Supersizing Our Bellies

Super Sizing our Bellies

It seems that entrepreneurs figured that if they supersize our bellies they will supersize their profit. It all started in 1940 when the brothers Dick and Mac first came out with the idea of a fast food restaurant creating a McDonald’s store, which presented fast food to all Americans. The idea of fast food is not bad. Over decades we have enjoyed eatingfrom all those restaurants like Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jr. , etc. that rapidly came out to the market after the growth of McDonald’s, but what it is bad is the quality of their product. The U.S Agricultural Industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. That is why the products sell in every average market and fast food restaurantsare cheap and lack good quality. The types of food we produce and eat come at a high cost to the environment, animals, and humans.

The environment and economic effects of factory farms on rural communities are known. These facilities cannot process the enormous amounts of waste produced by thousands of animals. As a result, they pour and pile manure into large cesspools and spray theland. Leaks and spills from the manure pools and runoff from manure sprayed on fields pollutes nearby

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rivers, streams, and ground water. Chemicals are a major problem to the environment. No one doubts the power of chemical fertilizer to pull morecrops from a field but the numbers are shocking. According to the article “Food Safety Consequences of Factory Farms”, a regular American farmer now produces an outstanding 153 bu. of corn per acre, up from 118 as recently as 1990. The quantity of that fertilizer is scary. Farmers use more than 10 million ton of corn alone and nearly 23 million for all crops. Another factor that affects theenvironment is the amount of waste farmers produce. Jayne Clampitt, an independent farmer who lives near a number of host farms in Iowa says, “This creek that we used to wade in that creek that our parents could drink out of, our kids can’t even play in anymore.”A pig produces approximately four times the amount of waste a human does. Most hog waste is disposed of in open air lagoons, which we canoverflow in heavy rain and contaminate nearby streams and rivers. The production of cheap food affects the environment drastically, sometimes causing droughts which directly affects the U.S agriculture. General knowledge is that if you do not take care of your land, it cannot take care of you.

A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 of fresh fruit. Farmers are producing a lot of calories. Most of those calories are unhealthy. Given that, it is not a surprise we are fat; it is because it costs too much to be thin. In the process of producing a lot of calories, animals are being maltreated throughout their lives. Therefore it is time to stopthat. Factory farms typically manage what animals eat in order to promote their

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growth and keep the overall production low. However, what animals are fed to make more calories, directly affects the quality of the meat and dairy products we humansconsume. Factory Farms mix low doses of antibiotics into animals’ food and water to promote their growth and to prevent diseases since they live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. However, the antibiotics might prevent animals from diseases at the moment but over time bacteria exposed to low level antibiotics can become resistant. For example, studies from the Union Concerned Scientists...