THE SECRETS THE FOOD INDUSTRY DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW

How many of you have ever watched the documentary FOOD INC. by Robert Kenner?  I watched this documentary over the weekend and was astounded with what I saw.  I never really gave much thought to where our food came from.  That is not until Carla and I decided to make a change in our families and our community.  I personally think that every person that does the grocery shopping and cooking in your home should watch this documentary.  I would like to share with you some of the highlights.

• Grocery stores stock over 47,000 items to provide you with different choices.  The prices will range from very low to what we would consider high quality.  Yes we think that if we pay more for the item it must be better for us.  Well hang on to your wallets.  These 47,000 items you have to choose from only comes from a handful of major food companies.

• The vegetables you buy at your grocery store that looks so nice and ripe.  Do you think they came from the farm like that?  The answer is no.  Take tomatoes for example they are picked while they are green and then ripened with ethylene gas.  Yes a chemical, not the natural process. 

IS IT SAFE?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT CHEMICALS IT CONTAINS?

• How about corn?  Did you know that almost every thing we buy that is processed has some form of corn in it?  Take a look at the products in your cabinet I can guarantee you will find that it contains corn.  Do you know why this is?  Well our government policy is to pay our farmers to overproduce this product.  It is so easy to store and will last a long time.  Scientist had to come up with new ways for us to use it.  Now it is almost all of our food. 
• Think back to when you were a child or ask your parents what the shelf life was of the food that was brought into the home.  Now look a those same items and their shelf life now.  You will see a huge increase in the shelf life of many items.  Why is this?  It is because of the chemicals and preservatives that have been put into them.  (Makes buying locally and fresh from the farm a lot more appealing doesn’t it).

• Corn is such a dominant crop we have started feeding it to our animals.  Take cows for example.  When you come across a pasture of cows what do you normally see them doing or at least should be doing.  Grazing, eating grass is what cows were engineered to eat.  Instead we have started feeding them corn.  This is harder for them to digest and because they are not engineered to eat this way they get sick.  So what does the Food Industry do?  The pump them full of antibiotics to keep the healthy.  This has to be passed on to us the consumer.  Not to mention the chemicals that are put on the meat in the processing plants. 






• Have you noticed that the size of a chicken breast has almost doubled in size in the last 50 years or so?  Why, because they are given growth hormones to re-engineer the chicken.  Guess what the chickens are feed?  You guessed it CORN.  Most chickens that are on factory farms never even see day light.  We have gone from growing a chicken in 3 months to 49 days.  The conditions in these chicken farms are just awful.  You would think that with the amount of chickens being raised that the farmers would be getting rich.  Think again.  The average chicken farmer for the large food companies average about $18,000 a year.  Not only that the food companies do not want the media or the public for that matter to see the conditions.  Farmers are threatened if they even think about letting the media into the chicken houses.  They would loose their contracts.  Also the farmers are going more and more in debt because of the demands and upgrades needed to stay in compliance with the food companies. 

• The hog processing plants are no better on average there are 2000 hogs slaughtered an hour, that is 32,000 hogs a day. Many of the workers become ill from handling all these hogs and the guts. 

Here is a fact that will shock you.  The majority of the regulators today over the Food Producers were once the executives of these companies.  Hmmm, that makes you think.  The sad thing is that you can be sued or even arrested for speaking against these food companies.  Wow, what has happened to our society when things that may cause cancer, harm or even kill people are protected by big business.  Folks you have the power.  The problem is we do not use our voices enough to change the system.  Far to often we think that there is no point to fighting a fight that can’t be won.  People are getting rich off of other peoples tragedy or illness.  WE DO HAVE  A VOICE AND WE CAN CHANGE.  IT STARTS AT HOME.  You have a choice of the food you buy.  The reason that the food industry has so much power is because we gave it to them.  We stopped taking a proactive stand in what our families eat.  We became a nation of convenience.  HELP US MAKE A CHANGE.  WE WILL ALL BENEFIT FROM IT.