Jake's+Comparison+Essay

I selected the off the farm comparison essay because it is a recent development in the news these days. Determining what food is better for you is hard to determine. Each idea has it’s pro’s and con’s. Being a farmer my self most of the food I eat is raised off the farm but there are some things we need from grocery stores. But it is America’s dependency on the convienience of grocery stores that has changed our diets for the worse. Off the Farm or Off the Shelves Today the food we eat comes from all parts of the world. We get our meat from commercial feed lots and slaughter houses. Our vegetables come from all over the united states frozen in packages or shrink wrapped so it stays fresh until it actually arrives at the grocery store. Our fruit is imported from all over the South American countries. However today we are in a struggle for which foods are actually better for our health. Should we be eating organic foods or store bought foods. To really be able to determine which foods are better for us we must look at each individual food item and compare the actual products together. In today’s world, we find ourselves tied to super markets for our food. What we must look at though is have we sacrificed the quality of our food for the sake of convenience. Today farm fresh items are a sought after commodity. However if we look back but only 5 years ago, the only people eating farm fresh vegetables were the farmers that grew them to live off of and turn a small profit. As an American people would rather go to the grocery store than to tend to a small family garden for food. In 2008 alone we grossed 4,820 million from our own grown vegetables. In our imports though we took in 8,395 million dollars worth of produce. Who is to say though that the grocery vegetables are not as healthy as farm fresh vegetables. The freezing of the vegetables does make their year round availability much more appeasing and packaging allows them to be kept for a longer period of time. The only issue you find is the chemicals put onto these products to make them grow faster and keep the pesticides off of them. However on a farm fertilizer is still used to help the plant grow. However good farmers use natural fertilizer such as manure for their plants. Moving into the snack field, which has crippled American health, there is no equivalent to a farm food. However most of the problem with these such foods are what they contain within them. Many of these snack foods are made with trans fats, saturated fats, and large amounts of sodium and sugar. These types of foods should be avoided, or at least eaten sparingly. Many of the foods we find in stores though that are guaranteed fresh are actually not as fresh as we would like to think. The example I have chosen to use is eggs. eggs are used universally in all styles of cooking. However the question remains: how old are our eggs we find in our grocery stores. Many people, though uneducated, never agree on the age of the eggs that reach our shelves. The average egg on an American grocery store shelf is between three to four months. Due to advances in refrigeration and the ability to keep eggs fresh in storage allows them to grow in age before reaching our homes. Though the difference seems subtle many will attest to the difference between store bought eggs and farm fresh eggs. Though there is no real organic egg or the greatest misconception of all would be a free range egg. No chicken is free range. With no way to coop a free range chicken the eggs are scattered. However these terms refer more to the feed they receive, than how they live. Factory chickens are kept four hens to a pen barely enough to house one hen. And they are fed hormones to speed growth and production. However on a farm they receive more natural diet with bugs, natural foliage, and common balanced food to regulate their growth. The most disturbing of the food processing industry is our meat. The meat we consume in the U.S today is by far the worst food to ever reach our plates. Processed meats such as hot dogs, bologna, sausage, ham and other packaged lunch meats. Eating these meats may increase your risk of colorectal, kidney and stomach cancer. Not only must we consider the actual state of the meat. There is also the issue of where these actual animals come from. Many of them are kept in feed lots in inadequate space in a multitude of numbers to meet the quota for the month. Many of these animals that are slaughtered young are fed hormones to make them grow faster and larger. This increase in size makes them loose vigor allowing more diseases and problems to occur through the herds. And this is the meat we are putting on our table’s? I think I will take the smell and raise my own beef, pork, and chicken. The life of a farmer is tough these days. But there will be a bounce back from the small family farm. The actual produce we find in stores isn’t so healthy after all. The foods we find in stores will never compare to the foods we raise on a farm. The quality is better. The food is cleaner. And the overall satisfaction is higher. So now the question remains: Why are we still buying food from the grocery stores?