Hope Baynham
Professor Williams
English 1010-46
November 6, 2012
Food, Inc. Informative Essay
“How much do we really know about the food that we put in our body daily”? The way we eat has changed over the last 50 years. Our average supermarket has over 47,000 products. The food industry does not want you to know what you are really eating because if you really knew what was in your food you might not want to eat it anymore which would make food companies lose a lot of money. Now our food is coming from assembly lines where animals and the workers are being abused every day. The food industry really started from fast food restaurants. In the 1930s there was a new way people where eating there food instead of going home and cooking the could just stop at a fast food restaurant which where back then called drive-ins. The most successful and famous drive-in we all know is McDonalds which started with two brothers “The McDonalds Brothers” they were successful but then they decided they wanted to cut cost and simplify. So they fired there carhops and then started to have workers do just one thing so they had fewer people and could pay them at a lower wage. McDonalds is the largest purchaser of ground beef, potatoes, pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce and even apples in the United States. Now there are only a handful of companies controlling our food system. Chicken is now raised and slaughtered in half the time they were 50 years ago. It usually takes a chicken 70 days to fully develop the way they are raising chicken now days they grow their full size and then even bigger in 48 days the big food companies speed the progress to make more money. But in doing this the chicken organs and bones aren’t fully developed which in return the chickens can only walk a few steps before they have to sit down. Tyson is the biggest meat-packing company in the history of the world. Most of the poultry houses Tyson has working for them are in debt because it cost usually cost $280,000 to $300,000 to have built one but the bad thing about it is they have to pay that kind of money and they only make $18,000 a year. Most of our food is an arrangement from corn.90% of our food has corn syrup or soy bean in it.We have things that are called GMO’S which are (genetically modified organisms) they are used to relate to crops created for humans and animals. These organisms are modified in a lab to enhance desired traits such as flavor or nutritional content. The enhancement of these traits has been made through breeding, but some