Review of the lectures

Hello, everyone~!

I've just finished listening to the last part of the lectures that I mentioned yesterday. So let me just review them here today.

*Part 1---"Moving Beyond Fast Food Nation" by Peter Singer, Eric Schlosser

It was this part that interested me in listening to the series of the lectures. The reason why I chose this was that, as I mentioned yesterday's post, I found that Eric Schlosser spoke about his field as a journalist who probed how the fast food industry in the US has really worked deeply. I actually read his book called "Fast Food Nation" and I was terrified of the contents of the book. After reading, I came to realize that we need to think about what we eat seriously. In the lecture, he mentioned how unsustainable it would be if we keep depending on the eating style that we have now by giving us the idea of continual impacts on the environment which keeps being harmed by the big food chains like McDonald's, other companies, and most importantly our choices. The other speaker, Peter Singer talked about how we should treat animals that we eat humanely even though they'll get killed one way or the other.

*Part 2---"Eating Well and Eating Locally" by Marion Nestle, Gary Nabhan

The first speaker, Marion Nestle, spoke about the need for consumers to have critical views against the choices which the companies offer. She also talked about the tactics that the supermarkets in the US have introduced to encourage customers to buy more by letting them see more products, which means people tend to eat more. What I found interesting about her presentation was that she argued that the signs on the products that said "healthy choice" or "smart choice" didn't mean that they are good for you at all. The second speaker, Gary Nabhan, talked about how we could eat locally. At first, I was surprised to hear that the prices of local foods are sometimes lower than those at the large supermarket chain. Moreover, the fact that the movements for the food issues have become bipartisan made me optimistic about improvements to be made in the future. Then, he finished his presentation by mentioning that we are all nourished by the place we belong to.

*Part 3---"Concerns for Oceans, Climate and Animal Welfare" by Becky Goldburg, Gidon Eshel, Paul Shapiro

All of the speakers in this lecture were concerned about the influences that we have on the environment, and they also have looked into the impacts of our choices in terms of eating ethically. Listening to one of the speaker, Becky Goldburg, talking about the problems that the fishery industry have was interesting for me because the term "organic" often brings me to think about agricultural fields. I've heard a lot about over fishing because Japan is a country whose people have eaten lots of fishes, but I've never heard of the issue that fishermen sometimes unintentionally end up catching animals or fishes which they don't intend to catch. It was a nice opportunity to know something new about the industry, and to realize that we need to make an approach toward the industry differently from the agricultural industry. Then, Paul Shapiro talked about his organization's campaign to improve the farm animal welfare by pushing retailers to produce battery cage free chickens and so on. I didn't know much of the issue, so almost everything he talked about was new to me. I'm sure that we have several organic stores that allow us to make smart choices for eggs, meats, and chickens. However, I think the awareness of the issue like this still needs to be built more in Japan because we are likely to focus only on the nutrition, especially when it comes to eggs. The third speaker, Gidon Eshel, spoke about the energy that we consume by making dietary choices, and how the differences of the choices affect the generation of the energy. It was a bit hard for me to understand because he used the words that I wasn't familiar with. However, I was surprised how thoroughly this whole lectures tried to cover all of the issues related to the theme, and it made me think about how far I could go to eat ethically.

Wow.... now you see how much I've learned literally a lot from the lectures? The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the title of the conference was that the problems could be solved if we all would eat organic foods. However, I've found that eating healthy and ethically as a whole is about changing the society that we live today. I came to know that I wouldn't be able to review all of them on this post. So let me leave it unfinished, and talk about it again tomorrow!

Okay, I'll finish here.
See you soon~!