An Elephant Crack Up Analysis

Elephant Food

In Charles Siebert “An Elephant Crackup?” the author analyzes the dangerous lack of empathy between the people and elephants that share a home in Africa. Like Michael Moss’s work “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” this lack of empathy between food companies and the majority leads to a conflict of interest for the poor and lower classes of society. Giant Food Corporations bank on the “conscious effort -taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles-to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive” (Moss 262). Leaving the lower class citizens with all the consequences to gain like obesity from eating the junk they food corporations throw on our shelves. Now it has also lead

Further proving the strong similarities between elephants and human Siebert observes that “When an elephant dies, its family members engage in intense mourning and burial rituals, conducting week long vigils over the body” (Siebert 355). In Sieberts research he defines orphan elephants that have watched their families be murdered exhibit behavior such as “post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans” (Siebert 356). This attack on families have adverse effects on people and humans alike and in America is used as a target for Food Corporations as a marketing strategy, These giant Food Corporations use this money, power, and access to victimize the public resulting in the unhealthy path America seems to be traveling due to the mass production of affordable and fattening foods. “The “target” remained the same as it was for regular Lunchables- “busy mothers” and “working women,” ages 25 to 49” (Moss 267). Then the companies use their abundant resources to study who in the family unit is most vulnerable and then attack them. Not literally like the villagers in Africa killing the elephants but from a marketing standpoint which also burdens the mind of the consumer. This attack on the consumer can result in an addiction to the junk food which laces the food industries pockets but is causing the

“this was war. They’d just throw hand grenades at the elephants, bring whole families down and cut out the ivory. I call that mass destruction” (Siebert 358). In Africa hunting elephants for their ivory is a way to make money, a way to live. The big question is whether it is moral or not to tell the humans to stop when it is their main source of income. The humans hunting elephants don't care for an orphan elephant going insane after its mother was murdered as long as the humans have food on the table for themselves and their families. Much like the giant food corporations in America this idea of self gain crowds out any form of empathy. “Lots of things are trade-offs” (Moss 269) Executive of the junk food Lunchables, Drane believes. He also believes that lunchables overall impact on the masses as “anything but a positive contribution to people's lives.” (Moss 269) Studies show otherwise and directly link junk foods to the obesity and hypertension crisis in America. The significance in this is that people are suffering because of the decisions of the few in power and the people in power do not care, resulting in only more exploitation of the vulnerable and furthering the imbalance of power between the rich and the