Entry #8 Midterm

What A Real Parent Should Do

Would you take your children to fast food restaurants of you have children? What are your reasons to do it if you already know what’s in the food and what the food would do to your children’s little bodies? It is hard for many people to avoid from eating fast food. However, it is the parent’s responsibility to control what their children eat, not the Fast Food Industry nor the U.S. government, since parents are the guardians of their children and they are the ones who really care about their children’s health. In this case, both Fast Food Industry and the U.S. government are considered outsiders. As we can see today, they have never done an effective action to control children from consuming unhealthy food.

            In the eyes of marketers Ray Kroc and Walt Disney, kid customers are highly welcomed to their businesses. In chapter 2 of “Fast Food Nation”, Schlosser mentions the advertising strategy of the two marketers which is called “cradle-to-grave”. This considered children as lifelong consumers, which the children would nag their parents or grandparents to the fast food restaurants after they watched the advertisements about fast food. Furthermore, these children may take their own children to fast food restaurants in the future, and the patter would go on and on. In other words, the parents are the ones who bring their children to fast food restaurants and feed themselves and their young children with unhealthy food. However, their children may learn from their parents and feed their next generation with unhealthy food as well. So, a simple action that the parents could take is to feed their children with healthy food. This could help children to develop a healthy eating habit and the influence may goes on to the next generation, and so on.

            The crazy marketers are targeting on children and attracting their attentions through “playgrounds, toys, cartoons…” and etc. it is time for parents to protect their lovely children from being brainwashed by the marketers! Being inexperienced children with young minds, most of them can’t even define what’s right or wrong thing to eat. And, that is why every child needs their parents to teach them and guide them to the correct eating habit which had previously been misdirected by the fast food marketers.

            As the matter of fact, our government and the giant Fast Food Industry do not really care about our young generation. Therefore, the responsibility goes to the parents. Since it is very hard to avoid advertisements to harm our young generation, the parents should do their best to keep their children away from fast food restaurants. In short, parents are the only people that their children can depend on; they definitely need the help and the guides to healthy eating habits.

Entry#7 "The Meatrix" Issue

Animal Welfare

            Being a human instinct, people keep the dog, the cat and other cute meek animals to be their pets; raise the rare and protected ones in the zoo to make sure they do not extinct or die out. Meanwhile, people ignore and feel indifference to the living condition of the factory farmed animals. Livestock and poultry that are raised in the factory farms desire better environment and humane treatment, since the poor living condition and inhumane treatment of these animals would ultimately affect the health of the meat consumers. As the matter of fact, in today’s world, the brutal scenes that ordinary people may never see are performing commonly in the American factory farms.

            The factory farms should provide larger living space for their animals in order to prevent from the spread of diseases. One big common to all factory farmed animals is that they all living in very narrow spaces with high density which they can’t even stretch or turn around their bodies. The terrible living conditions would cause serious leg problems on chicken and pig, and respiratory disease on cattle and etc. These diseases could easily lead to the death of the animals. To simply keep the animals alive (not cure), the factory farms treat the animals routinely with “pesticides and other unhealthy additives, and can be given hormones solely to increase productivity.” These drugs keep the animals alive while they are still suffering from the discomfort. When the animals are been slaughtered, the drug residues in the meat and the meat consumers would consequently eat the meat that contains the remaining drug. To fix the root cause of the drug residue, the factory farms must take action and proved better housing to the animals in order to increase of health of the animals and decrease to chance of eating meat that contains drug residue.

            To help the poor animals out, what we can do is to buy meat products that from local farms or just simply eat less meat. In short, same as living creatures with conscious, human should not treat other animals inhumanely specially to the ones that provide food and energy to the human being.