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Bread Wine Chocolate Chapter 2 Summary

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The book Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love by Simran Sethi revolves around the theme of decreasing biodiversity in all of the foods our society eats, the reasons why it is decreasing, and what we can do about it. Sethi uses a plethora of stories from her travels to describe the food production process—from deep in the jungles of Ecuador to a chocolate factory in Berkeley. She also explains that with the decreasing biodiversity, there is a decreasing variety in taste. For instance, in terms of wine, there are currently only 8 main grape varieties used to make wine in California; and they are not chosen for their taste, they are chosen for their economic value. Similarly, when it comes to chocolate, the standardization of …show more content…

Every pod has a unique taste, but when big manufacturers mass produce chocolate, they just blend all the different pods together and water the taste down with fillers and sugars in order to create the uniform taste we have all grown to love. Also, coffee has been limited to 50 commercial types of plants by domestication and this is exceptionally detrimental to the future of coffee (p 193). The limited diversity in coffee plants causes the coffee crop to be vulnerable to disease, death, and even extinction. Moreover, the standardization of beer hops has made it so that a majority of people have only ever tried one type of beer in their lifetime; and it tasted like bitter penny water, which they didn’t take a liking to. Bread is the most essential part of human diet. Sethi plainly states that “wheat is the staff of life,” and this is to say that wheat is eaten in copious amounts around the world. So much so that “15 plants [alone] provide 90% of our global food energy intake” and two thirds of which come from specifically rice, corn, and wheat (p …show more content…

Specifically, in lecture we discussed the effects of the Green Revolution, which was a shift made in the agricultural industry in an effort to boost food production in underdeveloped countries and increase crop output. Dr. Waines emphasized that although the green revolution did bring about some benefits (e.g. feeding people in Mexico, creating more food, etc.), it also brought on some detriments (lecture). Not only did the green revolution lessen agricultural biodiversity, but it also allowed the rich to become richer and failed to feed people in underdeveloped countries (lecture). This is not to say that it did not feed any people or a significant amount, but that the amount of people getting fed plateaued and Mexico absorbed a majority of the benefits. The green revolution also promoted a new, industrialized type of agriculture in which machine is favored and of which is extremely pesticide- and water-dependent (Lecture). This means our current system would further deplete our water tables and pollute our air. Not only that, but the large increase in food production has led to a large increase in population. Owing to these facts, it is apparent that this new form of agriculture is highly unsustainable. As previously stated, the book Bread, Wine, Chocolate revolves around depleting agricultural biodiversity in the foods we eat on a daily basis. This is a

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The problem is the developing world is also where people do not have enough money to pay for food, and they are often the ones who have to deal with the effects of climate change most intensely. To sustain the food system, we need to stabilize population growth. In the following chapter 3 “Moving Up the Food Chain” as countries develop they often eat more meat. The United States used to the largest consumer of meat in the world; however, as people in China and other countries continue to grow the economic income they want meat as well.

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Ever since the technology evolution inspired by the rise of military-industrial complex, the government and private corporations funded millions of research with the goal to improve people’s welfare. With such noble ambition in mind, Eisenhower reminds us in his last speech that intellectual and capitalism should be independent. Research for the purpose of welfare improvement should not be hinder or delay by any other special interest. However, in today food industry, research for health improvement are pushed aside by research for sales enhancement. Funded by corporations who sole interest is to increase their profit, Pollen claims that many “food scientists spend their days designing the future of food- its flavor, texture, and packaging (92).”

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(Lappe). Coline Serreau in her movie Local Solutions to a Global Disaster interviewed local farmers. One farmer who did not use chemicals on his crops, claimed that his harvest was better than his neighbor who had used chemicals on his crops, so it appears that the world’s hungry can be fed with the use of organic agriculture. Yet Paarlberg contends that the green revolution is a failure. In Rome there was meeting of five hundred NGO’s such as Friends of the Earth and Greenspace, agreed that the Green Revolution was probably not the best course of action and may have contributed to the rise in world hunger.

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Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma tells how omnivores have a variety of foods to choose from, whether they are nutritious or not. The lack of steadying culture of food leaves us especially vulnerable to the blandishments of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, the better to then assuage them with new products (5). That is true indeed. There is an abundance of food in America, so how are the options limited?

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Although his tone is persuasive and formal, he is straightforward with the tragic events he describes that take place in the underdeveloped countries. Throughout the essay, he makes a connection with his audience. In the beginning of the essay, he directly gets to the problem that he wants to discuss and establishes the message he wants to pass to his readers through his thesis statement. He presents a logical argument with the numerical data, along with dates and numbers that strongly support his claim of a global food problem. By referencing to recent events such as the “World Food Crisis” article of 2008 and the review of “environmental performance of agriculture”, that was published in 2008, he alerts readers that what he is discussing is currently happening, and is going to be a much larger impact on the world in the future.

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2001 AP Human Geography Free Response questions 1. (a) (i)The “Green Revolution” stands for the change in agricultural techniques such as fertilizer and insecticides, which eventually led to the increase of the productivity of the field. (ii)Fertilizer helps the crops to grow faster and bigger. Insecticides kill insects that may damage the crop.

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Grazing and growing feed for livestock now occupy 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet. If these current events continue, meat production is predicted to double between the turn of the 21st century and 2050. Yet already, the Earth is being overpowered by livestock that consume massive quantities of energy and resources, whose wastes contaminate waterways and farmlands, and when eaten excessively, degrade our health. Pollan makes a considerable point when discussing concentrated animal feedlot operations, “The economic logic of gathering so many animals together to feed them cheap corn in CAFOs is hard to argue with; it has made meat, which used to be a special occasion in most American homes” (pg. 67, An Omnivore's Dilemma).

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Likewise, the Maya indigenous people suffered through cultural changes as the diversity of native seeds decreased (Doc 6). The Document emphasizes the contamination the Green Revolution inflicted on the seeds as well as mother nature. From the point of view of the members of the National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous people, the green revolution resulted in a huge

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The graph in document 1, a food/population report by the UN, shows a direct relationship between a growing population and the amount of food supply. This rapid increase is made possible by Norman Borlaug's genetically modified crops that made more food on less land and were able to fight off plant diseases. Document 2, a speech given by a president Truman to the struggling citizens, says that many people in a food crisis are in misery and would do anything to escape it. This is fuel for the Green Revolution and its colossal effects on human’s food supply. Document 7 contradicts this thesis because it states that the people who experienced its effects thought it was a contamination to their culture and natural way of life.

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The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans”

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It resulted in a major increase of food supplies. Documents 1and 2 both prove this by directly showing how the food supply has increased. Wheat yields have been steadily increasing in both Mexico and India (doc 1). The United Nations have also concluded that the general food supply and population on the worldly scale has increased and should continue to do so (doc 2). The Green Revolution also brought about many lifestyle changes to occur.

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The problem of industrial farming is dangerous to the land to our health because there are children who are getting sick from the food they eat. America should be concerned about food production because they don't know what’s in it and that could be dangerous for the children and everyone else. In the article “When A Crop Is King” by “Michael Pollan” argues that how our food is made out of corn and it’s unhealthy for us.

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This was the beginning to the destruction of the environment because the farmers did not consider the affects that over farming would cause. A major problem that over farming has caused is an increase in population, then the over farming isn’t enough, which them causes farmers to produce more and we go back and forth in a never ending roller coaster ride between increase in food supply and increase in population. The world has yet to meet our carrying capacity, and when we do the world will have a major population decline. The other major problem that over farming has caused is the destruction of our environment. The more food we produce,

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Thrasymachus’ View of the Nature of Justice In the Republic by Plato, Thrasymachus argues that justice is what the strongest define it as in order to benefit themselves. Thrasymachus is skeptical of commonly-held views of justice because he believes that a just person receives less and is unhappier than one who is unjust. According to Thrasymachus’ view, people should act unjustly, but have the reputation of one who is just. I agree partly with Thrasymachus’ view of justice because justice is often the way he describes it as “the advantage of the stronger,” but that does not mean that is how it ought to be (338c).

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During the presidency of Harry S. Truman, towards the end of world war II, he was faced with a worldwide depression. The population number began to increase rapidly and half of the world was faced with a shortage of food. As a result, President Truman along with the Ford and Rockefeller foundation initiated research in biotechnology. Subsequently, the Green Revolution was born from these years of research which would eventually impact third world countries. However, despite the Green Revolution’s breakthrough of biotechnology in the 1960’s and the recognition through the win of a Nobel Prize, there is a constant debate about the success of the Green Revolution.

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