The finished product of the Collaborative Research Project is very telling. My research team and I included many pertinent facts about ammonia that we believe to be somewhat “unknown” by the public eye, which was ultimately what we had planned. Our goal was to explore the ways in which ammoniated beef threatened the average consumer’s health, although there was much discrepancy with what we intended to discover through research and what was actually disclosed. The result of much research left us with a very open conclusion, which remains that as of now, no studies or tests have been conducted to reveal detrimental effects of using ammonia as a sterilizing agent in beef. What has been unveiled is that there have been many instances in which the ammonia hasn’t completely “cleansed” the beef of pathogens, as beef manufacturing companies had to adhere to the safety regimens of injecting qualifying amounts of ammonia.
To my surprise, my group and I could have never conducted and completed a full-length collaborative research project had it not been for Google Docs. Using Good Docs gave us a medium through which we could all collaborate by sharing ideas, editing, revising, and brainstorming for further research. It provided us a blank slate for our research to expand and our ideas to flourish.
The finished product is a multi-modal approach to exploring, through extended research, ammonia in beef. The piece informs the reader as it provides facts about the scientific background and uses of ammonia, the regulatory pH levels of ammonia in beef, the effects of injecting beef with ammonia, the reasons why beef is injected with ammonia, and alternatives for using ammonia in beef. Furthermore, the product includes Beef Product Inc.’s (BPI) official website, an informative video about ammonia filler, and a graphic that represents a survey conducted by our group.
As it stands, the piece is a lucid reflection of the result of frustrated researchers searching for an answer they thought they were going to find. Although the product did not reveal what the group had expected it to reveal, the result is effective in that it exposes the intricacies of ammonia usage and it allows the reader to become an active consumer. Ultimately, we provided the foundation for ammoniated beef to be pondered…and possibly questioned.
My Collaborative Research project served as a very productive learning experience. It all began with the movie Food, Inc.. Throughout the movie I was disgusted, shocked, and enlightened all in one sitting. I felt my jaw drop quite a few times and I found myself (as dramatic as I am) gasping with concern. Despite my disgust, I continued to watch the movie and jotted down some possible themes for the project. Some of the runner-ups included the idea of engineering new foods, Kevin’s Law, the idea that the industry is more protected than consumers, and the Stonyfield Farms. However, it was the churning of my stomach that pointed me towards the theme of ammonia filler. As a recovering fast-food junkie, the notion of chemical injected beef struck a chord with me. So with that topic, I moved forward……..
I made the decision to collaborate with a group of hard-working members. After all, it wouldn’t have been much of a collaborative research project had I just worked with a partner. With my curiosity in tow, I devised a plan of attack for our research on ammonia. From that, each group member, including myself, chose a chunk of the plan to research. The bulk of my portion included research on the negative, long-term effects of ammonia in beef as they pertained to specific health cases wherein ammonia in beef led to detrimental illness and/or immediate sickness.
To my dismay, the research process didn’t reveal any instances of specific cases that involved an illness/death/sickness due to digested beef with ammonia filler. I found many road blocks on my way to discovering that there were no such cases that uncovered the “harsh, life threatening truth” that ammonia being injected into beef was dangerous. In fact, I was surprised to discover that the only harm that ammonia actually causes is its less-than-perfect job of ridding beef of E.coli, salmonella, and Listeria. Moreover, it seemed as if there were a limited number of online resources that gave the facts about ammonia in beef. It appeared that there were only about 10 websites with any information about ammonia used as a cleansing agent in food, and most of the sites were mere replicas of one another. The content was the same, but the syntax was different.
This leads me to question if ammonia in beef truly has no detrimental side effects and has never caused an illness OR if the lack of information about it as a “processing agent” is the food industry’s way of hiding information from consumers to continue making a dynamite profit off of inedible scraps. After all, the food industry feeds off of passive consumers.
In “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” author Michael Pollan embarks on a journey to answer the ever so perplexing question of, “What should we have for dinner?” Pollan’s journey takes the reader far and wide into the depths of the industrial food chain, organic food chain, and hunter-gatherer food chain. In his efforts, Pollan ponders the answer to why this question, seemingly simplistic, has become so interwoven with complexity-because of the amount of food choices an omnivore in America has. Furthermore, Pollan speaks on behalf of the American paradox that we are, “…an unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.” In his attempts to interpret the complications of choosing an appropriate meal, Pollan explains it as a type of vulnerability that we possess as a result of being a culture of people who has breakable ties with our food traditions.
In the two opening chapters of Part I of Pollan’s book, corn and farming are discussed. “Walking Corn” is what he refers to the American people as. This illustration of the American way eradicates Wendell Berry’s hope of “eating as an agricultural act.” Pollan further embellishes on the disassociation of the food we eat and the land it comes from, when he wheels us along into the supermarket full of food that is a mere “rearrangement of molecules” filled with corn flower, corn starch, and corn oil. The result of the corn fed animals competing for our purchase along with the processed foods filled with corn, packaged with corn, and shining because of corn, it is nearly impossible for the average consumer to trace the food back to where it once came from.
In addition to the overstock of corn, farming is taking a turn for the worse, putting farmers in debt higher than the bushels of corn they grow. The inexpensive, profitable corn crop has forever transformed the once green, pasture-like farms into black, asphalt-like farms. The increase in corn plant’s production has lead to a decrease in plant, animals, and human population in certain towns. Undeniably, our reliance on fossil fuel has been manifested in our salivating desire for yield. Our reliance on fossil fuel and less on solar energy has reconstructed the food chain. Moreover, the discovery of synthetic nitrogen and its excessive use of it leads to environmentally threatening risks of water contamination and global warming. Pollan so graciously reminds us that this would not be so, “…if we were a country with a stable culture of food.”
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
In Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: Why the Fries Taste Good excerpt, the audience gets a peek inside of the not-so-private Simplot plant whose conveyor belts and white coat workers fostered J.R Simplot’s empire of french fries. Today, the Simplot plant is located in Aberdeen, Idaho, although Simplot’s family originated in Dubuque, Iowa. Simplot was willing to gamble his life away at the ripe age of fifteen when he left home to become a potato farmer at age sixteen. Simplot’s success started with the flip of a coin which gave him the power to hold his future as a multibillionaire in the mechanics of his electric potato sorter. Being the processed food prophet of his era, Simplot, again, put all his chips in and invested in the new-aged frozen food technology and hit it big when he met with Ray Kroc and sealed the deal to McDonald’s. The nation’s eating habits were forever changed as Americans no longer desired boiled, mashed, or baked; they now preferred their potatoes as french fries.
Simplot’s success had just as much to do with the hand-held potato sorter devices as it did his understanding of the culture that he lived in. He was conscientious of what working men, stay-at-home moms, and children were craving in life and on their plates. Much to Stephen Schneider’s dismay, Simplot redefined the term gastronomy for the human race, just not in a good, clean, and fair way. He put food behind the steering wheel instead of at the center of our tables, an endeavor that ultimately reconstructed the human culture as we knew it.
"POV - Food, Inc. . Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: Why the Fries Taste Good (Excerpt) | PBS." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 28 Nov. 2010.
In an article titled, “Lessons on the Food System from the Ammonia-Hamburger Fiasco,” Tom Philpott exposes the reality of the “pink slime” in beef products that most Americans eat weekly. The New York Times noted that a South Dakota company known as Beef Products Inc., among many, are one of the culprits for adding meat filler that makes up 70% of the burgers we eat in the United States. Appallingly, Beef Products Inc. markets the most undesirable meet to local fast-food joints. The glistening product they market is the fatty scraps that are scraped off the slaughterhouse floor. These scrapings have been tested for infestations of E.coli and salmonella. To rid the meat of this and kill the pathogens, the food is sent through a process in which the meat is sterilized with large amounts of ammonia. The ammonia in these burgers is digested nation-wide and is prevalent in cheap, school lunches. Beef Inc. makes a profit from selling ammonia laced “pink slime” to help “sterilize” the beef, but is it really cleaning our meat?
Philpott, Tom. "Lessons on the Food System from the Ammonia-hamburger Fiasco | Grist." Grist | Environmental News, Commentary, Advice. Web. 23 Nov. 2010.
In “Good, Clean, Fair: The Rhetoric of Slow Food Movement,” Stephen Schneider tackles the rising, dangerous currents of the industrial agriculture with his introduction of Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food Movement. Schneider addresses issues concerning the industrial agriculture throughout his piece with gastronomy as its focal point. Gastronomy is the relationship between culture and food with a consistent perspective of the table as a “science.” Slow Food’s enticing, yet controversial movement aims to redefine gastronomy by “relocating food as the center of human culture,” while its name suggests the same. By reconstructing the core of human culture, consumers hold the power to put a halt on the fast paced life as they recede from capitalism and globalization. The rhetoric of the Slow Food Movement is encompassed by good food that fosters a connection to a geographic region, clean food that facilitates in preserving the environment, and fair food whose production is equitable.
Schneider, Stephen. (2008) Good, Clean, Fair: The Rhetoric of the Slow Food Movement. College English 70.4, 384-401.
Food, Inc.
Food Inc. is a documentary directed and produced by Robert Kenner targeted to illuminate on declining consumer health with the bull’s-eye on a handful of multinational corporations. The process is simple: the more they feed us, the more we eat. These corporations, in an effort to produce an abundance of cheap food, neglect horrifying repercussions that this cheaply produced food has on the health and living conditions of the animals from which the food comes from, those who work in the factories where the food is processed, and those who are consuming the food itself. With input from Eric Schlosser, the author of “Fast Food Nation” and Robert Kenner, viewers are witnessing the despicable and ugly downside of cheap and easy food production as we are taken on site to farms, supermarkets, and fast-food chains. The documentary exposes the reality of the current food production dilemma as it hits home with a mother-daughter duo sharing their story of the loss of a son (and a grandson) from a rare e-coli contamination. In addition, the up and coming business of the organic food industry is skeptically introduced. Ultimately, the documentary raises the eyebrows of consumers by proposing a logical notion: Is cheap, fast, and easy food worth the health risks that the food industry so graciously conceals?
Kenner, R. (Producer, Director) and Scholsser, E. (Producer). (2008). Food, Inc. [DVD]. Magnolia Home Entertainment.
In “The Pleasures of Eating,” Wendell Berry gives the reader a small “sample” of what our food should really taste like. The idea that “eating is an agricultural act” is a reoccurring theme. In fact, it is one in which Berry believes to have escaped the minds of “eaters.” When eaters claim this disassociation between their food and the land they live on, they are mere victims: passive, uncritical, dependent victims of the food industry. According to Berry, consumers have become so dependent, so uncritical, that they will eat whatever is placed in front of them without further evaluation of where the food came from, what chemicals reside within the food they are eating, or how fresh the food truly is. Berry serves us a platter of food for thought when he states, “The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach.” Here, Berry has vividly illustrated the production and consumption process of today’s eaters: feeding our bodies with the unknown.
With health in the garbage disposal, fire in their eyes, profit on their minds, and volume in their stomachs, food industrialists, advertisers, and fast-food chains have recreated the products of agriculture and nature and “prettified” them for the passive American consumer. Berry suggests that the manipulation of the industrial food production negates the idea of “the pleasure of eating.” In its rawest sense, the pleasure of eating is eating responsibly, knowing the garden from which the vegetables came, watching the process of that natural growth, and appreciating the cycle for which it is an active participant. Furthermore, “…the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.” Berry asserts that such a connection and appreciation to the origins of food can only manifest in the efforts of those who digest it.
What can we do?
Berry’s Bites:
1. Grow food for yourself. You will appreciate the process.
2. Prepare your own food, for you are the only manipulating factor.
3. Learn where your food is coming from.
4. Do business with a local farmer. Chances are you’ll bypass the transporters, packagers, and advertisers.
5. Defend yourself. Learn about food production.
6. Learn about productive farming and gardening.
7. Get to know the life histories of the food species.
Berry, W. (1990). The Pleasures of Eating. In What are People for? North Point Press.
1. Is my storyline enticing?
-Does it capture interest?
-Is the content of mental illness too off-putting because of the personal nature?
2. Do I effectively portray both Wally and Brenda in a credible way?
- Does one get a strong sense of who these people are?
-Do they seem too distant?
-Does Brenda’s voice shine through?
3. Is the whole piece coherent?
-Does it follow a consistent, nice flow of ideas?
4. As it stands, is it compelling enough?
-Does it cover all of the requirements?
-Does the prologue do enough to grab the reader's attention?
-Does the prologue need more background information about Brenda?
-Does the end portion feel forced? Or does it nicely tie up the story?
5. Is there any aspect of the story that leaves you confused or wanting more information?
-Anything in particular I should elaborate on?
The interviewing process is something that I looked forward to completing. Proceeding with the creative non-fiction option, I chose to interview my mom, Brenda. I conducted many previous interviews, but this was my first time interviewing my mom. Moreover, it was my first time interviewing someone about an issue that held significant value and was full of emotion. I was somewhat apprehensive and hesitant about approaching my mom to go through with this, knowing her deep and secretive connection to her brother. Prior to conducting the interview, my mother was open about her brother’s disease, but she never revealed the process she had endured through the journey of his diagnosis. This, to me, was the most significant struggle of the interviewing process. I wasn’t sure if the questions I was going to ask would pain her or hurt her in some way. This is something I never intended to do; however, throughout the interview I sadly watched her eyes well up with tears, her head sink down with guilt, and her shoulders tense up with anxiety. I, unintentionally, dug up archaic tragedies, events, and feelings that had been hidden away in her dusty attic of childhood memories.
Although I felt awkwardly responsible for causing my mother to rehash all of these painful experiences, the end result was cathartic for her. I watched her transition from feeling sorrow to feeling relief. After each interview session with her, she would end by saying, “It’s nice to talk about this.” Hearing her say this was, undoubtedly, the most rewarding aspect of the interview. Often times, it’s hard for us, as human beings, to open up old wounds and expose them for others to see, but my mother was courageous enough to let go and allow me to witness her past. I am grateful for her willingness to trust the system and for giving me the opportunity to create a worthwhile non-fiction story from it. I treasure her vulnerability.
Reflecting back, I have a newfound appreciation for the interviewing process and I believe that there is something new to be discovered through each encounter.
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