Fast Food: the death of culture and lives

          The reading written by JBK and Professor Dyer discusses how cultures are divided by the microbes in a particular region as seen in their “traditional” foods. A majority of these traditional foods are in reality created by the fermentation process due to the local microbes: cheese, wine, beer.  However, these culinary cultural boundaries were able to form due to the isolated natures of population. Nowadays we have a very consumeristic globalized community. We have developed a culture of fast food because we lead fast lives; we no longer have the time to spend cooking our  A chef, Jamie Oliver, has made it his life’s mission to educate America on what has happened to our food and how it has led to incredibly high rates of obesity and heart disease. These two health problems are the leading cause of death in the US and it is caused by the food that we eat and feed to our children.  His wish is “for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity”.  I think it is interesting that young adults my age talk about how they are so diverse. We start listing off the places our parents and grandparents   The problem is they have no idea how to make it themselves.  It feels as if the traditional recipes will die out with the older generations because we have lost the value of cooking food.

meals. Therefore, as a society, we have let large corporations, which are more interested in profit than health, make our food so that we can simply purchase it and eat it. Often the food we each is not natural but is instead heavily chemically processed, practically eliminating our natural microbial environment that had defined our food in the past. We have replaces microbes with machines to make
“food” which has been so processed it doesn’t decompose.

came from. A culture is often recognized by the traditional food, and the people my age talk about the food that these older generations make. “Oh that smell reminds me of the *blank* my Oma used to make for me”.

         Of course this is an over simplification, however I still believe it vital to recognize that the American culture is a melting pot of cultures, yet the prevailing cultures emphasizes how to do as little work in the kitchen because nobody has any time to spend their. This leads to an inability to cook and poor health. I believe we need to rearrange our priorities or cultures and lives will be lost.