Regardless of what foods we eat or diets we follow, we all have something in common: we’re all consumers. None of us are plants, we can’t survive off of sunlight (unless plants are pretending to be humans, in which case we have bigger things to worry about than our diets), we need food to survive, and you can bet food corporations are going to try to capitalize on that. If there’s money to be made, someone is going to try to sell it. Cheap? Organic? Low-fat? Gluten free? There’s a market for that and you’ll be bombarded with advertisements everywhere you go. TV, billboards, Instagram, your annoying neighbor Karen who thinks she knows everything about proper dietary care because she saw a special on Dr. Phil, they’re all trying to sell you things. Some are forward with their intentions when they use slogans like “pile it high and sell it cheap,” which makes it clear that they know their customers want cheap food, and if the food can be piled high then it’s probably not healthy produce that would rot before a dent was even made in the pile (Pollan, 184). People have less time to cook, and corporations know that, so they sell you something cheap even if the product is unhealthy. The health benefits don’t matter, what matters is that they’ve got your money. Have a lot of free time, money, and enough freezer space to fit the carcass of a deer so that you’ll always have fresh meat? Read Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food to learn about all the unrealistic options he provides to try and sell you on the idea of healthy living, because that’s what he’s doing. It might just seem like yet another informative book, but he’s actually trying to sell you on a certain lifestyle, just like the big food corporations. Their goals might be different, but they’re still trying to sell a product to you, the consumer. And how are we supposed to know who to believe? With so many different food lifestyles, how do we know which is right? It begins to make consumers feel less like people and more like just another cog in the machine. At the end of the day, how can I even prove that I’m real? How can you prove that you’re real? In truth, how can any of us prove that we are real? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that I paid $4.99 for a box of Cap’n Crunch and couldn’t be happier. Pollan can eat his plants, I’ll be over here spooning myself some diabetes, and you can decide what you want to do.
