On August 16, 2024, Perdue Foods LLC recalled roughly 167,000 pounds of chicken nuggets due to reports of contamination of the nuggets with metal strips. I don’t know about you, but personally I do not want to find metal in my delicious chicken nuggets. In reality, the problem is bigger than just the contamination of chicken–it is about the lack of transparency in the global food industry. Do we really know what is in our food? What are traditional food company practices? Are they sustainable? How should you take steps to make healthier food decisions, both for others and for yourself? 

Before making steps towards forward progress in the food industry, we must first understand one important definition: what is the food industry? According to the New World Encyclopedia, “the food industry is the complex network of farmers and diverse businesses that together supply much of the food consumed by the world population.” The food industry is of the more lucrative variety, worth roughly $1.5 trillion in the U.S.A. in 2022, generating around 22.1 million jobs in the same year. An industry of this size and significance has both drawbacks and benefits. So what are the praiseworthy parts of the food industry, as well as the not so praiseworthy parts? 

On one hand, one plus of the food industry is that with the advancement of technology, food safety has increased. Farmers and corporations are now able to track their products to ensure the safety of the food they are selling. Additionally, this increased technology has allowed for more sustainable systems to be put in place across the industry. For example, vertical agriculture, which is exactly what it sounds like–planting produce on vertical surfaces–has increased the sustainability of food production practices. 

On the other hand, there are numerous agricultural practices that are harming the environment, rather than helping it. In the fishing industry, overfishing is increasing in occurrence. Overfishing exists when fish are caught faster than their populations can replenish. Thus, there are fewer fish to catch. This has enormous implications for marine ecosystems as well as global populations that rely on fish in their typical diet. Another poor aspect of the food industry is the lack of readily available food for roughly 800 million people. This deficiency is causing severe starvation and more health issues for the younger generation. These deficiencies are often caused by food shortages due to natural disasters, but they can also be caused by unequal distribution of food within a country. This means that governments and other institutions often have control over how much food their citizens receive. Thus, some citizens do not get adequate nutrition, either because of natural disasters or issues perpetrated by governments. 

So how can you make good decisions for yourself and others? This is a nuanced question due to the fact that every single person on this planet is different, with different priorities and perspectives. Some prioritize the practices and sustainability of their products over the price of the product. However, another person in a different situation may choose price over sustainability. In the end, it is most important to strike a balance between making smart decisions for yourself and your physical health, and finding ways to improve the status of our food industry. 

One way to aid your physical health is to follow the MyPlate diagram created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most students are well-versed in the MyPlate vernacular, as it truly is a tremendous tool for making healthy eating decisions. The MyPlate diagram is an instrument that was created by the U.S. government in hopes to increase education about food in the United States. This tool should be used as a guideline for what to eat when striving to be healthier, not a strict be-all-end-all rule. Even if just one more person knows how to make healthy decisions about their food, that is one more life that is all the healthier.

One way to help increase the sustainability practices of the food industry as a whole is to simply raise awareness. Education can go a very long way. Talk to those in your community about the issues that are going on within the food industry. For example, discuss with your neighbors the issue of food shortages in underprivileged communities. This little spark of community will eventually develop into a fire that, hopefully, extinguishes the food scarcity in the modern world. Another way you can help diminish the effects of food shortages is by volunteering directly with food banks such as Feed More or the Mobile Produce Pantry by World U.P. Organizations such as these helped roughly 40 million people in 44 different countries in 2020, according to Food Tank, a Baltimore-based non-profit “think tank for food.” Every minute you give and every piece of food you donate to the cause makes a difference, so do it!

In the end, it is up to us, the consumers, to keep researching ways to better help the people the food industry serves. It is up to us to ensure the safety of food for everyone across the world for generations to come. 

Information retrieved from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Civil Eats, BOSS Magazine, foodindustry.com, the World Wildlife Fund, the University of Oxford, Food Tank, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Sources used: 

• https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-alerts/perdue-foods-llc-recalls-frozen-ready-eat-chicken-breast-nugget-and-tender-products 

• https://civileats.com/2023/05/22/food-prices-are-still-high-what-role-do-corporate-profits-play/#:~:text=Food%20 corporations%20are%20 thriving.,3%20percent%20to%20%2446%20billion. 

• https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/ag-and-food-sectors-and-the-economy/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%2022.1%20million%20full,percent%20of%20total%20U.S.%20employment. 

• https://thebossmagazine.com/how-technology-advancement-impacts-the-food-industry/#:~:text=For%20instance%2C%20technology%20has%20developed,and%20process%20food%20more%20efficiently. 

• https://www.foodindustry.com/articles/how-big-is-the-u-s-food-industry/ 

• https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing 

• https://www.myplate.gov/resources/tools 

• https://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/food-system-challenges