Analysis Of The Pleasures Of Eating By Wendell Berry

In “The Pleasures of Eating,” by Wendell Berry, I believe his quote, “There is, then, a politics of food that, like any politics, involves our freedom,” signifies the politics in the food industry and how the ignorance of consumers restricts their freedom unknowingly. In the previous paragraph, Berry discussed the, so called, american dream that includes the luxury of “ignorance” to the food that is consumed. He claims that if people truly looked into the food industry, and studied it, they would return to reality. He later makes a point that “we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else”(Berry 99). This statement is made because blind consumers are not free from the hidden truth of our food: such as the process, the chemical additives, and the state of the food we consume. In “A Healthy Constitution,” Alice Waters gave an example of how the transition from processed to whole foods changed the attitude and health of students in an alternative high school. She concluded that the nutritional value of processed foods, which is nearly nonexistent, had a negative effect on the mental state and well-being of students; the alternative, fresh whole foods, were grown locally grown and had greater nutritional value(Waters 141).

He shares the horrible conditions of the animals in the factories: including the tight enclosures where animals break their bones trying to move and the antibiotics given to the animals to keep them alive in the brutal factories where they would usually parish fairly quick(Scully