How Different is the Food We Consume Now then Fifty Years Ago?

In the introduction of Michael Pollan’s Defense Against Food, he talks about how eating habits, and the food we consume on a daily basis are constantly changing from when his mother was a child to even when he was one. Everything we eat from basic meats and vegetables, to butter has a different makeup from fifty years ago. Instead of it being homemade and reduced in the fats and carbohydrates, it is now filled with every bad thing we could imagine. But we as a society are being told that it is ok to consume these products because what they have been filled with is added nutrients our bodies need to make them healthier, when in fact most of the foods we consume can be considered “imitation” foods, hence they are not the natural supplements our bodies need and get from foods such as vegetables and grains. Pollan argues that in American we are the most body and health conscious but yet we have the highest rates of obesity and heart disease. Why is that? The foods that we consume are not “real” foods, they are in some way, shape, or form genetically modified for the most part. Pollan discusses how even the animals we consume for meat are fed different types of grains so that their bodies can be filled with better “nutrients” when in actuality they are being filled with what is helping cause the obesity and heart disease numbers we have in our nation. According to Deborah B. Whitman there can be postives from gentically modified foods but the negative possibilites are risky and in some cases, completly unknown (http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php). I feel that if what we are being told, which is that the healthy food we eat is full of the everyday necessities we need to live long healthy lives, is not the complete truth then that should be shown on the labels of the products. If this is not shown on the products then it is almost as if we are not allowed a choice in what the food we eat contains. Not having a say in what the food we eat contains is part of why we are having the health problems we do, but yet we do nothing about it. I feel that we should fight for the right to be told everything that goes into our food from the time it is grown, raised, or manufactured until it reaches the shelves of our grocery stores.