Burgers and Fries to Replace Stir-Fry and Rice

During the summer of 2010 my sister and I drove from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to our home in Ashland Wisconsin; I had just finished a summer internship at the University of Southern Mississippi.  During the long 20 hour drive we traveled through Mississippi, part of Tennessee and Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.  When we entered the state of Illinois, we set sail into the endless sea of corn fields.  It’s a pretty boring drive when all you see is corn on the side of the road.  But isn't it also amazing?  Corn is the crop that feeds our industrialized food system. 

During the Chinese National Holiday I traveled to Chengdu China by fast train and was able to see much of the Chongqing and Sichuan landscape along the way.  The first thing that struck me was that there was no endless sea of corn and there were no large scale farms.  The hilly and mountainous landscape was dotted with small farming plots which all seems to be taken car of by different people and had many different crops growing in them.  Seeing this gave me a good idea for a class lecture.  I wanted to know what my students thought about using the industrialized food system in China.

First I showed my students the documentary film Food Inc to give them a good all around view of the way food is made in an industrialized system (the movie certainly makes you think more about where your food came from).  Then in the class following the movie we discussed what answers they came up with to this question, “Should China ever adopt the industrialized food system so as to independently feed its large population?”   Over all the results were about half and half for adopting or rejecting the food system.  The main argument for adopting the food system was to help overcome feeding the large population independently even though the consequences were great.  The arguments rejecting the food system were many.  Students used arguments stating environmental problems, emigrational problems, cultural problems and health problems.  None argued for human or animal rights (kind of a touchy subject here in China).         

 Yes the industrialized food system is great. We Americans are able to spend less of our annual budget on food than most people in other countries around the world.  Our grocery stores don’t have seasons anymore, and they have an average of forty thousand different products to choose from.  One of our major exports is food because we can produce so much of it so cheaply.  Other countries cannot compete with our food system.  For example, think about how widespread McDonalds is in the world.  McDonalds is everywhere (over 31,000 restaurants in 119 different countries world-wide).  Go America!  Right?  Also keep in mind many Americans don’t know how to cook, can’t afford to cook healthy food, don’t eat together as a family and have some sort of health problem related to their diet.  And don’t forget the large carbon footprint and all of the human and animal rights violations that are created by manufacturing this super cheap food.   

Personally it makes me feel disgusted when I see a McDonalds in the Forbidden City in Beijing or KFC in downtown Beibei.  American fast food restaurants don’t belong in China and frankly neither does the American industrialized food system.  Chinese food is a big part of Chinese culture; culture that comes from how the food is grown, processed, cooked and then eaten.   China is already losing a lot of its culture by being on the fast track to modernization.  Why should burgers and fries replace stir-fry and rice?  With an industrialized food system already in America, I wonder what food-related culture we Americans have lost (how food is grown, processed, cooked and eaten).