Fast Food Nation..

Fast Food Nation
The Dark Side Of The All American Meal

Author: Eric Schlosser

A great piece of investigative journalism, Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser explores the fast food culture and the industry behind it with great detail to unearth many disturbing facts for all of us to see. Reading the book, I am reminded of a saying, ´Every beautiful face has an hideous skull behind it”, and this book tries it best to bring out this hideous aspect of the cheerful and the progressive fast food industry which became an icon of the American way.

The book traces the history of the fast food culture with case studies of McDonalds, Subways, Burger King’s and Wendy’s that has brought America efficiently prepared meals at low prices and has transformed the eating patterns and the lifestyles. Schlosser delves into the structure of the industry and explores the participants of the Industry, employees, meat industry, flavor Industry, packaging industry, potato farmers, the franchisees, the frozen foods industry, the agri-business aspects.

The fast food culture exerts a direct influence on large parts of the population, Schlosser cites an estimate that "one out of every eight workers in the United States has at some point been employed by McDonald's" alone. The fast food industry seems to provide cheap, convenient, and fast food, and provide employment to a large number of people -- but the food is arguably not particularly healthy. The effects of the consolidation of the agribusiness, the demand of the unskilled, cheap labor by the fast food chains is disturbing.

To promote mass production and profits, the industry must keep labor and material costs low. Hence the bringing of the American concept of assembly-line production into the food industry to exercise control, deskill the job done, maintain consistency. Teenagers and recent immigrants make up much of the fast food workforce, often working under poor conditions. Companies profit from huge turnover. Schlosser recounts how McDonald's and its ilk have fought against unions, sometimes closing stores to prevent workers from unionizing.

MNC’s have little regard to the economic fortunes of individual farmers or local communities. Poultry owners doesn’t even own the birds and the potato farmers have nothing in their control due to the corporate ownership of the agri-business units. The chapter on Why the Fries Taste Good offers a bleak look at the future of food through Flavor Industry, where any taste can be given to any product.

Regarding dangers to consumers Schlosser focuses on E. coli and salmonella infection. Workers in meatpacking plants routinely suffer from repetitive strain injuries, and many have lost fingers and worse as the pace of killing and cutting up animals has increased to create higher profits. The faster the line moves, the less attention is paid to food safety. Parasites and bacteria are another price paid for the meatpacking industry's profit margin.

Schlosser ends the book saying that "you can still have it your way", highlighting the choice the consumer has to say no to the fast food.

Business As Unusual..

Business As Unusual
The Journey of the Anita Roddick And The Body Shop

Author: Anita Roddick

This book is written by the founder of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick. The book is quite different and unique in its own way be it the way of presentation of the print or the power of expression of the words. The book describes Anita's joy of the journey in the business world, where she wants to nurture "A Revolution in Kindness". She describes how she has managed to keep an initame part of herself alive in a business gone global. Despite the constraints of a Global Company, she always tried to to reinvent herself, tried to find new ways to push the limits of the business, to change its language, to make it a force for positive change. That's why the title- Business as Unusual.

She describes her experiences of being an entrepreneur and how she is guided by passion and instinct to run the global business. Being a nomadic soul, how she has capitalized on the opportunities and how she is passionate about her ideas. She says that entrepreneurs are basically crazy. They see and feel things which others don't. She talks about vision, creativity, energy, pathological optimism and the ability to put ideas into action as her core strengths, of course with a touch of craziness.

Born into an Italian immigrant family which is settled England, Anita has a hands on experience in working in a cafe which is run by her parents. Her work at United Nations for two years and her experience of community life at Kibbutz, Israel arouse her interest in community life. Being Married to Gordon Roddick and after running a hotel and restaurant for three years, Anita thought of settling down. She wanted to start a shop selling skincare products because she was irritated by the cosmetics industry and their pandering to unfulfilled desires. She says that irritation is a great source of energy and creativity.

Her endorsement of Ruby Campaign, her community work, her views about community as company where people work for common good and her call for responsibility revolution is truly commendable. She also stresses on communication as the key for any global business and her efforts in keeping the channels of communication open in The Body Shop. She also stresses on her community work, her campaigning for the Ogoni cause, her deals with the indigenous communities.

Reading the book, I didn't feel that The Body Shop is a separate entity from Anita. It runs in her blood and she considers it as her child and passion, that's how she maintained her integrity and passion in the soulless business world by holding to the indigenous way, listening to her heart and guided by passion. Its about empowering employees and continuous experimentation.. More than that, its about a burning pathological need for recreating herself in the corporate world. Anita Roddick comes out as a Maverick, Fighter Spirit and a Maniac who stands for what she believes!

Tuesdays with Morrie…

An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom

At times you long for a mentor or a coach to guide you through the life’s ups and downs. You long for an ear to listen and a hand to show the world and the way to make our own way. Here the student is Mitch Albom and the coach is his college professor Morrie Schwartz.

Mitch Albom rediscovered Morrie, who is dying due to a fatal disease, in the last months of the older man's life. Morrie is suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), an unforgiving disease of the neurological system, which debilitates the body slowly. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, which resulted in lessons in how to live. It celebrates the undying human spirit and its quest to learn and grow. He talks about love, joy, compassion, warmth, family, relationships, culture, society in such a disarmingly simple manner that you feel as a part of the conversation wondering about Morrie’s depth of understanding of life.

Morrie says, "We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of -- unconditional love, unconditional caring. Most of us didn't get enough." Morrie has something to say about those who want to be young again. He says that's a reflection of a life that hasn't found meaning. He says if you've found meaning you don't want to go back, and you can appreciate the 23 year old in you, the 35 year old and the 62 year old.

Morrie emphasizes on cultivating relationships, touching people with genuineness and honesty, sharing warmth, affection and love. People tend to see each other as dissimilar rather than alike. In reality we all have the same needs. We are remembered by how we touched other’s lives rather than the bank balance we have.

The book inspires as I am not only soaking his wisdom, but I am also being a part of his experience of death. In his words, he is fortunate enough to know he is dying, to take stock of his life as it comes to an end. Understanding dawned in me that it is that in learning how to die, we learn how to live. If I accept the inevitability of my own death, then I can live my life free of trivial worldly concerns. Albom includes you in Morrie’s journey of life and it’s sure a book which makes you laugh, cry and makes you learn about life along the way.

The One Straw Revolution..

The book written by Masanobu Fukuoka discusses about the spiritual underpinnings of the natural farming and stresses on the issues like
¨ All world is a part of one central truth; we see dualities and opposites because of ignorance
¨ Living in harmony with the environment, life, people and ourselves.
¨ Unity of all things, or the philosophy of do-nothing.

Natural farming here means allowing nature to farm with little or no human intervention.

Realization and the Beginning

The book starts with the realization of Mr. Fukuoka that humanity knows nothing at all. He feels that there is no intrinsic value in anything and every action is a futile, meaningless effort. Here when he says that humanity understands nothing, he recognizes the insufficiency of the intellectual knowledge. He feels that understanding nature is beyond human intelligence and that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is. He announces that Nature doesn’t change, only the way of viewing it changes. He believes in allowing the natural pattern to evolve rather than remaking nature for the benefit of mankind and sets himself to observe how the nature maintains the natural balance among the natural habitant.

Process of Natural Farming:

Then he moves to state the four basic principles of natural farming as
1. No Cultivation
2. No chemical fertilizers or prepared compost
3. No weeding by tillage or herbicides
4. No dependence on chemicals

He talks about the uses of scattering of straw in the form saying that straw enriches the earth maintaining the soil structure. As germination is best at surface because the grain gets exposure to the oxygen, he says that sowing seeds when the preceding crop is still on the field minimizes the damage caused by sparrows. Next comes pelleting of seeds, where in seed is mixed with clay and made a pellet so that it wont become food for rodents before it germinates. He talks about the natural lifecycle of the plant and advises strongly not to kill the natural predators. He calls the modern agricultural practices of weak and improved varieties, addition of copious quantities of Nitrogen to soil, addition of too much of water as wrong practices.

He criticizes the modern scientific method and says that the modern research divides the nature into pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with the natural law nor to the practical experiences. He realizes the limitations of the scientific method and hence he sets himself on an experimentation course to find a method closest to the nature.

Implications of the current farming practices:

He talks about the ramifications of using the pesticides; chemicals, which destroy natural balance and result in food contamination. All the human measures we take proceed from limited scientific truth and hence cant really lead to a true solution. He urges to tackle the source of the problem and calls attention for the need of modest solutions to tackle difficult problems.

He questions the need for the values, which care for size, appearance rather than quality, like external beauty of the fruit, and calls that as a result of unnecessary modernization. He says that natural food should be cheaper and claims that commercial agriculture is a failure. He questions the validity of research with fragmented understanding.

Food crisis is not caused by insufficiency of nature’s productive power but by the extravagance of desire. He calls for serving nature through spiritual awareness. It’s all right not to understand. Basis of human life is to live here and now in awareness of nature. He ridicules the concept of work for the human beings and says that a life of simplicity means work as doing what needs to be done.

Various Schools of Natural Farming:

Mahayana Natural farming: Unity of man with nature. It believes that if individual abandons his will and allows himself to be guided by Nature, Nature provides everything. Here farming goes nowhere and seeks nothing.

Hinayana Natural Farming: It believes in pursuing the way of nature; itself consciously attempts by organic methods etc, to follow nature. Farming is used for achieving a given purpose.
Here there is a distinction made between both the ways of natural farming. One believes in techniques undertaken in conscious pursuit of given objective where as the other relies on spontaneity as an expression of a person’s harmony with nature as he goes about his daily business, free from the domination of volitional intellect.

Here he says that one looses happiness in an attempt to possess them. Ultimate goal of farming is cultivation and perfection of human beings.

Fukuoka feels that people nowadays eat with their minds and not with their bodies. When one no longer wants to eat something tasty then only one can taste the real flavor of the food. He says that the food culture originates in partnership of man and nature.

Four Classifications of Diet:

1. Diet dependent on habitual desires and taste preferences, which he says as self-indulgent and empty eating
2. Standard Nutritional Diet, a materialistic and scientific eating process,
3. Diet of Principle, based on spiritual principles and idealistic philosophy
4. Natural Diet or diet of non-discrimination following the will of heaven.

He calls for “Right Food, Right Action and Right Awareness”


His View of Knowledge:

Here Mr. Fukuoka distinguishes between two paths of knowledge, i.e. the discriminating and the non-discriminating knowledge. Discriminating knowledge is realized by intuition derived from analytic, willful intellect in an attempt to organize experience into a logical framework with limited scientific truth and judgment. Where as non-discriminating knowledge arises without conscious effort on the part of the individual when experience is accepted without interpretation by the intellect.

He says that people think that they understand things because they become familiar with them. He calls it superficial knowledge and says that foolishness comes out looking smart. Words would never match the wisdom of keeping silent. Concepts of duality originate in mind. Love and hate are not separate things. Love gives substance to hate. World is neither based on principle of cooperation or competition. The word of relativity doesn’t exist. This idea is a structure given to experience by the human intellect. Other animals live in a world of undivided reality.

One can proceed questioning “what is nature?” in two ways
1. By examining nature in connection with man, which leads to philosophy and religion
2. By examining nature apart from man which leads to path of nature.

Scientific truths are concepts of relative world. Eventual human goal is to transcend the world of relativity, to play in a realm of freedom. He says that the patterns of life must form a union with nature, which would help in attaining a no-mind state, a state where there is no distinction between individual and the external world. As Buddha echoes that mind and the matter are the same through “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form”.

My Take:

I loved this book as it takes a holistic view of the entire approach towards the man’s understanding of food. Though the theme of the book is natural farming, the book stresses on man’s relationship with the nature and farming. The book is strives to bring in a philosophical change in the whole process of man’s understanding of farming and questions the validity of fragmented understanding and scientific approach. Its interesting and engaging to understand the philosophy of a man who walked his talk.

Finally, I know that the post has become very long, but can't help myself as I wanted to observe the chain of his thought process and the pearls of his wisdom!

The Alchemist...

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, a book that inspires by gently touching your heart with the immensely simple language yet strong message. It talks about the wisdom of listening to our hearts and learning to pay attention to the omens strewn along life's path. The beauty of the book lies in its simplicity of expression. It’s not a book if you are looking for something logical and realistic. It’s a book to be read if you want to feel and immerse yourself in the journey of life.

The book is about Santiago, a shepherd boy who dreams of a treasure and embarks on a journey from Spain to Egyptian Pyramids in search of finding it. Slowly this magical fable combines spirituality and mysticism in a beautiful concoction to pave the way for the Shepherd boy to realize his destiny. The boy’s journey is marked by joys, sorrows, travails, his learnings and yearnings. His anxiety, worry, love and feelings find a beautiful expression and how he learns to be aware of his inner voice and what he really want to do “When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream”, that’s the message the book echoes.

It’s a book that advises never to sacrifice the desire to explore beyond the known for fear of the unknown. Following the dreams and inner voice and trusting our intuition and inherent desire and using that to realize our potential- that’s what The Alchemist is all about.

The Day of the Jackal..

I was insisted by my friend to read, “The Day of the Jackal”, written by Frederick Forsyth. The book tells about the story of hunting of an assassin code named Jackal, an Englishman who is hired by a secret para-military group OAS Chief, Marc to assassinate French President, General de Gaulle. The book is divided into three parts, the first describes the Summary of the Plot and selection of Jackal by Marc for the task, the second describes the laying of the Plot and the planning of the Jackal and the third describes the hunting down of Jackal by the French detective Lebel. The plot is quite interesting and description is immaculate and detailed. I find that the book has more attention to detail and a lot of description than dialogue. What engaged my interest in this incredible thriller is the convoluted and logical way in which the plot unfolds and the character of the Jackal who is described as an inhumanly methodical and deviously professional. Really enjoyed the foolproof planning that went into the design of the plot and the description of the terrorist activities..

The Amul Story..

Just finished reading The Amul India Story by Ruth Herediya. The book traces the development of dairy movement in India, starting from a small place called Kaira district, backed by the vision of Sardar Vallabhai Patel to build institutions like GCMMF and NDDB and the brand called Amul. The initiative and dynamism shown by Verghese Kurien-a professional manager, Tribhuvandas Patel-a visionary farmer,H.M.Dalaya- technologist to fight against all the odds is quite commendable. The book describes the toil and hardships faced by these committed individuals in shaping the co-operative movement in India through Kaira Co-operative. I was quite surprised to know that a lot of technology that involved spray drying and processing of buffalo milk was first developed in India and Amul dairy in Anand was the largest milk processing plant in Asia when it first got started. The amazing part of this co-operative is that it collects milk from direct village primary co-operatives or the villages and does the value addition in the product and markets it. So the Villagers concentrate on producing more milk where as the GCMMF takes care of the sales and distribution part of it. This way, the rural India is enriched by the creation of micro-enterprises leading to the formation of self-sufficient and developing communities. Its truly delightful to see how a profitmaking enterprise aids in community enhancement leading to the fulfillment of the altruistic vision. Truly Amul is a dream realized through grit, passion and conviction of all the members! The triumph of rural India!!