While scrolling through The New York Times, I came across this article talking about the avian flu. The article talks about a farm that produces chickens for the Tyson company. On this farm, a case of lethal avian influenza was found in the flock of chickens that the farm was producing. How did these flocks of chickens receive this disease of avian flu? That is the thing, they do not know where the disease came from. The Department of Agriculture has done research and has still not identified where the avian flu had come from. Tyson stated that, "this was a bird health issue and not a food safety concern or human health concern." They later added, "there’s no evidence to suggest that any form of avian influenza can be transmitted to humans from properly cooked poultry.” Does the safety of the product not matter to major companies anymore? Most likely, these chickens are raised in poor conditions. The chickens are probably give genetically modified food to grow bigger, cramped up into a small space, and given no daylight. However, that doesn't matter to major companies like Tyson. These major companies are only worried about the mass production of their products. Overall, maybe it's time to change the way major companies run how they produce their food, in order to increase the guarantee of the population's safety.
read everything you can get your hands on
Monday, March 13, 2017
Are we doing enough to keep our food safe?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/dining/bird-flu-avian-influenza-chickens-tyson-foods.html?_r=0
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Utilizing food waste
https://borgenproject.org/reducing-food-waste-feeding-hungry/
The article talks about world hunger problems and how solutions can be made. Corina Balsamo, the writer of the article, states that world hunger is viscous cycle where people are malnourished, meaning they lack essential vitamins or calories. Malnutrition affects many developing countries, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America. These countries are in poverty and they lack the access to funds or resources in order to grow food. Along with poverty, harmful economic systems, conflict, and climate change also contribute to world hunger. And the people that are at most risk for hunger are children. Children who are malnourished contribute to five million deaths per year and have been the cause of diseases like malaria and measles. This creates a cycle where people are stuck and require aid from other countries.
So the solution? Many of them are simpler than we think. One of the biggest problems along hunger is food waste. By reducing food waste or find ways to utilize it to our advantages, we can help world hunger. For example, an unnecessary waste of foods is the practice of throwing away “ugly” or “unwanted” fruits and vegetables. Perfectly edible foods are being tossed because of the different shape they have compared to the “normal” apples or bananas. Instead of throwing them out, a solution would be to not waste them, give it to the malnourished countries, or charities that can then pass it along to them. Another solution to help reduce food waste is to use leftovers. Individuals can help, by buying food that they only need and keeping the leftovers to eat for another day. This doesn’t mean to never go out to eat again, but rather being more cautious with food is the simplest solution we can all do.
The article talks about world hunger problems and how solutions can be made. Corina Balsamo, the writer of the article, states that world hunger is viscous cycle where people are malnourished, meaning they lack essential vitamins or calories. Malnutrition affects many developing countries, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America. These countries are in poverty and they lack the access to funds or resources in order to grow food. Along with poverty, harmful economic systems, conflict, and climate change also contribute to world hunger. And the people that are at most risk for hunger are children. Children who are malnourished contribute to five million deaths per year and have been the cause of diseases like malaria and measles. This creates a cycle where people are stuck and require aid from other countries.
So the solution? Many of them are simpler than we think. One of the biggest problems along hunger is food waste. By reducing food waste or find ways to utilize it to our advantages, we can help world hunger. For example, an unnecessary waste of foods is the practice of throwing away “ugly” or “unwanted” fruits and vegetables. Perfectly edible foods are being tossed because of the different shape they have compared to the “normal” apples or bananas. Instead of throwing them out, a solution would be to not waste them, give it to the malnourished countries, or charities that can then pass it along to them. Another solution to help reduce food waste is to use leftovers. Individuals can help, by buying food that they only need and keeping the leftovers to eat for another day. This doesn’t mean to never go out to eat again, but rather being more cautious with food is the simplest solution we can all do.
Children Are Our Saviors, So Why Aren't We Trying To Save Them?
By "saviors" I mean the children who will one day make our world a better place by, I don't know, finding the cure to cancer or AIDS or achieving worldwide peace or stopping world hunger. By "we", I mean the people who feed these children, who make sure that there's something in their stomachs.
I recently found a Ted Talk video by Jamie Oliver who talks about childhood obesity and how we need to teach our kids about food. I'll link the video here. He talks about how the next generation of people will not likely live 10 years after their own parents' death because of the food that we immerse ourselves in. Our health care bill for our diet-related health problems are more expensive than for those who smoke at all. How food is handled in America is a terrible sight with the most powerful companies being the food industries, labeling their foods the way they analyzed will gain the most profit with bright colors and words that people can't even pronounce. The children are being led down a dark tunnel of food-related problems and we're holding their hands.
His solution for this is for us, the people who should know better, to teach our kids better about the foods they need to eat. I mean, there are some children who don't know what a tomato is. Oliver says, "If kids don't know what stuff is, they'll never eat it." We need to expose the youth to healthier food choices, both at home and in school. Food businesses need to put food education as their main front, supermarkets teach their customers to create easy, healthy homemade meals, and schools should have a garden that is tended and used for the students in home economics to make their own meals. The more children are exposed to this way of seeing food, the more open they will be to eating it and sustaining their fair share of life as their parents desired for them to have.
Are Computer Farms the future?
Agricultural farming may seem like our primary way to receive ingredients for food, but there are other alternatives to developing these ingredients, and that is computational farming. Disliked by some traditional farmers, computational farming doesn't require much space or ingredients to grow a crop that you want specifically, thoughts from an experienced farmer and my teacher Ms. Fletcher states, "I am torn." These crops grown from an isolated container allows the owner to adjust heat, temperature, light exposure, and many other components. In an article I read here, by Mark Anderson, MIT researchers has developed a working and mobile farm which creates an opportunity for people who are interested in indoor farming.
Each crop contains sensors which displays its status and lets the user know what to adjust according to the system preferences. These indoor farms cannot be interfered by random pests such as rats, cockroaches, flies, ants, etc, also disregarding many factors like rain pour, droughts, or any deprivation these plants can grow based on the user's choice. Though funding may be expensive, these indoor farms may prove there helpfulness in the near future, I would consider buying one if I was interested in growing my own food, but others may consider it cool yet lazy because not much work is being put into these plants compared to conventional farming. Nevertheless, the computer farm is still being improved to allow many to have them in house or schools. Overall, computer farming can enable people who wouldn't consider farming outside and give them an opportunity to watch how these plants grow inside their own houses.
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| MIT CityFARM at the MIT Media Lab |
Friday, March 10, 2017
Vegetarianism and It's Benefits on the Planet
In the article that I found, explained ten ways that vegetarianism can help save the planet. I looked more into this when I watched a TED talk by Mark Bittman who explained how what we’re eating is causing our planet extreme problems such as global warming. The problem with what we’re eating is that the farms that these animals are on aren’t all that great. The gases from the manures, the oil burned taking the animals’carcasses to markets that are usually thousands of miles away, the energy ad electricity that is needed to keep the meat cool on the way to those markets, the gas used to cook the mat, the energy used that is needed to plough and harvest the fields that grow the crops that the animals eat, and pumping the water that they need all put all sorts of pollution into the atmosphere which is resulting into our planet’s condition now. The food that is used to feed the animals is also a problem because of the pesticides which the animals eat making us prone to diseases. The animals are all crammed together and it’s just an unsanitary area for both the people working on those farms and the animals because they’re all pretty much squashed together. This can spread E coli and that actually has happened kind about a year or two ago at several Chipotles and there were cases of people getting really sick and hospitalized. Basically becoming a vegetarian is a huge step into decreasing all of these things from happening and helping our planet.
Food Politics and The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/opinion/a-neglected-issue-the-politics-of-the-food-we-eat.html?_r=0
An article published by The New York Times informs its readers that the options we make daily about our food choices affects, not just our own health and bodies, but much more than that. The author explains that some options we choose, have terrible effects on the earth we live on and can be undermining to our communities. They also explain that the main we reason we have been so pulled in by these foods is because of the constant advertising they make and how they never seem to be promoting healthy foods. This article, personally, has made me think about both my previous and present choices in food and I am interested to discover what are good things to choose to consume as opposed to picking things that, in their making, cause negative effects. This source really makes you think whether it is worth buying into all the unhealthy, unnatural food that the majority of this country eats on a daily basis and I think it is such a good thing when an piece of text really think about its topic. Another great thing an article can do, if it is discussing an issue, something that hurts the environment for example, is making the reader want to come up with solutions. After reading about how my decisions can affect the environment, I want to find possible ways to improve this situation and have even started deciding to make healthier and safer choices. It's truly disturbing to realize that the media just barely advertises and promotes a healthier lifestyle and diet because eating organic foods and healthier can truly be beneficial to the consumer, the planet, the weather.
An article published by The New York Times informs its readers that the options we make daily about our food choices affects, not just our own health and bodies, but much more than that. The author explains that some options we choose, have terrible effects on the earth we live on and can be undermining to our communities. They also explain that the main we reason we have been so pulled in by these foods is because of the constant advertising they make and how they never seem to be promoting healthy foods. This article, personally, has made me think about both my previous and present choices in food and I am interested to discover what are good things to choose to consume as opposed to picking things that, in their making, cause negative effects. This source really makes you think whether it is worth buying into all the unhealthy, unnatural food that the majority of this country eats on a daily basis and I think it is such a good thing when an piece of text really think about its topic. Another great thing an article can do, if it is discussing an issue, something that hurts the environment for example, is making the reader want to come up with solutions. After reading about how my decisions can affect the environment, I want to find possible ways to improve this situation and have even started deciding to make healthier and safer choices. It's truly disturbing to realize that the media just barely advertises and promotes a healthier lifestyle and diet because eating organic foods and healthier can truly be beneficial to the consumer, the planet, the weather.
Automation in the food Industry
So, I'm doing my report on automation as you can probably tell from the title. Food automation is not just like the autonomous machines you see in factories building cars and phones and pretty much anything complicated, These machines can be seen in almost any point of food production from planting to processing to delivery. Pretty interesting stuff if you've been following the trend of global automation for a while, what got my attention the most was an NPR article I was reading about how there are disposable drones (Link below)
These drones are made of cardboard and other biodegradable materials and make journeys to areas that need urgent supplies of food and medicine, you know, the stuff people kinda need to live their lives. Once the drone completes its drop off, it dies and disappears. This allows inexpensive transportation and therefore can help save hundreds maybe thousands of people. It's probably a good thing. Each drone can cost between $250 and $1,000 including guidance and navigation systems making these things to be viable The 8 Million dollar project called ICARUS (Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Nonrecoverable Systems). Fitting as Icarus in greek mythology flew too close to the sun and his wings got burned off. This 8 Million Dollar project is being headed by your friendly neighborhood DARPA, DARPA are the same people who brought us entertainment in kicking around their expensive robots in short youtube videos you have probably seen.
So yeah, because of the good folks at the R&D department of the federal government you might just get saved by a flying cardboard box, that can reach you in minutes, better deal than Amazon Prime, I think.
These drones are made of cardboard and other biodegradable materials and make journeys to areas that need urgent supplies of food and medicine, you know, the stuff people kinda need to live their lives. Once the drone completes its drop off, it dies and disappears. This allows inexpensive transportation and therefore can help save hundreds maybe thousands of people. It's probably a good thing. Each drone can cost between $250 and $1,000 including guidance and navigation systems making these things to be viable The 8 Million dollar project called ICARUS (Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Nonrecoverable Systems). Fitting as Icarus in greek mythology flew too close to the sun and his wings got burned off. This 8 Million Dollar project is being headed by your friendly neighborhood DARPA, DARPA are the same people who brought us entertainment in kicking around their expensive robots in short youtube videos you have probably seen.
So yeah, because of the good folks at the R&D department of the federal government you might just get saved by a flying cardboard box, that can reach you in minutes, better deal than Amazon Prime, I think.
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