quality and quantity of food consistent, this tends to not happen in America. Here, the quality of food has gone down, while the quantity has gone way up. We do not indulge in “authentic” food culture, our food here tends to be anything but that. We do not have any “norms” that are passed down through many generations, the only things that can be seen as being “passed down” are fast food and overall unhealthy food that contains a lot of fats. Those who venture out of this norm succumb to fad diets, those that are promoted to help you lose weight fast in a supposed “healthy” way, that is everything but that. But Kingsolver says that food culture is not something that is sold to people. But in America that seems to be everything we consume. From fad diets to the unhealthy foods and fast foods to even food that is supposedly all organic, things are constantly being sold to us. We do not have a guaranteed cuisine, the industry is constantly changing things up to keep us, and our bellies, “entertained”.
