I visited each site briefly in the Eye Opener section: Food Tour, Eating Green, and Score Your Diet. I decided to further explore on the Food Tour because I thought I could get some interesting new facts!
Basically it was a virtual process of where our food comes from and what is done with the fertilizers, land, slaughter house, super market, and much more.
Some interesting facts I learned:
Ferilizer Facts: Producing feed for the U.S. livestock, consumers about 22 billions pounds of fertilizer annually, and that energy used to manufacture it coule provide one years worth of power for about 1 million Americans.
Factory Farm: I was not aware that Farm animals in the US are not protected by strict laws and are often tortured and/or badly mistreated.
Animal Feed: Livestock are fed trash! At one point they were even feeding cattle with other cattle remains (YUCK!) which caused Mad Cow disease, which is illegal now.
Manure Lagoon: The methane released from livestock and their manure is equivalent in environmental destruction to the annual release of CO2 from about 33 million automobiles.
Super Market: Contaminated food cuases about 5,000 deaths each year. About 1/5 of them are linked to meat poultry, dairy and egg products. (Any one hear about the peanut recall?!
Hospital: The CDC estimates that contaminated food causes about 76 million illnesses, 325,00 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths each year. The main culprits ranging from hamburgers, milk, and eggs.
Obviously if I put in all the things I learned from this site, it'd be a little over kill. I just put in the ones I thought were most interesting. If anyone hasn't seen this website I highly recomend it. There are tons of facts. Although these facts were alarming, I have a hard time believing that all farms contribute to some of these horrendous things (such as the cruelity and contamination), but it was interesting learning about them all! If anyone was considering being a Vegitarian, this site will pull you towards that for sure!
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Jayme,
ReplyDeleteWow, good info in you post. I never ever thought that manure was a problem for our environment, let alone such a big problem. Knock on wood, I haven't gotten food poisoning yet. I am not ready to be a vegetarian, I love a steak on the BBQ.
Jayme,
ReplyDeleteWho knew that the release of methane from farm livestock could be the equivalent amount of CO2 as 33 millions automobiles?!!!
It is sad to hear that people eat the meat of poorly treated animals. I don't think I will be eating peanuts for a while with all of this outbreak. Thanks for informing me of the outbreak.
Jayme-
ReplyDeleteYou shared lots of great facts within this post. I too read the statistics on the food tour and was taken back by every single one. I have heard about the peanut recall, I was going crazy for a while because I eat peanut butter on just about everything. 5,000 deaths a year is a high number for contaminated food. Staying away from the PB for a few weeks is doable considering the potential consequences.
Comming from a small farm town, a lot of this is hard to believe. After thinking about it though, it's hard not to believe. I just wonder why our diets in the U.S. are so much different than the diets of people in other countries.
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