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Home Opinion Educating yourself could prevent health threats from food
  • Opinion

Educating yourself could prevent health threats from food

By
Emmie Jones
-
September 1, 2010
0

More than 18 food recalls have been listed on usrecallnews.com in the last month. Besides our eggs, meat and chocolate, it is affecting our pets, too. Dry pet food brands like Iams and Eukanuba were listed on the recall news website. Hundreds of recalls within a year are listed; which is insane. You, the consumer are a victim of the carelessness at the plants as well as unconcern at home for what you put in your fridge and cupboards.

The food industry tries to regulate the systems they have, but it’s a very challenging job when demand is out of control. The consumer should start making changes in their consumption life to prevent these scares from happening in your home. It’s interesting to see how society reacts when there is a recall on a food item.

This is not the first time in our history of a food recall and certainly will not be the last, simply because of convenience. The agenda of this industry is to create excellent availability of products and make large sums of money. The latter is the wrong motivation, which will always result in low quality products being sold.

I believe many large corporation-employed farmers do not have intentions to produce poor food, but they are only allotted so much time and money to pump out enough items for the consumer. Without the help of time and money, things do get sloppy and forgotten. So is this the industries greed or is it the demand of human consumption that farmers can’t keep up?

Greed is a huge factor in any industry on the face of the planet. There is no way to make greed just disappear either. If the consumer can manage the money flow for the big corporations, things could possibly get better.

Maybe if the demand for convenient food weren’t so high, the quality of things would rise again. Maybe changing our diets to go with the natural seasons rather than buying things that aren’t in season could help the flow of mass production. When I go to the store, I think, “Am I making the right people money?” I want to eat real food with real nutritional value. But with the mass production of food I think we’re losing the meaning of what that is.

People like the convenience of going to the grocery store on a whim and having everything under the sun available to them. Big food producing companies want their items to be convenient for their consumers. If it’s convenient, the consumer will likely keep coming back.

But when someone somewhere forgot to do one of the most important parts of their job, a contamination happens. Again, this could be due to lack of time, skills, energy, and ambition or short of the right tools for the job. When quality of work and care subsides, production eventually will halt because something goes horribly wrong. I think the food industry needs to reflect on these things in order to prevent a recall at their plant.

People are not fully educated on where their food comes from either. Recently I watched a documentary on the food industry called Food, Inc. I was disgusted with the way our country produces food items.

Just watching one documentary and seeing through history how often items are infected by some bacteria has made me drastically change my shopping habits. It has also made me be aware of what I’m purchasing at the grocery store. It should be up to the consumer to know what they are buying and where it’s coming from. Just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean it is better for you. If the food producing industry doesn’t care about my health, I should.

Good food and good for you food is being lost with demand rising because of increase of population and irresponsible eating habits. Consumers, it’s time to take the time to learn what you are actually buying and know whose pocket book you are helping out.

Local farmers care about what they are doing, if they didn’t, they would be growing for bigger corporations. Healthy choices and smart shopping will not just make you feel good physically but may even save your pocket book from going belly-up.

Also, being conscientious of what you’re eating will prevent infections like salmonella, hepatitis and Staphylococcus Aureus, a common staph infection. I’m not willing to let a large corporation’s laziness and greed put me or a loved one in the hospital.

Emmie Jones
The Globe
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