Looking Deeply at a Social Problem

food

Ocean Blues

By Miles Mahowald

I will never forget the first time I went free-diving in Laguna Beach, California. The water was crystal clear, the ocean floor was covered in beautiful rocks and kelp that supported an army of fish. Everywhere you looked underwater there were beautiful fish to be seen. This was like heaven to me, being able to escape into this underwater world that was flourishing with life and color was something of immense value and importance to me. As I began to grow older, my love and passion for the ocean grew with me. My understanding of the importance for ocean conservation is something that I knew needed to be a part of societal importance.

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Teatime with Alice

By Roomee Doo

I never experienced acute hunger until that time I lived in Old Pasadena. Most nights I had a hard time falling asleep, the last meal being a small pastry I ate at my second part-time job. It’s amazing how quickly I forget that feeling. I began to take food for granted as soon as hunger was no longer my problem. When have we become so desensitized to the value of food? Mealtimes are no longer treasured, and the idea of food has become reduced to calories that give us energy to work. It has become normal to believe everyone has access to food and assume that others share the same food wealth. Yes, we do hear about food insecurity and know that it exists, but we don’t experience the constant pain of our stomach trying to digest itself from starvation. It’s just words on paper and statistics on a screen.

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Not a Food Desert — Food Apartheid

By Breann Barnes

More accurately I call this societal issue food apartheid because the availability of food choices disproportionately affects communities of color. A food desert sounds as though it is the dust bowl, as though it occurred naturally. This is not the case, so for the rest of the essay I will use the term food apartheid. It should be everyone’s choice to eat healthy or not, and I believe people that are experiencing food apartheid do not have this choice. I believe this needs to change.

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The Price of Meat

By Lap Nguyen

For millions of Americans, meat is the main source of protein and a staple part of their diet. The food system involved in creating this common resource consists of practices and infrastructure that produce, process, transport, and eventual consumption of that resource. Within this system, factory farm institutions are responsible for creating almost 95% of the meat that Americans consume. However, if we begin to closely inspect this institute, we can see that it is one of the worst, most disgusting, dirty, awful, cesspools of despair that prioritizes money over people and the planet.

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Factories of Destruction

By Madeline Russell

[Factory farming] is a point of convergence for so much unnecessary violence that affects already vulnerable communities, destroys the environment, and is encouraged by our capitalist economy because it maximizes profit. Because factory farms are solely focused on saving money and time, it is no surprise they don’t treat animals properly… while it might seem obvious that factory farming hurts livestock and other animals, what isn’t so obvious is its negative effect on humans.

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Access to Nutritious Food Should Not be a Luxury

By Anonymous

Access to healthy and nutritious food should not be a thing of luxury, and the people living in the United States of America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, should not be starving. The options shouldn’t be just sugar, salt, fat. What can be done to overcome the obstacles that are keeping communities from an essential part of human existence.

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