HW 5 - Dominant Discourses Regarding Contemporary Foodways in the U.S.

The dominant discourses in america in my opinion are who is liked most by the people.  The junk food industry is highly liked by kids and a lot of adults.  In the new york times article "Told to eat its vegetables, america orders fries" by Kim Severson the article says, "The baby-carrot industry tried to reposition its product as junk food, starting a $25 million advertising campaign whose defining characteristics include heavy metal music, a phone app and a young man in a grocery cart dodging baby-carrot bullets fired by a woman in tight jeans".  This is showing that the vegetable industry is working hard to compete with junk food by trying to become junk food.  That shows that junk food is a dominant discourse because if a company is trying to compete with another company by trying to be like it that shows that people like junk food better. 


The topics about food dominant discourses that I feel are most discussed are probably how and where the food is made.  On the news you always hear about different companies ways of processing their food and how they treat their workers.  Just recently mott's apple sauce workers went on a strike because they felt that they were being treated unfairly.  This just shows that even though mott's is a big company they still don't treat their workers fair and pay them fair because they want to stay at the top and try to spend the least amount of money possible and still make a good profit.  Wall mart workers also had a problem with unfair treatment, the website http://www.walmartspeakout.com/speak-out/main says, "I have worked for Wal-mart for almost 5 years now. I work at store 5260 and at one point in time I could say that with pride. The last couple years have been an increasing struggle just to survive with Wal-mart. Aside from getting paid table scraps, and ever rule change that comes every other week. I am at my wits end because of the abuses to myself and fellow employees".  This quote is showing again that to stay on top these companies are paying their workers less and less money then they deserve. 


I feel like in the past two quotes i have used the people writing about them do know what they are talking about.  I feel this because they found out about the quotes and they did all the research to find the person who said the quote.  I am not necessarily saying that they have the best views of the food situation in america but for what they were writing about i feel like they do have a pretty good understanding of that topic.  If they were to talk about another topic then that could be a different case because they might not understand the new topic as well as they did the old one.  I agree with the statement about wall mart workers being underpaid.  I feel like the least they could do is pay the people who keep their business running.  When you under pay workers it creates a huge problem which is not good for business.  If the workers are not happy with their pay they will sometimes strike against their company which slows down business and slows down profit for the company.