Wendell Berry The Pleasures Of Eating Summary

In early texts on European farming, agriculture was regarded as “agri and cultura, and food was seen as a vital part of the cultures and communities that produced it.” Today, industrial farming dominates, as food is seen as a product and farming is organized along factory lines (Pretty 54). In the past, agriculture was defined as field cultivation and the harvests were held in high esteem. In our modern world, food is not appreciated as it was and is now a foreign aspect of our lives in both how it is viewed and produced. In the essay “The Pleasures of Eating” by author Wendell Berry, he criticizes how today’s urban population is so blind to how their food is produced and how the food industry does not help people understand. Berry wants to

He is often presented with the question, “What can city people do?” after finishing a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life. From this, the audience can trust that his answer is credible because he has personally experienced the agriculture industry from being a farmer and understands the entire food process and details of the food industry. Berry goes on to strengthen his argument by telling his audience how he prefers his food to be produced saying, “I like to eat vegetables and fruits that I know have lived happily and healthily in good soil, not the products of huge, bechemicaled factory-fields,” that he saw in the Central Valley of California. This shows ethos because he gives a personal example based on his knowledge of food production and how it has affected the way he eats, hoping to persuade his audience to be more conscientious of the food they eat in order to appreciate it more. Berry explains that he gets more pleasure from his food by knowing where it was raised, how it was treated, and how it got from the farm to the table which helps to convince the reader to try to learn more about their food and know under what conditions they want their food to be

He appeals to the audience’s emotions by focusing on the unhealthy nature of how our food is tampered with and how it was raised before it reaches the table. People sit down to a meal of “anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived” and lack the knowledge of the reality of that what they are eating is completely processed and unhealthy. If people knew the journey of their food, they would be disgusted and would have a new perspective on the horrid food before them. Berry then goes on to say that if people actually knew what was happening to their food before it got to their table, it would not be as appetizing or appealing. People would rethink the hamburger they are eating if they knew it came from “a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot.” If people knew the nauseating truth about their food and the process that it goes through, people would be repelled and angered. The food industry does not reveal how it mistreats their animals for the benefit of production, which leads for people to continue to enjoy the bountiful production of processed foods. Berry appeals to the audience’s emotions by giving grotesque examples that he felt