food food food

I try to think about the environment when I make my food choices, but sometimes it's depressing and I choose no to think about it. It kind of disturbs me when I look at the ingredients on the back of all the processed food we eat in the United States because I never know all the ingredients are or what they do. It just seems unnatural and unhealthy. I watched a documentary last year, called "King Corn", that really changed the way I looked at the food industry particularly the production of corn in the United States.

In "King Corn", two recent college graduates went to rural Iowa to grow an acre of corn to discover the inner workers of the corn industry. They realized that most of the corn grown in the United States is genetically modified and not for people to eat. It's either grounded up for animal feed, so there is corn in our beef, or it is used to create corn syrup, which is used as a sweetener in almost all processed foods and drinks. Basically they discovered that corn is in almost everything we eat in such vast amounts that it's can be found even in our hair!! I found it incredibly weird to think about. After watching that movie I swore I'd eat all organic and natural food, but that just isn't a feasible option for me because of the cost of those foods. While I was abroad in Israel, I ate all locally grown fruits and vegetables. It was great and I knew that the foods I ate over there were not only better for me but better for the environment.

I think all the processed and frozen food I ate over the past two days, like the frozen dinner I had and the cereal I ate for breakfast. Those foods cause the most environmental damage because all the wheat, corn and other vegetable ingredients had to be grown, packaged and shipped to the factories. Then at the factories they are processed with who knows what, re-packaged then shipped to the grocery stores where I bought them. All the energy used to produce those foods create a lot of environmental damage. I wish there were more organic and local affordable options here in the United States, so that the food I consume isn't as environmentally damaging!