clevermanka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clevermanka) wrote2010-06-29 10:08 am
clevermanka) wrote2010-06-29 10:08 am
Entry tags:
This is your brain on Cheetos
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funky_peacenik's LJ:
"Many of us think of people who lobby for pure water and pure food as food faddists or health nuts. We call a section in our local supermarket the "Health Food Section." What is the rest of the store called, the "Death and Disease Section"?"
— Carol N. Simontacchi The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children
I don't know how I feel about the topic of the book, but that quote is fabulous.
In other Yes-All-I-Talk-About-Is-Food-These-Days news: Last semester, one of our student workers aas enrolled in a Communications Studies class and she would practice her speeches for the secretaries here. One of her persuasive speeches was about food waste in restaurants and grocery stores. I found it very moving and informative. I asked her to send me her outline for the speech, and I'm putting it here :
Topic: Food waste by corporate food chains
General Purpose: to persuade
Specific Purpose: to persuade my audience to cut down their levels of consumption at corporate food chains
Thesis: Corporate food chains are a major player in food waste in America and contribute to world hunger.
Introduction
I. Attention-getting device: What if I told you that out of 100 percent of food produced, 27 percent is wasted? The New York Times explains that this food has not simply gone bad and is no longer healthy for consumers. A good percentage of perfectly good food ends up in landfills for no good reason. There is something you have to know about before you shop at corporate food chains.
II. Relevance of topic to audience: How many of you have shopped for groceries at Walmart, Target, or Dillons or ate out at a chain restaurant like Applebees or Burger King in the last month? It is hard to stay away from these food chains because of their convenience and quality (not to mention their cheap prices), and why should you? I hope I can show you that there are more repercussions to buying from these large companies than what you see in your refrigerator or on your plate at a restaurant.
III. Establish credibility: Not long ago, I worked at Applebees on Iowa street and I was so surprised to find out how much food was carelessly thrown out for no apparent reason. I am also working exclusively with the manager of Checkers to bring local food to more of the community because of the benefits local food has over corporate food chains and I am a very active member of the local food branch of Environs on campus where we explore these ideas as well.
IV. Thesis: Corporate food chains are a major player in food waste in America and contribute to world hunger.
V. Preview: I will begin by sharing some first-hand experiences related to corporate food waste. Next, we will discuss just how much is wasted, and, finally, the benefits of Americans not participating in corporate food chains.
[Transition: No one really knows how it feels to see large quantities of food being wasted, unless you have had a first-hand experience. My roommate, Josh, recently went under intense interrogation for a “food scandal” that happened at Target.]
Body
I. A. Five months ago, after the Pizza Hut inside Target had closed down for the night, the employees asked Josh if he wanted some of the pizza that was destined for the dumpster. Josh took the pizza and he has suffered severe consequences. Last month, Josh was interrogated by his boss and told he was on a list of people being “watched” for eating the pizza given to him by the people that work at the Pizza Hut inside Target. The people who gave him the food were fired immediately for food that had no other use and, because of policy, would have to be thrown away. We are not talking about food that has the potential to make people sick. This is food that is perfectly good and should be eaten!
Another bogus policy that Josh has encountered is in dairy. In standard policy at the supermarket, yogurt must be thrown away a week before its expiration date because the corporation feels that consumers will not want to buy it.
B. I used to work at Applebee's, and, while I was not interrogated for eating leftovers from the kitchen, I did have a similar experience concerning food waste policy. One night, the rush had calmed down in the restaurant, a cook gave me some of the unused food because it was going to be thrown away anyway, and almost immediately the plate was torn from my hands and I looked up to see my manager intentionally throwing the food into the trashcan in front of me. It made me embarrassed. I felt I had done something wrong. It also made me angry! What was that food wasted for? Company policy?! If food chains will not even allow their hungry employees to eat untouched food after a long night, they are certainly not trying to help out the rest of the world.
II. A. As I stated earlier, 27 percent of food produced is wasted. This statistic came out of a New York Times article by Andrew Martin titled “One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal.” I can only imagine how many families could have been served by all the pizza and Applebee's meals that were insensibly thrown away. Martin’s 2008 article states that, “The Department of Agriculture estimated that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people.” An article by Rachel Oliver, written in January of 2008, titled All About: Food Waste, shows us the effect that a decrease in food waste would have on the world. It states that, according to the U.N. World Food Programme, the wasted food from the United States could “satisfy ‘every empty stomach’ in Africa. (France's leftovers could feed the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished).”
B. There is obviously no way for us to leave this classroom and change the way corporations operate. We are not capable of change on such a large-scale level, but we can focus on ourselves. By giving these corporations our money, we are fueling places like Applebee's and Target. We need to stop contributing our money and our time to these kinds of places.
C. Also in the New York Times article, Martin shows the opposing side’s view, “For cafeterias, restaurants and supermarkets, it was just as easy to toss food that wasn’t sold into trash bins than to worry about somebody getting sick from it.” This is an easy way out for corporate food chains and it is a contributor of hunger in the United States and elsewhere. Such a wide disclaimer leaves out many deserving, hungry people’s needs. This point of view is self-serving and extremely unsympathetic. Of course there are positive initiatives being taken by corporate food chains. Some of the chains are using the disposed food for composting and some donate the food to local food banks. The KU Underground and Wheatfields Bakery in Lawrence are great examples of places that donate their surplus food to the community every week. The key word here, however, is “some.”
D. An article in the San Francisco Gate from April 5, 2010 gives us a good visual of how much food is thrown away in California alone, “More than 6 million tons of food products are dumped annually, enough to fill the Staples Center in Los Angeles 35 times over.” I was sorry to hear that of the 90,000 restaurants in California, there are very few restaurants that are doing something about food waste.
[Transition: There is a way that we can help fix this waste issue. Choosing simply to not participate in corporate food chains that are responsible for a good percentage of hunger-related issues in the US is one way to become involved. There is more to your dinner at a corporate restaurant or supermarket than what meets the eye (or stomach).]
Conclusion
I. Re-state purpose and review of main points: More important than what is on your plate and in your stomach, is what lies at the bottom of a nearby trashcan. The statistics you have heard are not just numbers I have told you for shock-value. They are real-life conditions that people are encountering right now- conditions that can be helped if the rest of the world paid closer attention to what scraps they throw away. I hope you will remember Josh’s story the next time you go into a corporate supermarket as an example of unnecessary waste as experienced by a first-hand individual.
II. Close with impact: We cannot be in every restaurant or supermarket to ensure that food is not thrown away for no reason. What we can do is check out the places before we buy from them to see what they are doing to decrease food waste. You don’t have to stop eating out, just choose places that you can be proud of for shopping/eating at. This takes more effort, but, in the end, your non-participation makes a statement about your ethics and sympathy for the world’s hunger problem. We need to stop fueling these corporate trashcans! Do something for the people around you who are less fortunate and feel a part of this new movement today!
Works Cited
Andrew Martin. “One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal.” May 18, 2008. The New York Times. April 11, 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin.html>.
Jason Arnett (manager of KU Underground). Personal Interview. April 20, 2010.
Jenny James (manager of Wheatfields). Personal Interview. April 20, 2010.
Josh S. Personal Interview. April 11, 2010.
Rachel Oliver. “All About: Food Waste.” January 22, 2008. CNN. April 11, 2010. < http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/ asiapcf/09/24/food.leftovers/index.html#cnnSTCText>.
Tina Mather, Kimberly Daniels and Shannon Pence. “Vast amounts of food trashed despite incentives.” April 5, 2010. San Francisco Gate. April 11, 2010. <http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-05/news/20835488_1_food-waste-food-donations-food-donation>.
Yes, there are several problems I have with her arguments--parts of it verge on "clean your plate, there are starving children in Africa" admonition, which is just silly. And she doesn't research the legal issues involved with giving food away. But I appreciated her emphasis on personal education and responsibility. What a concept!
funky_peacenik's LJ:"Many of us think of people who lobby for pure water and pure food as food faddists or health nuts. We call a section in our local supermarket the "Health Food Section." What is the rest of the store called, the "Death and Disease Section"?"
— Carol N. Simontacchi The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children
I don't know how I feel about the topic of the book, but that quote is fabulous.
In other Yes-All-I-Talk-About-Is-Food-These-Days news: Last semester, one of our student workers aas enrolled in a Communications Studies class and she would practice her speeches for the secretaries here. One of her persuasive speeches was about food waste in restaurants and grocery stores. I found it very moving and informative. I asked her to send me her outline for the speech, and I'm putting it here :
Topic: Food waste by corporate food chains
General Purpose: to persuade
Specific Purpose: to persuade my audience to cut down their levels of consumption at corporate food chains
Thesis: Corporate food chains are a major player in food waste in America and contribute to world hunger.
Introduction
I. Attention-getting device: What if I told you that out of 100 percent of food produced, 27 percent is wasted? The New York Times explains that this food has not simply gone bad and is no longer healthy for consumers. A good percentage of perfectly good food ends up in landfills for no good reason. There is something you have to know about before you shop at corporate food chains.
II. Relevance of topic to audience: How many of you have shopped for groceries at Walmart, Target, or Dillons or ate out at a chain restaurant like Applebees or Burger King in the last month? It is hard to stay away from these food chains because of their convenience and quality (not to mention their cheap prices), and why should you? I hope I can show you that there are more repercussions to buying from these large companies than what you see in your refrigerator or on your plate at a restaurant.
III. Establish credibility: Not long ago, I worked at Applebees on Iowa street and I was so surprised to find out how much food was carelessly thrown out for no apparent reason. I am also working exclusively with the manager of Checkers to bring local food to more of the community because of the benefits local food has over corporate food chains and I am a very active member of the local food branch of Environs on campus where we explore these ideas as well.
IV. Thesis: Corporate food chains are a major player in food waste in America and contribute to world hunger.
V. Preview: I will begin by sharing some first-hand experiences related to corporate food waste. Next, we will discuss just how much is wasted, and, finally, the benefits of Americans not participating in corporate food chains.
[Transition: No one really knows how it feels to see large quantities of food being wasted, unless you have had a first-hand experience. My roommate, Josh, recently went under intense interrogation for a “food scandal” that happened at Target.]
Body
I. A. Five months ago, after the Pizza Hut inside Target had closed down for the night, the employees asked Josh if he wanted some of the pizza that was destined for the dumpster. Josh took the pizza and he has suffered severe consequences. Last month, Josh was interrogated by his boss and told he was on a list of people being “watched” for eating the pizza given to him by the people that work at the Pizza Hut inside Target. The people who gave him the food were fired immediately for food that had no other use and, because of policy, would have to be thrown away. We are not talking about food that has the potential to make people sick. This is food that is perfectly good and should be eaten!
Another bogus policy that Josh has encountered is in dairy. In standard policy at the supermarket, yogurt must be thrown away a week before its expiration date because the corporation feels that consumers will not want to buy it.
B. I used to work at Applebee's, and, while I was not interrogated for eating leftovers from the kitchen, I did have a similar experience concerning food waste policy. One night, the rush had calmed down in the restaurant, a cook gave me some of the unused food because it was going to be thrown away anyway, and almost immediately the plate was torn from my hands and I looked up to see my manager intentionally throwing the food into the trashcan in front of me. It made me embarrassed. I felt I had done something wrong. It also made me angry! What was that food wasted for? Company policy?! If food chains will not even allow their hungry employees to eat untouched food after a long night, they are certainly not trying to help out the rest of the world.
II. A. As I stated earlier, 27 percent of food produced is wasted. This statistic came out of a New York Times article by Andrew Martin titled “One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal.” I can only imagine how many families could have been served by all the pizza and Applebee's meals that were insensibly thrown away. Martin’s 2008 article states that, “The Department of Agriculture estimated that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people.” An article by Rachel Oliver, written in January of 2008, titled All About: Food Waste, shows us the effect that a decrease in food waste would have on the world. It states that, according to the U.N. World Food Programme, the wasted food from the United States could “satisfy ‘every empty stomach’ in Africa. (France's leftovers could feed the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished).”
B. There is obviously no way for us to leave this classroom and change the way corporations operate. We are not capable of change on such a large-scale level, but we can focus on ourselves. By giving these corporations our money, we are fueling places like Applebee's and Target. We need to stop contributing our money and our time to these kinds of places.
C. Also in the New York Times article, Martin shows the opposing side’s view, “For cafeterias, restaurants and supermarkets, it was just as easy to toss food that wasn’t sold into trash bins than to worry about somebody getting sick from it.” This is an easy way out for corporate food chains and it is a contributor of hunger in the United States and elsewhere. Such a wide disclaimer leaves out many deserving, hungry people’s needs. This point of view is self-serving and extremely unsympathetic. Of course there are positive initiatives being taken by corporate food chains. Some of the chains are using the disposed food for composting and some donate the food to local food banks. The KU Underground and Wheatfields Bakery in Lawrence are great examples of places that donate their surplus food to the community every week. The key word here, however, is “some.”
D. An article in the San Francisco Gate from April 5, 2010 gives us a good visual of how much food is thrown away in California alone, “More than 6 million tons of food products are dumped annually, enough to fill the Staples Center in Los Angeles 35 times over.” I was sorry to hear that of the 90,000 restaurants in California, there are very few restaurants that are doing something about food waste.
[Transition: There is a way that we can help fix this waste issue. Choosing simply to not participate in corporate food chains that are responsible for a good percentage of hunger-related issues in the US is one way to become involved. There is more to your dinner at a corporate restaurant or supermarket than what meets the eye (or stomach).]
Conclusion
I. Re-state purpose and review of main points: More important than what is on your plate and in your stomach, is what lies at the bottom of a nearby trashcan. The statistics you have heard are not just numbers I have told you for shock-value. They are real-life conditions that people are encountering right now- conditions that can be helped if the rest of the world paid closer attention to what scraps they throw away. I hope you will remember Josh’s story the next time you go into a corporate supermarket as an example of unnecessary waste as experienced by a first-hand individual.
II. Close with impact: We cannot be in every restaurant or supermarket to ensure that food is not thrown away for no reason. What we can do is check out the places before we buy from them to see what they are doing to decrease food waste. You don’t have to stop eating out, just choose places that you can be proud of for shopping/eating at. This takes more effort, but, in the end, your non-participation makes a statement about your ethics and sympathy for the world’s hunger problem. We need to stop fueling these corporate trashcans! Do something for the people around you who are less fortunate and feel a part of this new movement today!
Works Cited
Andrew Martin. “One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal.” May 18, 2008. The New York Times. April 11, 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin.html>.
Jason Arnett (manager of KU Underground). Personal Interview. April 20, 2010.
Jenny James (manager of Wheatfields). Personal Interview. April 20, 2010.
Josh S. Personal Interview. April 11, 2010.
Rachel Oliver. “All About: Food Waste.” January 22, 2008. CNN. April 11, 2010. < http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/ asiapcf/09/24/food.leftovers/index.html#cnnSTCText>.
Tina Mather, Kimberly Daniels and Shannon Pence. “Vast amounts of food trashed despite incentives.” April 5, 2010. San Francisco Gate. April 11, 2010. <http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-05/news/20835488_1_food-waste-food-donations-food-donation>.
Yes, there are several problems I have with her arguments--parts of it verge on "clean your plate, there are starving children in Africa" admonition, which is just silly. And she doesn't research the legal issues involved with giving food away. But I appreciated her emphasis on personal education and responsibility. What a concept!
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Ugh, this is one of those issues I find really irksome.
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Some of those owners are folks that I want to make it and keep supporting.
My special fave is the Global Cafe (http://globalcafelawrence.net/earth-friendly)because they use biodegradable utensils, even for their take-out, they buy local food, AND are building their own sustainable garden for the fresh greens on their menu.
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My fave there is ANYTHING with Rafi's green chili sauce.
I've bought containers of it from him to take home.
... and I'll eat bread just to have a Cuban Sandwich, it has pork shoulder AND ham, with mustard and pickles, pressed flat and toasted.
oh, and today's breakfast special, I'm dying for either of them:
Breakfast Special - (served all day until it's gone)
Salmon Scramble $ 7.50
Salmon, Red Peppers, Onion, Cream Cheese
Served W Potatoes & Toast
Ole Omelet $ 7.25
Portabello Mushrooms, Bacon, Green Chile & Cheddar
Served W Potatoes & Toast
I actually get asked about this kind of stuff all the time, being where I work and all.
I am surprised that she doesn't mention the Federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act- which basically allows corporations like Applebees and your grocery store to donate food to food banks and pantries without the risk of being sued, should someone fall ill.
* Protects you from liability when you donate to a non-profit organization;
* Protects you from civil and criminal liability should the product donated in good faith later cause harm to the recipient;
* Standardizes donor liability exposure. You or your legal counsel do not need to investigate liability laws in 50 states; and
* Sets a floor of "gross negligence" or intentional misconduct for persons who donate grocery products. According to the new law, gross negligence is defined as "voluntary and conscious conduct by a person with knowledge (at the time of conduct) that the conduct is likely to be harmful to the health or well-being of another person."
Many restaurants donate a ton of food… actually we hit 10 tons donated last October. The problem, I think, is lack of education on the part of the restaurants and those distributing food- more people need to know that this bill exists.
And of course resources on the part of the food bank. For instance, the food bank covering the area of Lawrence is the one that I work at, I have heard rumor of starting the food rescue program in Topeka and Lawrence, but it comes down to resources – do we have the resources to buy more trucks and hire more staff.
I will say that Target and Applebee’s do a lot for their local communities… and perhaps others don’t. But those two org’s I know do.
Applebees and your grocery store to donate food to food banks and pantries
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http://feedingamerica.org/partners/product-partners/protecting-our-partners.aspx
They are one of the first places I go and look to when dealing with anytype of food donation question.
They also have lists of business partnerships, which I always find interesting.
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Re: I actually get asked about this kind of stuff all the time, being where I work and all.
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For example, McDonalds is the largest buyer of potatoes. If people banned McDonalds enough that they stopped making fries, I doubt that all of the sudden the starving would find themselves rolling in potatoes. Rather, the people who grow the potatoes would cut back on growing them because the market has dropped. Food distributions is a bigger economic and political issue than just banning Applebees.
Actually, this happens in Phoenix with some growers, as told by my aunt, and witnessed by my mother. When onion growers cannot sell enough of their crops, they dump them in the dessert because it costs a lot less for them to go dump them than it costs for them to distribute them. The difference between this story and food chains is that they dump them so people can just come and take them. They aren't completely wasted if people come out and get them. My aunt took my mom out to the dumping site and they just grabbed some onions and went home.
If she would have rather just focused it on the expanding waste (and waist of American food habits, she would have had me. Although she wouldn't have really changed my mind since I'm already on that side to begin with.
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She's not asking people to boycott anything (at least that's not what I took away from it), just asking people to think about where their money is going, and is that important to them.
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And that's the crux of it: This is no cure for world hunger, but it might help reduce _local_ hunger.
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There is also a difference between donating the food to a food bank and donating food to your employees. Letting your employees chow down on the food isn't really solving world hunger either. However, I've never known anybody who has worked in food service and not been able to eat the food. We are offered free Subway quite a bit from a family member who works there. My three weeks that I managed to last in food service when I was youngster, I was also able to eat the food if I liked. We could take home the bread at the end of the day that was going to be thrown out as well.
I'm keeping in mind that she forwarded an outline, and perhaps the speech was better presented? And this is for a class, which is part of learning.