Wilk Response: How Far Does My Food Travel Before It Reaches My Plate

           While currently reading Wilk’s “Home Cooking in the Global Village”, I am reminded of how far the food on my place has come from to get to me. Wilk mentions a can of Fuze fruit juice to make these connections. Ingredients of the drink came from various places abroad and contain several preservatives to get them to our grocery stores. However, the actual packaging mentions nothing of how “exotic” the drink is. Instead the beverage claims that it is “an energizing and stress reducing” product (yeah, right). He mentions the ingredients in the drink and where they may have come from (Brazil, India, Ecuador, China, etc.). These are simply educated guesses though because actually finding out where your food comes from leads to dead ends and more questions.                                                        

Before reading this I did have somewhat of an idea of the connections between extortion and our food. For those that aren’t aware, a vicious cycle goes on to obtain our food at the prices we do (Diaz 2009). The citizens of developing countries have back-breaking jobs that pay very little (pennies on the day for some) (Diaz 2009). These jobs cannot be filled by people that actually consume the product because they will not take them (because they don’t pay enough for such hard work) (Diaz 2009). These jobs then get outsourced to other countries for low wages (Diaz 2009). The workers live in poverty and work several hours a day (way more than eight) (Diaz 2009). The irony is that they are working to harvest food for the richer and more powerful countries, but do not have enough food to feed themselves or their families (Diaz 2009). I learned this from watching a documentary for an Honor’s Sociology class last semester. The documentary is titled: “The End of Poverty” (http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=pktOXJr1vOQ&list=TLIid086AUfgI). I will admit that the documentary is very biased, but it does contain copious amounts of truth. I’m over simplifying the cycle here, but this gets to the jest. The documentary explains the cycle very well, but not many people have one hour and forty five minutes to explore such a depressing topic.

                         http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=pktOXJr1vOQ&list=TLIid086AUfgI

While taking Wilk’s concept about the Fuse drink into consideration, I decided to tie this to a more local arena (me). I love mandarin oranges! They are so tangy and wonderful, plus they provide a giant amount of Vitamin C. So I decided to look at a can of them and see where its origins may lie according to the can. The can said it was “a product of China” and was “manufactured for Dole® Packaged Foods, LLC, Westlake Village, CA”. So clearly this was not totally grown in the USA. The actual oranges probably came from China. The processes to make them sweeter and prettier probably happened in California. So this links my oranges to two very far away distances. Why couldn’t the oranges come from Florida? Florida is the orange state after all. This is most likely due to the price increase that would result from Americans harvesting the oranges. The imaging on the can claims of "green" production, healthy eating,  and freshness but does not make a big claim as to where it came from. So while I’m eating and enjoying my oranges, I realize that what I am munching on has been to more continents than I have.

 

Sources

Phillipe Diaz. Film: "The End of Poverty". http://www.youtube.com/movie/the-end-of-poverty. 2009.