(source: terrapass.com) The reality of fertilizer is that while it supports our food systems in the world, it can contribute even more to the pollution. The byproduct and the production itself of fertilizer contribute much to the carbon foot print of the world. The ecological condition that exists involves the climate impact of food and the overall function of the… Read more »
During the past few weeks, we have learned a lot of important concepts about where our food comes from and what we sacrifice in order to keep food on our tables. I found it very interesting and a bit daunting to learn about the amount of petroleum that it takes to make our mass production of food possible. Petroleum is… Read more »
In Lessons eight and nine we looked at water and food, both of which are vital aspects of living. More specifically we saw how different parts of the world have adapted to their climates so that they can accommodate their needs. Many countries have found ways to fix their deficits, such as Israel who went from being one of the… Read more »
(source: http://lh4.ggpht.com/) Our world is filled with various cultures and each culture has cuisine that is a representative of their norms, behaviors, and other feat that would mark how one might consume food. In my paper, I compared the food of a US family and that of a Bhutanese family. In the US family, there was an abundance of imported… Read more »
In his photographic essay Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, Peter Menzel provides an intimate look at what families around the world eat. Of the many places featured, two countries stand out in particular: Chad and the United States. In Chad, refugee families subsist on rations of various grains provided by the World Food Program. Families pose by large bags… Read more »
The modern world is divided economically into the global north and global south, or simply put, developed and developing nations. Due to the economic inequalities between developed and developing countries, there are vast disparities in the daily lives of the citizens of France for example, and those who call Chad home. While families in France visit a local market… Read more »
Guatemalans’ inability to break out of poverty is a direct relationship to the late 20th century global food and fuel price shocks that targeted the cost of imports that developing countries couldn’t keep up with (Clapp, 64). After the inflation of interest rates and import taxes on fuels in the 1970’s, the IMF and World Bank sought a remedy to… Read more »
While clicking through the slide of each photo within the Hungry Planet gallery, I instantly felt a sense of sadness and even shame when I stumbled across the photo of the Aboubakar family from Eastern Chad. Their weeks’ worth of food supply was practically less than what my two-person household consumes on a daily basis. There were no processed or… Read more »
Peter Menzel’s Hungry Planet depicts the various dietary and health lifestyles choices from various families around the globe. The Western diet, generally consisting of red meats, refined grains, processed foods, high fat and sugar content, as well as large food chains such as McDonalds have become popular making its way to countries like Japan, but not so much in countries… Read more »
Reading the chapter “Cheap Food, Hunger, and Obesity” from Michael Carolan’s The Real Cost of Cheap Food was particularly eye-opening with regards to the obesity epidemic in the U.S. Living in Spain, I hear plenty of commentary about “fat Americans” and their propensity for eating Big Macs. This behavior is typically blamed on individual laziness and a need to want… Read more »