Debate 9.3 Group Presentation on The Omnivore’s Dilemma pp. 261-303

Presenters for this Debate: Yinghuan Yan and Meng Wang

1. On this discussion board, the presenters on this section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma will post their presentation and discussion questions for the class, by Thurs. 3/28. Presenters, or I, will post the statement, or proposition, that they have chosen to work on. Each presenter will post the equivalent of 1.5 pages on their position, labelled “pro” (for) or “con” against their chosen statement. After reading their opponent’s statement, the presenters should post their rebuttal (response to; attempt to argue against) their opponent’s presentation and a discussion question for the class, labelled “rebuttal and discussion question.”

1. Students, you are required to write a paragraph response to debate 9.3 and send it to the debate 9.3 classmate responses by Thurs. 4/11 (additional week for spring break). First, before reading the debate, note if you are for or against the statement. Then note if your position changed or remained the same after you read the debate. Give any insights on the debate or debate topic.

1. After I read students’ paragraph responses to the debate, I’ll send a summary to the class.

1. Presenters, a week after I send the summary, send a paragraph about your experience doing the debate and my summary to debate 9.3 classmate responses.

2. Traditional cuisines are healthier for us than modern fast food because they follow food rules, which often are biologically advantageous (296).”

Pro

The biggest difference between traditional food and modern fast food is that it is more convenient, saves time and has more kinds of fast food. However, fast foods contain high-fat, high-salt, low-fiber foods and more artificial additives, which tend to cause excessive heat supply. In fast food restaurants, large quantities of meat are needed. The animals in modern farms grow in small spaces by eating artificial feed and antibiotics and mature in a very fast time. And there are a lot of preservatives in many fast foods, which also don’t help health. The food fried in fast food not only has carcinogens but also a lot of calories. The downside of fast food is an environmental problem. Although the current fast-food restaurant reduces the use of plastic lunch boxes, replace them with paper boxes. The raw material for making paper lunch boxes is wood, and we need to cut down wood, which destroys forest resources.

Traditional food has significant marketing value for the food and beverage industry. Because there has been an increasing consumer interest in traditional food in recent years (Kivela and Crotts, 2005; Vanhonacker et al.,2010). For example, a survey conducted with foreign tourists in Korea found that 70.2% of the tourists try Korean food before they visit Korea (Chang and Cho, 2000). According to research in France, 74.0% of the participants found the authenticity of the food important (Ferrandi, 2012). Furthermore, I think traditional food is also part of traditional culture. When people go to other places to travel, the first thing they want to try is definitely local food instead of McDonald’s. American-style food culture is not exquisite, fast and convenient, not luxurious, and more popular. Three meals a day are more casual, and it is possible to put time on the job. But I think we can put down our work properly and enjoy the food instead of just eating it. There are many traditional foods that are passed on from mouth to mouth. If people only eat fast food, no one wants to learn traditional foods, and traditional foods will be lost over time.

“Joel is no more likely to sell his grass-finished beef to Whole Foods (let alone Wal- Mart) than he would feed his cows grain…So Polyface does not ship long distance, does not sell into the supermarket, and does not wholesale its food.”(Pollan, 2016). People are willing to buy from him, which shows that people tend to be with traditional food. People are willing to cook for themselves instead of buying fast food. It may also because people living in small towns live comfortably and they have time to enjoy the cooking process. Unlike people who work in the city, limited time can only eat fast food.

Work Cited

Chang, M.J., & Cho, M.S. (2000). “Recognition and Preference to Korean Traditional Food of Foreign Visitors in Korea.” Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture, 15(3): 215-223.

Kivela, J., & Crotts, J.C. (2005). “Gastronomy Tourism: A Meaningful Travel Market Segment.” Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, 4(2-3): 39-55. doi: 10.1300/J385v04n02_03

Pollan, Michael. “Omnivores Dilemma.” Publisher: Penguin Press. 2007.

Vanhonacker, F.,Verbeke, W., Guerrero, L., Claret, A., Contel, M., Scalvedi, L. et al. (2010). “How European Consumers Define the Concept of Traditional Food: Evidence from a Survey in Six Countries.” Agribusiness, 26(4): 453-476.

CON

All the fast foods in our consciousness are McDonald’s, KFC and so on. All fried foods have a lot of fat, and fried foods can make people fat, but such fast foods are considered traditional fast foods. Recently, a large number of new fast foods are flooding the market, such as SWEETGREEN, with vegetable salads. The main image is carrot skin, broccoli stems, toasted bread, cabbage heart and other foods that are generally treated as waste. These vegetables are from nearby farms. These foods are good for those who sit in the office all day, and for some people who are overweight.

“the overall attributional trend of placing responsibility for over-weight and obesity on behavior rather than personality traits or environmental factors” (Campo & Mastin, 2007). People now do not only care about their own health but also about the health of their food. So now there are a lot of “organic foods” that are squandering into our lives. Now many fast food companies are promoting healthy snacks. For example, McDonald’s has announced that it will stop using margarine. Recently, the company also announced that it will stop selling chickens containing antibiotics and milk from auxin-injected cows; in addition, seasonal foods appear in McDonald’s menus. So part of the fundamental elements of obesity is for personal reasons – no fitness.

In the future, new fast food will replace a large portion of fast food. “At the beginning of this year, McDonald’s announced that it stopped selling chickens containing antibiotics, which caused the industry to follow suit. A few days later, Costco immediately announced the decision; Tyson Foods— – The nation’s largest chicken processing company and McDonald’s major supplier also announced that they will stop using human antibiotics to raise chickens by September 2017; similar fast food chains such as Chipotle and Shake Shack have followed suit” (Time BY DAN MITCHELL MARCH 4, 2015). In theory, various fast food companies have the ability to fundamentally change the food system and have a completely healthy, balanced menu. So my argument is that traditional cuisines are not healthier for us than modern fast food, because technology is improving, and fast food is also improving, the era of new fast food will come soon, and fast food will become healthier.

References

Campo, S. & Mastin, T. (2007). Placing the Burden on the Individual: Overweight and
Obesity in African American and Mainstream Women’s Magazines. Health
Communication. 22(3): 229-240.

DAN MITCHELL （2015）Time

Rebuttal and Question

I very much agree with the fast foods contain high-fat, high-salt, low-fiber foods and more artificial, which tend to cause excessive heat supply. But now this fried food is a traditional fast food, and now Many new types of fast food are on the rise. For example, I know that there is a fast restaurant called POKE. They mainly sell fresh sashimi, which is sold through sashimi and vegetable salad. Not only is the taste very suitable for the taste of the public, but it is also guaranteed in terms of health, and people can get healthy and not consume too many calories. Compared with processed foods, traditional foods have found that traditional foods are consumed much faster than processed foods, and more often than traditional foods.

My question is how to define traditional food. If traditional food can replace fast food, can traditional food replace other types of food?

Rebuttal and Question

I agree that you mentioned that not all fast foods contain a lot of fat and fried foods. There are also a lot of new fast foods that tend to be vegetables. The food of these vegetables may be useful for those who need to lose weight. Even though McDonald’s stopped using margarine, there is still a lot of oil in fried foods. Eating fried foods often makes you fat. Even if they promote healthy snacks, you can smell the fried food as soon as you walk into the store. Do you smell the scent and control yourself not to eat? The answer is obviously very difficult to do that. Besides, eating fast food will have the problem of disposable tableware. Recycling disposable tableware is not a simple matter. Although the tableware is made of paper, it is also harmful to the environment. If you encounter inferior disposable tableware, it will easily affect our health. If we can, we try to return to a slow-paced life that suits us, using healthier ceramic tableware, which is also responsible for our own health.

How do you define what is healthy fast food? And how to solve the problem of disposable tableware lunch boxes?

Discussion 10.1: Week 10: The Omnivore’s Dilemma (304-363, 391-411 (end))

Answer ONE of the following questions that has not been answered by a previous poster, unless they have all been answered once already. It should help you to do the reading assigned before answering these questions. Also post a paragraph response to one of the other postings by your classmates. Make clear which comment you are responding to. You may agree, disagree, ask a question, or try to come up with a transition connecting two of the ideas in different postings. Please post by Thurs. 4/11 at midnight.

Choice 1: Life on the farm seems to be a lot of work. Why do you

think Salatin regards it as an ecstasy? Do you think such alternative kinds of farms are a viable alternative for our industrial food chain? What are the hidden costs of the way we do things?

How is the meal Pollan cooked from grass-fed, Polyface Farm, better

than the one from Whole Foods or McDonalds?

Choice 2: What is the problem with our relationship to food today? Consider the following quote from Chapter 16 “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” describing what video cameras installed by anthropologists for General Mills observed about many Americans’ dinner routine:

Mom, perhaps feeling sentimental about the dinners of her childhood, still prepares a dish and a salad that she usually winds up eating by herself. Meanwhile, the kids, and Dad, too, if he’s around, each fix something different for themselves, because Dad’s on a low-carb diet, the teenager’s become a vegetarian, and the eight-year-old is on a strict ration of pizza that the shrink says it’s best to indulge. (302)

How does eating at your home compare to the families’ (above) that were studied by General Mills’ hired anthropologists? What is the signfiicance of such changes to traditional food culture, rules and rituals?

Choice 3: What do you think of some of the different deliberations Pollan makes about the ethics of eating animals? Pollan considers and responds to ethicist Peter Singer’s reflections on the ethical treatment of animals:

It’s one thing to choose between the chimp and the retarded child, or to accept the sacrifice of all those pigs surgeons practiced on to develop heart bypass surgery. But what happens when the choice is, as Singer writes, between “a lifetime of suffering for a nonhuman animal and the gastronomic preferences of a human being?” (312).

If we consider that animals should have some rights, shouldn’t these be taken into account? What kind of appeals does Pollan make in this passage? Does he appeal to ethos, pathos, and or logos, and how?

Choice 4: Pollan feels there is something alienating about being a vegetarian:

I also feel alienated from traditions I value: cultural traditions like the Thanksgiving turkey, or even franks at the ballpark, and family traditions like my mother’s beef brisket at Passover. These ritual meals link us to our history along multiple lines—family, religious, landscape, nation, and, if you want to go back much further, biology. (314)

How does food tie us to our culture? Does this seem like a valid argument for continuing to eat meat?

Choice 5: Pollan states,

Sometimes I think that all it would take to clarify our feelings about eating meat, and in the process begin to redeem animal agriculture, would be to simply pass a law requiring all the sheet-metal walls of all the CAFOs, and even the concrete walls of the slaughterhouses, to be replaced with glass. (332)

How do you think this would change our view of meat consumption or where we want to buy our meat?

Choice 6: Do you agree with Pollan that the animals at Polyface farm, eating worms and rooting for corn cobs, are happy? (319) What do you think constitutes animal happiness?

Choice 7: What is your opinion of the controversy about eliminating the invasive pigs from Santa Cruz Island? Should animal rights, like human rights, be thought of in terms of the individual, or more in terms of the ecosystem? (325)

Choice 8: What is shown by the picture of Angelo cleaning the pig on page. 362: “There was one picture. . .. of what is” (362).

What kind of appeals does Pollan make in this passage? Does he appeal to ethos, pathos, and or logos, and how?

Choice 9: Upon shooting the pig, Pollan feels pride and gratitude that the animal was a gift (353). But later in seeing a picture of himself after killing the pig, Pollan is embarrassed by his madly proud grin (360):“So which view of me the hunter is the right one, the shame at the photograph or the joy of the man in it, the outside gaze or the inside one?” (361). What do you think of this dissonance between the inside and outside view of the hunter, and what do you think this shows?

What kind of audience does Pollan aim at? From these passages in particular, what audience does he seem to be considering? What beliefs and knowledge does he assume they have?

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