The news article used for the 11/7 news in food assignment is called "Facing Climate Change Tanzania Can't Afford to Fear GM Crops" written by Megan Molteni.
The article talks about how Africa has been heavily affected by the climate change problem the modern world faces. High temperatures and devastating droughts have brought hardship to Africans trying to find food and water. Earlier this year, scientists hoped to help reduce the food shortage by introducing a GMO crop, specifically a drought-resistance white corn hybrid. While not the first GMO to be used in Africa, it will hopefully pave the way of using more GMOs to bring a stronger flow of food to those who are hungry. You'd think with all the great benefits that GMOs have, why aren't they more widely used? As the article "How Square Watermelons Get Their Shape" illustrates, there are a multitude of misconceptions and false information floating around about GMOs that may make people uneasy or even fearful of the idea of using these crops. However, the need for a stable food source throughout the world is indisputable. Hertsgaard in "How To Feed the World After Climate Change" argues that with the deteriorating climate leading to impaired crop growth paired with the exponential increasing number of mouths to feed, crops with GMOs such as heat- and drought-resistant properties are what's needed to help solve the food demand problem. A few African countries are already taking a step in the right direction to restoring crops destroyed by the harsh climate.
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The news article used for the 10/26 news in food assignment is called "Slow Church Movement Fights the 'McDonaldization' of Sunday Service" written by Bob Smietana.
Christopher Smith and John Pattison, the authors of the book "Slow Church," are arguing for the end of mass producing spiritual growth a la similar fast food tactics, also known as McDonaldization. They argue that rather than employing methods for getting the greatest number of people through a Sunday mass, churches should be striving for a higher quality spiritual engagement that caters to individuals rather than being cookie-cutter fit to everyone. "Megachurches" are also taking people away from their community, allowing them to remain anonymous instead. Advocates of the fast church movement think that industrialized faith could get new generations interested in going to church and keep them returning due to being more convenient. Laura Shapino in her book "Something from the Oven" talks about how baking cakes became different once cake mixes were available at stores. The cake mixes cut the time needed to make the cake, thus making it more convenient for those baking, but it lost its sense of "love" and taste that cakes made from scratch had maintained. The comparison could be made here; going to church is about a quality spiritual experience that connects the people involved to God and community. Finding ways to shovel more people through the institution would lose its love and attention to detail that the "slow churches" have, but would greatly increase the number of people the church could reach out to. As George Ritzer illustrated in "The McDonaldization of Society," efficiency is always something that's striven for in pretty much every corner of the modern world, from health care to homemade food and even to sports. Making every day life more efficient is an innovative way that humans are evolving, so fitting this to churches shouldn't be out of the ordinary. Whether churches should actually try an industrialized faith or keep a more conservative approach, however, is still open for plenty of debate. The news article used for the 10/10 news in food assignment is called "Ruchazie community group feed locals and tackle food poverty" written by Hannah Rodger.
The article talks about how the founders of the Ruchazie Poverty Action (RPA) group has begun setting up community stalls around the area to sell small portions of food at low costs to locals who otherwise would go hungry. Tracie McMillan talks about food deserts in her article Do Poor People Eat Badly Because of Food Deserts or Personal Preference? She mentions that neighborhoods with insufficient access to grocery stores has become a major concern among health officials. The RPA is bringing the means to buy food closer to those who don't have the transportation to get to a grocery store. Not only is the food nearby, it is also healthy and locally grown! In Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?, Mark Bittman notes that the presence of unhealthy "junk" food is meant to draw those with lower incomes in, making the food looks more affordable than it really is. "Making certain that real food is affordable and available to everyone" is a change that needs to be made. The RPA's inventory of fruit, vegetables, tea, rice, and more is in the right direction for making healthy foods available to their community. The news article used for the 9/28 news in food assignment is called "Farm Workers, Migrant Population Threatened by Zika" written by Walter Makaula.
The article above talks about how the living conditions of migrant workers living in Florida could be vulnerable to a Zika disease outbreak. Workers tending to the fields for long periods of time are open to an attack by Zika-carrying mosquitoes. While health officials are trying to find ways for the workers to protect themselves, whether it be by wearing clothes to cover up skin or making homemade bug repellents, the biggest reason for this outbreak is that workers can not afford to go to a doctor; either the doctor's appointment would be too pricey or they can't afford to miss a day of work. In Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating, the author recalls her experience working on a grape farm for the first time. The workers were paid by the number of crates that their group filled by the end of a nine hour shift. On her first day, her group only managed to fill thirty-nine crates; at $2 a crate, that only left the group with $78 to split between the three of them (27). Bringing $26 home to a family with kids after a full nine hours of working is well below a living wage. These workers can't afford to miss a single shift in the fields, lest leave their family hungry for a day. Also, being migrant workers in a country where they aren't even considered legal citizens, it must be extremely difficult to find a doctor for a price that's within their very constricted budget. Seeing these conditions first hand, including the migrant workers in Food Inc. who were in danger of being arrested and shipped back across the border at any time, has been an eye-opening revelation to what happens behind the scenes of the produce that average consumers buy and consume everyday. The news article used for the 9/19 news in food assignment is called "Sugar Shocked? The Rest of Food Industry Pays For Lots of Research, Too" written by Maria Godoy.
The article above talks about how prominent companies in the food industry are paying scientists millions of dollars to research and publish findings on their products. Coca-Cola was mentioned specifically, as they had paid "$132.8 million to scientific research and partnerships." While forwarding scientific research is important for advancing technology, experts found that roughly 90% of these published findings had favored the sponsor's interest. Scientists were being paid to publish incomplete or skewed research to make the company's product seem better or more healthy than it actually was. In the reading The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food by Michael Moss, he talks about how Coca-Cola has an extremely aggressive marketing campaign, even going so far as to "extend to especially poor or vulnerable areas of the US". Their main goal was always to try to get users to drink more. Taking this into account, it wouldn't be surprising that Coca-Cola would pay scientists to "tweak the experimental design in subtle ways" to make the product look better than it is. People trust what scientists have to say, so the companies use them as a sort of marketing scheme in order to gain a positive public opinion among those who read these findings. Moving forward, consumers need to view new research on food with a weary eye, especially when it is funded by a big industrial company. |
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