The Grey Industrialization( of cookies)

My name is J.N, and I am a GCE student attending my final term for the freshmen year. In this final term, my class and I take a course known as Food for Thought, which studies food throughout history. We have done multiple assignments, as well as gone to multiple Field Experience. One of them being Uncommon Grounds, which is a coffee shop that grows most of there food.
What we had to do for our final assignment is to create a review between food we made at home or at school, as well as food we ate in a restaurant. This was a very enjoyable assignment since it was supposed to reach out to our opinion. I saw there was more of a learning experience rather than a challenge, which I believe there was none in my experience. My thesis is that my cookies will win over the industrail cookies known as Lofthouse do to taste, and I would suggest to you my cookies. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my review on my homemade cookies as well as Lofthouse branded cookies.

J.N "Flour" Own Work 6/4/17 

Firstly, I want to say that I love baking these cookies. Mainly because the cookie dough looked and tasted so good. Not only that, but I also tinkered with the recipe. Adding in different ingredient to make it taste good. To summarize the recipe, I first mixed in everything together but the eggs, until it was pale and fluffy. Then I added at least two eggs, then added a third one so the dough could be more liquidy. I then put it in the freezer for fifteen minutes. I shaped the cookies like walnut sized balls, sprinkled some sugar on to them, and baked for 10 minutes. I then let them cool for five minutes, and ate my most successful batch of cookies yet.
I wanted to make this as fair as possible for both types of cookies, and in order to do so, I thought it would be great to let the cookie rest for about more than an hour. This way the cookies that I buy at the store will match the exact same temperature, and would allow tasting to be down to the flavor, rather than the temperature. It also allows the feeling of eating to also be fair as well.
In this assignment, the both cookies have to go through at least 5 criteria that follows the senses. They are;
how does it look

how does it smell

how does it feel inside and outside of the mouth

J.N. Own Work "cookie" 6/4/2017

how does it sound inside and outside the mouth

how does it taste.

The homemade cookie looked promising, looking crumbly yet delicious. As if I touched it, it would necessarily fall into one million pieces, nor with it not leave a slight mess. It had a yellowish tint, with the bottom having a much darker it, as well as there were sparks of sugar around the cookie, magnifying the look and texture. The smell reminded me of a sweet cake batter, but still stayed in touch with the mix of a cookie aroma as well. For the texture before eating it, it felt like it was a small bit rough on my fingers, like a normal cookie would. The feeling of the dish in my mouth was amazing. The cookie itself felt soft, and would continually stay there for at least more than a few seconds, having also the perfect mix of crunch. The sprinkled sugar gave it an extra layer as well, allowing a noticeable crack in each bite, and making more enjoyable. The sound of the dish was a bith squishy, and small parts of crunch in it. The taste was good, and it was very cake-cookie like. It was sweet, but also had some bitter and pungent and that one could argue is evened out, which is usually a good thing. It didn’t necessarily leave a large punch, but rather left a continuous source of flavor for a well amount of time.

J.N "Lofthouse" Own Work 6/4/17

After being happy with the my homemade cookies, I then moved on to the store bought. Because of eating the homemade, it somewhat soured my look on the store bought. Nonetheless, I tried to keep neutral. The cookie I was eating was called Lofthouse Delicious Cookies: Cookies and Cream Sugar Cookies. When looking at it, it looked like the perfect cookie, but not the natural one. If you saw it, the you would know it was made in a sort of factory. It had the exact same color around it, as well some white frosting on top of it. This was unfortunate since it evened the playing field. Yet, I will still try to eat the cookie with the frosting since it came with it. When smelling the cookie, it had a promising aroma. It did smell like cookies and cream, as well as a brownie-sh smell. It has a smooth but also rough texture, and reminded me of a delicate sponge when I pushed on to it. When eating the cookie, it dissolved in less than a few seconds, which I didn’t enjoy. It reminded me of powdered sugar put in water, dissolving into nothingness. It didn’t have much of a sound because of how quickly it was gone. The taste was stronger when first biting it, which was good. But it only felt pungent and sweet, and that was pretty much it. It did do good advertising, since I did gain the taste of cookies and cream, as well as some brownie taste, but not to much.

After eating both dishes, I would mainly prefer my dish over Lofthouse. This is for several reasons, but the biggest reason was the feel in my mouth. When I ate the homemade cookie, each bite felt liked it cracked or popped. The taste lasted for a while compared to most cookies, as well the cookie was soft yet crunchy, in an perfect amount. The Lofthouse cookie was the opposite and what I despise in a cookie. It had a large impact, but for a very short amount of time, and then dissolve. A cookie from any store should stay and make the mouth feel good, with both an amount of crunch and softness.

Then there is the ingredients. Even though mine isn’t fully organic or local, it does have certain qualities that make it have a better background. The better ingredients of the homemade would be:

J.N "Nutrtion" Own work 6/4/17

1. 365 Everyday Value Cream Cheese, which is cow friendly and does not put rBGH in them

2. Organic Eggs

3. Ceresota All Purpose Flour UnBleached, which is doesn’t contain GMOs

4. The cookies from Lofthouse on the other hand contain contain ingredients:

5. Enriched Bleached Flour

6. Natural & Artificial Flavoring

7. Margarine

Of course, both do contain ingredients such as baking soda, egg, salt, sugar, and etc, there is no denying that the homemade cookies contain ingredients that are more farm friendly compared to Lofthouse. So I would have to say that while my cookies are a mix between organic and industrial, Lofthouse cookies are fully industrial.

Finally, there is also the fact of the true personality of the cookie. Most of the time, the grand taste of the Lofthouse cookie mainly came from the frosting. I know this because I would try out the cookie itself on the edges, and it had no personality what so ever. It tasted like unsweetened cocoa powder that was somewhat bitter and not really sweet. To myself, this fact is really ironic since you bought cookies to eat the cookies, not the frosting. That companies like Lofthouse are are putting much more emphasis on the frosting rather than the cookie.

If you don’t know who Michael Pollan is, he is an investigator, author, and researcher in studying economical and political crises that relate to food. He has written books such as Botany of Desire, Cooked: A Natural History, and much more. In his book In Defense of Food, he talks about five problems that large food corporations have that is their fatal flaw which is create in order to gain profit. These are:           

J.N "Homemade" Own Work 6/4/17 

1. Quantity over quality

2. Complexity to simplicity

3. Leaves to seeds

4. Whole to refine

5. Culture to science.

In the Lofthouse cookies, I could see several of these guidelines. But the biggest one would be complexity to simplicity. What complexity over simplicity means is that each product is meant to look the same in every way in order shut less to cost. The reason I say this is because, when looking at the cookies through the box, every single one was meant to look the same. That each one didn’t have any individuality, and that each one looked like the last. In fact, each one tasted like the last. 

Even though mine tasted the same, there were some that were bigger while others that were smaller. They were not meant to be perfect, but were meant to be tasty. Which brings me to another guideline Lofthouse follows, which is science to culture, meaning that it would turn into artificial flavoring. Unlike my cookies, Lofthouse had so many chemicals in it, from bleached flour, to artificial flavoring, to many other chemicals. It was also made in a factory rather than normally, seeing how each one looks exactly the same.
So overall I believe that my homemade cookies are better since they have less artificial flavors as well as having more natural ingredients. It also has a better feel as well as a longer lasting taste.

J.N "Myself" Own Work 6/4/17 

Recipe:

1. Preheat the oven at about 350 before making the cookies

2. Mix in the 2 ¾ cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda and ½ teaspoon of salt

3. Then mix in the 2 cups sugar, ¾ cups of cream cheese, ¼ cups of whipped butter, as well 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, until the mix looks pale and fluffy

4. Then mix in 2 eggs until it looks like cookie dough(add an extra egg if it looks too dry)

5. Put the dough in the freezer for about 15 minutes

6. Take out the dough, and heavily butter up the pan

7. Try to make each portion walnut sized on the pan, and separate them each by 2 inches

8. Sprinkle in ¼ cup of sugar on newly placed cookie dough

9. Put the cookie dough into the oven, and let it bake for about 10 minutes

10. Take them out, and let it cool down for five minutes

Citations

Cindy Catudal "Chewy Sugar Cookies" allrecipes.com cookierecipe.com 6/4/17
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/22850/chewy-sugar-cookies/

Genetically Enhanced Trees/plants Industrializing Technological-advancements (GETIT)

Hello, my name is J.N., and I am at my last term of my freshmen year at GCE. I took a course known as Food, which studies the science behind food through GMOs, the green revolution, and much more. We had gone to multiple field experiences, on of them being a farmers market in order to see the stance for GMOs for farmers. For this term, everyone in my class had to pick a side on whether GMOs were good or bad. I personally choose GMOs to be a good thing, mainly because of the potential it served. There were a few challenges, such as create a video that was very limited with dialogue, but there was also some success in writing the props on how GMOs are good. With that being said, I hope you enjoy my thoughts on GMOs.

Stance on GMOs from JN on Vimeo.

Pros of GMOs from Jeimarous on Vimeo.

My father has always told me that intelligence and improving ourselves is what makes a human being good, to some extent. That if we just learn the same things, plant the same crops, or even eat the same food, we won’t have much achievement in life. That, if we didn’t advance ourselves in religion, politics, human rights and especially science, we would have been isolated. We would have still been a primate in a tree rather than living on the ground, and using fire to advance ourselves. Is it truly bad to modify food that is, in turn, truly advancing the human civilization, and feeding millions? I believe not. This is why I believe that we are doing more good than harm, and that the reason it isn’t fully gaining potential is through economic and political stances. So I will be talking about the benefits of GMOs that have helped humans by growing crops to resist climate change, can be more advanced in the future, and how it increased yields in multiple countries around the world.

First, GMOs could resist climate change such as drought. In the book Empires of Food, it states “Droughts have always been an existential problem for agricultural societies since they first appeared”pg104. It has ravaged multiple civilizations in the past. History.com states there have been droughts in Ancient Egypt, Africa, MesoAmerica, China, and Syria. Now, CO2 has made climate change so much worse where droughts are more frequent.

There is an organization known as CGIAR that is working on the climate crises, and has even successfully been able to create crops that are resistant to drought. They claim in an article “One way in which they (CGIAR) have responded successfully to the challenge is by developing varieties of major food crops that are drought tolerant or escape drought through early maturity”. Newsweek.com states that Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats or CRISPR has also been try to achieve better crops, as well as many other organizations. In theguardian.com, it states that African countries “saw their yields increase by 20% to 30% after sowing a variety of drought-tolerant hybrids.” Another helper in withstanding droughts would be a corn known as Droughtgard, who in pri.org states “certified for sale in several other countries, including Australia, Canada, Mexico and Japan.”

Another idea on how GMOs can be useful is through its potential . newsweek.com states “food production will have to double by 2050, at which point the world population is expected to have grown from 7 billion today to well beyond 9 billion” With that in mind, people have to realize that GMOs could be an essential factor to life in the next 20 years in the human race. This could also lead to the advancement of GMOs in supply and conditions, or in other words, the second green revolution.

According to the balance.com, “There is no faster way to produce animals and plants with specific beneficial traits and, as we learn more about the genetics, many more modifications will become possible.” With hearing this, we can infer that GMOs are already advancing in agriculture in science right now. grist.org even states that researchers are looking into “This newer system (which)is called C4 photosynthesis. Researchers around the world — funded by nonprofits like the Gates Foundation — are working on creating C4 Rice and C4 Wheat. Those crops could grow 50 percent more food per acre.” Also, in Empire of Food, it talks about how FACE is working and examining rice in order to see if they could could survive higher levels of CO2. The book states that “FACE experiment as the world's most educated guess on how food would grow in the upcoming generations.”pg94 So with that in mind, I believe that GMOs can be able to support in the long run, not only in feeding people but also advancing the science in agriculture as well.

Finally, I want to talk about how GMOs have affected people today, and what are their benefits. Mainly, the biggest one would have to be the yield per acre. Alumni.berkeley.edu states “Bt corn has an estimated yield of 34 percent more in the Philippines, 11 percent in South Africa, 9 percent in Argentina and 5 to 6 percent each in the U.S. and Spain”. Not only that, but ingrist.org states “There are 7 million cotton farmers in India. Several peer reviewed studies have found that, because Bt cotton increases the amount of crop they have to sell, it raises their farm profits by as much as 50 percent, helps lift them out of poverty and reduces their risk of falling into hunger.” GMOs are helping out people by create a higher food supply that has grown both the economy, as well as allowing people to buy affordable food. Also, unlike organic, GMOs grow faster and can be able to stay in a single area without destroying forest. Grist.org states “Either we do this on the same land we have today, or we chop down forest to create farms and pastures to meet that demand, something no one wants to do.”

There are multiple arguments against GMOs, and there are at least two that I have seen.

1.Why are there GMOs when there is also hunger in the world as well? Wasn’t the whole purpose of GMOs as to help stop world hunger? 

Well, the reason there still is world hunger even with GMOs is because some countries are anti-GMO, while other times GMOs (like most wonderful things) are used only for profit.

With the expansion of GMOs, there have been multiple countries that have banned GMOs for multiple reason. The main two are that monocultures of GMOs are bad for the environment and that they are “unnatural” or are wrong. Though people could debate about it being wrong to mess with nature, the idea of GMOs being bad for the environment is false. Most of the time, it isn’t GMOs that are ruining nature, but rather the pesticides and herbicides that are being inflicted upon GMOs. In fact, scientist are already creating crops known as Bacillus thuringiensis, or bt crops that don’t need pesticides. Regardless, some countries don’t enjoy crops, and they are paying for it thanks to hunger.

In Zimbabwe, there are laws that restrict the use of GM crops, yet they have experienced multiple droughts. In the circleofblue.org, it states ““Zimbabwe’s restriction on the importation of genetically modified crops, limiting the amount of corn and other grains it can procure from South Africa,” Because of their restriction, Zimbabwe is now facing debt and hunger in their country.

2. Are GMOs healthy for people to eat?

The answer is yes. I have read countless sources, and each one of them said that GMOs are safe to eat. The one problem with GMOs is that there are added pesticides on them. Of course, scientists are working on a crop that is known as Bt crops. They don’t require pesticides because they to be “highly effective at combating pests such as European corn borer, rootworm, corn earworm, tobacco budworm, and bollworm” by harvard.edu. One of the biggest examples would be in grist.org, which states “By reducing the amount of insecticide used (which, in India, is mostly sprayed by hand) Bt cotton has also massively reduced insecticide poisoning to farm workers there — to the tune of 2.4 million cases per year.”

So with all that in mind, I do believe that GMOs aren’t just advancing in agriculture, but also in scientific research. GMOs are advancing the human society in so many ways. With that, I would have to bring back to my father's ideas on always learning, which makes us human. People around the world are dying due to the loss of crops and resources. Children in places such as Zimbabwe are going hungry and dying because of prejudice against GMOs. Even the United Nations, one of the most advanced organizations dedicated to helping countries has even stated “Nearly five million people in Zimbabwe - half of the country's rural population - will need assistance by next year”.

“GMOs have the most potential to advance human society since the development of synthetic nitrogen”

Steve Freeman, Farmer

Both these graphs represent the data founded by harvard.edu, and were adapted by Malakof D. and Stokstad E. It shows both the growth of Bt corn and the reduction of pesticides in the US. Since both are related, the two graphs are suggesting that Bt corn are making pesticides more unnecessary.

Greatest Percent Change in both graphs:

Pesticide Use vs Years: 2004-2005

0.1 kg = 2004, 0.05 kg=2005

0.05 - 0.1= -0.05/o.1= 50% kilogram decrease in pesticide

Percent of Plant arce in Bt corn: 2006-2007

2006= 40, 2007= 49 49-40=9/40= 22.5% increase of planted acres in Bt corn

Citations

Hsaio Jennifer & Lyon Krissy "GMOs and Pesticides: Helpful or Harmful?" harvard.edu SITN 6/4/1

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/gmos-and-pesticides/

J. Wechsler "Recent Trends in GE Adoption" usda.gov Economic Research Service 6/4/17

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx

TOM PARRETT "GMO SCIENTISTS COULD SAVE THE WORLD FROM HUNGER, IF WE LET THEM" newsweek.com Newsweek 6/4/17

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/29/gmo-scientists-could-save-world-hunger-if-we-let-them-334119.html

Paul Diehl "Can Genetically Modified Food Feed the World" thebalance.com The Balance 6/4/17

https://www.thebalance.com/can-genetically-modified-food-feed-the-world-375634

Ramez Naam "Why GMOs matter — especially for the developing world" grist.org Grist 6/4/17

http://grist.org/food/why-gmos-do-matter-and-even-more-to-the-developing-world/

Dr. Atli Arnarson "GMO Foods: Good or Bad?" authoritynutrition.com Authority Nutrition 6/4/17

https://authoritynutrition.com/gmos-good-or-bad/

"Genetically Modified Crops" scripts.mit.edu Terrascope 6/4/17

http://12.000.scripts.mit.edu/mission2017/genetically-modified-crops/

Stacy Finz "GMOs: Research Says They’ll Help End Starvation, but Americans Remain Wary" alumni.berkeley.edu Cal Alumni Association 6/4/17

https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2014-10-14/gmos-research-says-theyll-help-end-starvation-americans

Jesse Greenspan "7 Withering Droughts" history.com History 6/4/17

http://www.history.com/news/7-withering-droughts

"Drought-Tolerant Crops for Drylands" cgiar.org CGIAR 6/4/17

http://www.cgiar.org/web-archives/www-cgiar-org-impact-global-des_fact2-html/

Oliver Balch "Are drought-resistant crops in Africa the tech fix they're cracked up to be?" theguardian.com Guardian US 6/4/17

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/sep/02/drought-resistant-crops-gm-africa-monsanto-syngenta-dupont

Matt Weiser "Scientists think GMO crops may help us deal with climate change" pri.org Public Radio International 6/4/17

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-13/researchers-around-world-are-exploring-how-gmo-technology-might-boost-food

Matthew Niederhuber & Kaitlyn Choi "Insecticidal Plants: The Tech and Safety of GM Bt Crops" harvard.edu SITN 6/4/17

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/insecticidal-plants/

Evan Fraser &Andrew Rimas "Empires of Food" Counterpoint 4/29/17