Food Inc. : How Our Food Is Made

Ever since kids meals came around, children have driven
their parents crazy in order to get one from a restaurant 

When I was younger in the 4th grade, I really favored a Happy Meal from a McDonald's restaurant. I like the food it had, but the main reason why bothered my parents so much for one was because of the toys it had. Throughout my childhood years, I failed to realize the main purpose of the excitement that waited for me within the box.

In the documentary titled, Food Inc., viewers were sent on a learning field trip that shows us the truth about how our food in the happy meal is being made.

When McDonald's first started off, it was a regular restaurant. Back in the 1950s, many restaurants were. similar and they had someone's food delivered to them by someone in roller skates. One day, the owners decided to cut down on the cost of making their food and created a new process. This new process began a new idea on how restaurants are going to work in the future. In their new process, the McDonald brothers introduced the factory way of making food.

The factory way had less workers with lower pay. This helped the McDonald brothers make help money by making food at a lower cost. Coming with this change, McDonald's became a very rich company that it is today because of these changes.

Ever since restaurants started, they have bought their meats from four major companies. These companies are Tyson, Swift, National Beef, and Cargill.  With that, the American Beef Supply is majorly controlled by these companies. In 1980, these companies only owned 20% of the supply. Now, these companies now own 80% of the beef supply.

Now that the four companies own the American Beef Supply, they have lying to people about how there animals are treated and made. They would say the animals are raised on a farm, but, they are really raised in a factory. Also, the animals are not being treated right. For example, chickens that are raised in factories are being mutated to grow faster and the owners of the factories make their muscles grow bigger than usual.

Chickens are forced to live in tight spaces in factories 

Since corn is very cheap, these major factories buy corn in order to feed their cattle or chicken. It only costs about 50 cents in order to make it. Since corn costs less, it is used as main ingredient that is used for their products. Not only is it used for the companies products, it is used to make many things we eat and drink. Products like, juice, Kool Aid, Ketchup etc..., are made with a certain type of corn.

Even though the cattle is fed corn, these animals were meant to eat grass. The only reason why they were corn was because it made the cattle bigger and fatter. Since these animals were meant to eat grass, them eating corn would result to having bacteria and microorganisms in their stomachs. All the bacterias that ended up in the cattle would result in them having E. coil in their stomachs.

In 2001, a little boy named Kevin Kowalcyk died of hemolytic-uremic syndrome. His death was caused by eating ground beef that had E. Coli O157:H7. After twelve days of having it, he passed down away at the age of two years old. Since E. Coli was becoming to be a problem, the beef companies started soaking their meats in ammonia.

Now that the companies are controlling the E. Coli in their meats, they are selling their meats at a cheaper price. Foods that are heavily subsidized are one of the cheapest foods that are bought. Obesity, diabetes, and poverty are linked to all of this because these foods are high in calorie, and the cost of the food is very low so this is causing people to be overweight.

Out in the country, there is a man name Joel Salatin that owns his own farm and animals and he sells his own products. But, according to the USDA, this man's farm is considered "unsanitary." They considered this because his farm is open air and they do not use ammonia.