Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

01-30-19

The Only Way to Have a Cow

In “The Only Way to Have a Cow,” Bill McKibben claims that animal consumption and

industrial farming has a huge impact on climate change. As he himself is a vegetarian, he

believes that the only way to cut back on these greenhouse gas emissions is to become a

vegetarian, vegan, or even go organic. Some examples that he uses are: “going vegan is 50

percent more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than switching to a hybrid car

according to a University of Chicago study”, and “the UN Food and Agriculture Organization

finds that half a pound of ground beef has the same effect on climate change as driving an SUV

10 miles.” In my opinion, I don’t agree with McKibben because it seems a bit impossible as lot

of people can not give up meat or other resources that uses greenhouse gas emissions. This issue

relates to everyone, especially in California, which can be referenced to a meeting I went to back

in December of 2016. So basically, it was the State Water Resources Control Board Meeting, and

it was between local farmers and the state boards. The State boards members were exactly like

McKibben because they wanted to cut back on the usage of water of farmer to benefit the fish

and wildlife. However, these farmers need a good amount of water for their farms. If there was

no water for agriculture, their they’re would no food produced enough for the world, especially

when everything comes from the central valley. Even though McKibben’s claim was supported

wholly, I still believe that it’s absurd because for me, I can’t live without chicken in my salad

bowls and wraps.

 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

02-06-19

Farm to Fable

This assigned reading really got to me as I really thought back on the food I ate in

restaurants. It really made me question myself if the food I ate were actually organic as the

restaurant said it was. Troy Johnson was brilliant for giving real life examples in his “Farm to

Fable” article. Many restaurants claim that they serve organic commodity produce from local

farms and love using the signage Farm-to-Table signage on their menu. This term is used more

as an objective to make these restaurants’ food look fresh and appealing. Furthermore, he

explains how mad these farmers get when restaurants use this claim, especially when they have

no connection to them. I absolutely agree with Johnson’s claim because restaurants are just

manipulating both the consumers and farmers. The worse part is when these customers who

come into these places to eat “organic” food gets sick and blames the farmers whose names are

on the menu. I believe the most outrages thing that was read was when the restaurants would

substitute the food and charge the customers more than the food cost in total; or like when the

restaurants chefs or owners would buy from farms for a few weeks and then stop buying it. To be

honest, it ruins the farmer’s operations because they would increase in sales and then drop in

sales. Also, they would hire more workers, and then they would lay off some after words because

what these restaurants are doing. However, in order to prevent being lied to, the best way is

having consumers know what vegetables or fruits grow in which seasons. Nonetheless,

restaurants should really stop using the phrase Farm-to-Table.

 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

02-25-19

Why the Fries Taste Good

In Eric Schlosser’s essay, he talks about flavors and how foods gain their tastes. It really

caught my attention when he started talking about the International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF)

because I had no idea that it is basically the world’s largest flavor company, and how company’s

do not like to share their information the to the public because they have secrecy about how they

make flavors. For example, the IFF’s snack and savory plant lab is in charge of making the

flavor of potato chips, corn chips, crackers, breakfast cereals, bread, and last of all, pet food.

Seriously, pet food. I find it so surprising because what if they accidently mix dog or cat food

flavors in human food. Another example is that they also are responsible for fragrances and

perfumes like Clinique’s Happy, Ralph Lauren's Polo, Calvin Klein’s Eternity, and Estee

Lauder’s Beautiful. Lastly, they also make household products such as: detergent, deodorant,

body soap, shampoo, conditioner, and floor wax. To be honest these are all not save because like

I said before, they could just mix up the household chemicals with food flavors. Nonetheless, as

the title of the essay talks about fries, I found it surprising that McDonald’s just started using

vegetable to deep fry fries about in the 1990s, as they had been using sesame seed oil and beef

tallow to do all that deep frying stuff since 1951 when they first opened. Beef tallow is the beef

fat that is on the lean meats of the body. I honestly find that so gross, but what can I say, fries are

still good even though I stopped eating fast food. To conclude, the most horrific part is about the

IFF because I can be eating a piece of a soap bar in my potato chips and I wouldn’t know.
 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

02-27-19

Sweet Confusion: No High Fructose Corn Syrup

Laura Bell first talks about chemists Richard Marshall and Earl Kooi, who tried making

glucose into fructose as sweeteners. In the 1980s, high fructose replaced corn syrup in soft

drinks, baked goods, dairy products, sauces, and other foods. I find this a pretty big issue because

in Bio, these sugars are not healthy at all. While in 2004, Barry Popkin and George Bray

published a commentary about rise of the USA’s obesity rate with high fructose corn syrup. High

fructose can cause epidemics of obesity and diabetes, and abdominal fat, high blood pressure,

and elevated triglycerides — which cause a dangerous disease to cause metabolic syndrome. The

fructose can stick onto the fat around the belly and is less likely to engage with eating healthy

and losing weight. Also, the human liver can either absorb sugar or allow it to pass into the

bloodstream to be turned into energy for the brain, muscles and other organs. Bell continues

saying that when the fructose is in the liver, it winds up in packages as glycogen or stored as fat.

Fructose encourages the liver to increase production of uric acid, a metabolic end product that is

best known for causing gout, but which is also a risk factor for high blood pressure and kidney

disease, and high triglycerides are a risk factor in heart disease. During experiment in 2011,

volunteers who drank beverages with high fructose corn syrup experienced a rise in triglycerides

during the day, which is twice as high when compared to glucose produced sugars. Once fructose

causes diabetes, the insulin levels start to resists; meaning the body loses sensitivity to insulin,

which the pancreas has to work harder to pump more and more amounts of hormones.
 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

02-27-19

How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

In Anahad O’Connor’s article, he discusses about the sugar industry paid scientists to

keep secrecy about the defects of sugars. Basically, they were paid millions of dollars to blame

that saturated fats were the real cause to diabetes and heart problems. One example he used was

that in 2015, Coca-Cola gave millions of dollars to researchers to claimed that it was not the

drinks caused obesity. Furthermore, in Connor’s article, he explained how researchers did it. He

says, “In 1965, Mr. Hickson enlisted the Harvard researchers to write a review that would

debunk the anti-sugar studies. He paid them a total of $6,500, the equivalent of $49,000 today.

Mr. Hickson selected the papers for them to review and made it clear he wanted the result to

favor sugar.” This just proves that the sugar industry are really shady about their work because

they do not want to admit that it’s the fructose and glucose who are causing the problems. To be

honest, I really think that sugar is worse compared to fats because for sugars they cause more

damage. As for fats, you can burn it off by working out and it’s actually advised to have and eat

healthy fats. In recent years, both of the sugar industry and fat industry died down because the

low-fat died gained more attention. Although I said before that fats are better, low-fat diets are

even better because there’s not that much fat within products. For example, low-fat milk, low-fat

yogurts or all those commodity produces. Anyways, as people want to become healthier, they

should just take Bill McKibben’s advice and become a vegetarian, vegan or go organic to save

the planet and reduce all the greenhouse gas emissions that are used to make the sugars and fats.
 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

02-27-19

Eating Made Simple

Marion Nestle indicated that there is too much nonsense given by nutritionists. As

nutritionists try to educate and show people what people should be eating, people should take it

to account that they are the ones who should be motivated to eat healthy. Nestle writes that in the

phrase “eat less” means that people should consume fewer calories, not cut back on all types of

food. I believe this plays a really important part in her writing piece because people misinterpret

this phrase. For instance, they would cut back on all foods or starve themselves to lose weight.

Starving oneself is not healthy because there are internal causes that makes that person sick. In

contrast, it just really means that just eat more food with less calories. Furthermore, Nestle

discusses the cause of obesity. She explains that America’s obesity rate increase dramatically

since the 1980s. More specifically, she talks about sodas. One example she uses is “Pediatricians

pediatrician often see obese children in their practice who consume more than 1000 calories a

day from sweetened drinks alone , in several studies indicate that children who habitually

consumed sugary beverages take in more calories in way more than those who do not.” To be

honest, I totally agree with Nestle because in today’s society, there is sugars in every food there

is. Referencing from the previous readings, it was said that obesity is the number one deadly

cause of humans, even more than cancer and heart problems. Thus, in order for people to lose

weight and maintain their weight is to watch how much calories they are eating. Lastly, the most

important thing is to not consume any sodas or sugary beverages because it will ruin everything.
 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

03-18-19

Eating the Hyphen

In Lily Wong’s writing piece, Wong first starts off with what the word actually means

based on the Oxford English Dictionary, and that in order for her to eat and enjoy her dumplings,

she would need a fork, spoon, chopsticks, and a bottle of ketchup. Yup, Ketchup!

One example that Wong experienced is cutting the dumpling in half and them squeeze

ketchup onto the meat. This just basically proves that once you are raised in a different

environment culture and exposed to different attributes of society, you tend to change the things

around you; from your look, to your personality and the things you eat. Wong also gives

examples of how she would hold her dumplings in the wrong way with her chopsticks and a

Chinese person would just look at her differently. But it wasn’t that she wasn’t Chinese enough,

it was just that her parents grew up in the states, and she herself grew up here; being exposed to a

culture that wasn’t really defined to her. The funny part is that she always refers to Chinatown

when talking about the culture, seeing people, and hearing the Cantonese and Mandarin

languages. Overall, I feel like this assigned reading was so relatable because I’m really picky on

how I like my food, and how much culture and food influenced each other to change over

generations. Being born here, I feel like I’m more exposed to the American culture instead of my

culture. Therefore, whenever I eat Asian food, I’m super-duper, extremely picky, just like Wong

with her dumpling wrap. However, I guess its okay because I will always have that hyphen and

experience both the Hmong and American cultures as my identity.

 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

04-01-19

Brightening Up the Dark Farming History of the Sunshine State

Natasha Bowen’s describes how race, class and farming in Miami, Florida was during its

years. According to her, you won’t find any farms in Florida because it’s such a modern and

uptight place. The place that she was talking about was known as “Little Haiti” because of how

much African American’s there farming for free, housing and trying to support families.

I think it is relatable to all races in this country. Since American farming is usually all

white people, other’s find it hard to actually buy produce from the minorities and are often

looked down upon. For example, when I was still in FFA, it was really hard to see Asian kids in

the programmed filled with white kids, whose families owned farms businesses and other

agricultural productions. However, that did stop me from raising an animal, getting involved, and

recruit other minority students to join FFA. I feel like as people are so used to seeing the white

person at farmer’s market, people just tend to buy it from them white people. However, in the

centrally valley, it’s great because there are so many groups of people who farm here and don’t

actually need to go to farmer’s market to have their items sold. To be honest, I truly respect that

because farming takes time, patience and having the motivation to wake up as early as 3 o’clock

and come home super late, and just having a repeat the days over and over again. Just like the

videos we watched in class, farm labors don’t make enough per day, week, and month to support

their families. Thus, that’s the downside of discrimination in the agricultural business.
 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

04-08-19

Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?

In Jonathan Foley’s article, he really claims about how to reduce agricultural productivity

and sustain the world to become a better place. The five solutions he includes are: Stop

expanding agriculture’s footprint, close the world’s yield gaps, use resourced much more

efficiently, shifts diets away from meat, and reduce food waste. In my opinion, I feel like it is

half possible and then half impossible. My reasons for possible is that yes that can maybe happen

someday in the future when both the people and government come to a compromise of how the

world is changing and how there’s actually no food reaching certain places. Thus, people really

do need to conserve food just like how they conserve energy and water. As for the impossible,

looking at where we at now, there’s no way because the government is so into political nonsense

that it would be “difficult” for them to look at the bright side. If the people were able to do all of

these five solutions Foley jointed down to sustain the world and the government actually had the

time to look at it, then yes, it would lead back to the possibilities. As the world the is growing

every single day, it would only be great if the government would cut back on expanding places to

grow food and people should know how to reduce food waste. I just really think that it should

start with the people then the government because Americans are the one who put these politics

into office. So it would only make sense that people change who they are now by starting within

their communities with plans and motivation, and then expand it to other places. If this is how

we can preserve natural life and reduce food waste, then yes. I feel like this is the way to go.
 Maisee Her

WRI 010-72

04-08-19

Test-Tube Meat: Have Your Pig and Eat It Too

In reference with this reading to the video we had watched in class, I feel like I would be

able to eat “cleanly” because it’s like I don’t know the context of it. I feel like growing food in a

lab is basically like eating chemicals I work with and use in Chem and Bio labs. It’s like we are

eat more “artificially” compared to how we are already eating “artificially” now. Furthermore,

the taste of pork from an actual swine will be different from pork chemically grown in labs.

However, with Robert Kunzig’s stance, he writes “Post long-term goal is super cultured steak -

but that's going to be much, much harder than growing a lot of muscle fibers in smashing them

into party.” Just like he said, of course it going to be harder and more expensive to eat cultured

food. As organically grown food from local actual farms are already expensive, just imagine who

expansive a cultured hamburger would be. To be honest, I just feel like conducting cultured food

in labs or whack because there can be so many contexts that the world doesn’t understand, will

there really be enough t o feed more than 9 billion more in the 10 years. As many people in the

world already don’t have food, have access to food, or have money to actually buy food, the

cultured food will only be a waste on technology as we can expand it to do something greater for

benefiting the world. Last, but not least, I don’t think the cultured food making is possible for the

long run because all people are different and picky about their food; and as everything will be

increasing up in prices in the next few years (or already is now), the mindset of lab grown will be

insanely more expansive than buying organic produce from a local farmer.