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How Informed are our Choices? - Part Two

© Sonia Fluke

I have been pondering this for some time. I have done a lot of research into many things that are relevent to me and I've come to a few conclusions. I've seen the way that marketing tools are effectively used to brainwash the mainstream popluation and I've watched in horror as they've lapped it up. It is however, not my responsibility to convert the world - that is an impossible task. It is also not my wish to rant and rave and promote doom and gloom, rather to encourage positive change.

This article was originally intended to be the first part in a series of written pieces exposing some of the myths we as consumers take as gospel, showing up the big corporations and governments for what they are. But it did occur to me that many of you would stop reading, because sometimes it seems that there is too much info out there. So, instead of filling your heads with a bunch of facts, figures and data, I'll do an overview of the things I have found and the websites to research it further. I do hope some of it will encourage someone to make a positive change in their world.

I have to start with take away food. I have always loved to tuck into good old McDonalds as much as the next person, but can't stomach the stuff now,due in no small part to the things I have read and seen. These facts may not bother you, but they bothered me enough to stop consuming it. For starters,do you realise how much McDonalds and corporations like them contribute to our environmental problems? For an example, it takes 800 square miles of forest to keep McDonalds in paper for a year. That boggled my mind,especially in this age of recycling and attempting to undo our inflicted damage. How about the extensive export of grains from poor countries to the US for feeding the enormous amount of cattle needed to put the beef in their burgers? Cattle consume 10 times the amount of grain and soy that humans do: one calorie of beef demands ten calories of grain. Of the 145 million tons of grain and soy fed to livestock, only 21 million tons of meat and by-products are used. The waste is 124 million tons per year at a value of 20 billion dollars. It has been calculated that this sum would feed, clothe and house the world's entire population for one year.