The Eleventh Hour, "The Hope is You"

             
              In this blog I will discuss the film ' the eleventh hour' produced and narrated by Leanardo Dicaprio, with contributions from well known scientists, physicist, environmentalists and politicians. In this film they together talk about problems faced by natural environment and the causes that led to such massive and traumatic change on planet earth.
              Global warming, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, change in climate, depletion of oceans all is mentioned and highlighted in this film. Before watching this film I just had a vague idea that global warming is dangerous and never took it as an alarming situation. I realized that I was aware of the changes taking place around me such as, change in climate; less snow, rise in temperature, increasing numbers of natural calamities, and loss of biodiversity (increasing no. of endangered species). But I never thought of the reasons why all this is happening. This was not the scenario in early times. As Dicaprio states in his film, right now "we face a convergence of crises"; we need to take precautionary steps to save our planet before it’s too late.
            Pollution is the biggest enemy of planet earth, greenhouse gases: it contains large amount of carbon dioxide and other poisonous gases. Which causes global warming: ozone depletion, ocean depletion, health problems, human rise ecology, global climate change etc. the damage created on earth by humans is immeasurable. the largest amount of greenhouse gases is produced by industries by burning of fossil fuels, cafo's and slaughterhouses are the biggest contributors in producing greenhouse gases emission, they generate millions of tons of manure every year and "produce ammonia (NH3) forms from the breakdown of manure and urine as well as wasted animal feed"(citation needed). Which then mixes with other poisonous greenhouse gases and is causing global warming. 'Global warming' is a strong word and no one can ignore it; this is problem which needs to be cured soon. Pollution created by these animal industries in large amount is taking away the natural from the nature which will soon result in end of the planet earth if everything continuous on the same pace.  Such practices like animal industries should be substituted with some other system like; animal husbandry, which is safer and healthier. All we need is to redesign our thinking in a way, where everybody takes planet earth as their responsibility and work together to keep it safe.
            As said in the film "people need to realize that there are things they can do in everyday life, everybody making a change adds up to something meaningful"; everyone can do a little something for the betterment of our nature and help our planet to recover from such such depletion. For instance everyone can follow the thumb rule of 'R.R.R', which is recycle, reuse and reduce the use of resources. Because resources are limited and want are unlimited and never ending, one should be careful and responsible in using the resources and should help in promoting sustainable development so our future generation can enjoy life on earth to the fullest without any scarcity of resources. But this is only possible if everybody realizes their potential and start acting in a right direction for a better and safe future.
             In this film the problems created by human being for planet earth is discussed from several viewpoints of experts. This film tries to aware general public about the current condition of earth and provides evidence and reasoning for such massive destruction. The film tells us that we are the last hope to save and protect our planet.

CAFO system and Overeating 'The double trouble'

            

     In this blog I will discuss the relation between the cafo system and overeating, and how they complement each other. Overeating is a prospering reason of obesity, and obesity is one of the leading causes of death in The United States, on the other hand there is cafo system which promotes overeating by producing large quantity of cheap meat and dairy products.  According to Dr. Kessler's research in his book 'The End Of Overeating' he concluded, "certainly food had become more readily available in the 1970's and 1980" readily availability of food here means: cooked food; that means no more homemade food and  mom's don't need to cook food at home because everything is easily available in neighborhood food outlets and it cost less. Eating out just became a culture in the United States, what happened that lead to a sudden change?  Something happened in 1970-1980, something abnormal that changed the entire food system of the United States. People who were doing well earlier started to gain weight, this was something new something beyond expectations, earlier they ate and never felt the need to think about the numbers of calories they consume, and never gained so much weight to be noticed and point out as 'fat' and ‘obese’ and if there was any weight gain it was a little and could be taken care of easily. Suddenly the people started to gain weight so fast that the number of overweight people was unbelievable that even the researchers were not sure about the figures they were looking at, they kept on rechecking their data to assure the accuracy of the numbers they had, again and again until they were sure. Such dramatic change of million and million pounds in the population of United States, seemed to be the output of the increase in all these fast food joints, restaurants and eating hubs; they started serving food in massive quantity and on very minimum price with the help of CAFO's which made everything easier, faster and cheap for US food industries. CAFO's and overeating go hand to hand, they promote each other and their existence depends on each other, the more people eat the more CAFO's produce, the more CAFO's produce the more people are going to eat. According to Dr. Kessler "we have larger portion sizes, more chain restaurants, more neighborhood food outlets and a culture that promotes out door eating". That leads to eat more and more, I guess mankind has a tendency to buy things on cheap price even if it’s not necessary or wanted at the time and once  one  buys  the cheap food provided in massive  quantity they ‘eat it’ without giving a second thought about the pros and cons of it.

            Most of the people 'eat' not to satisfy their hunger but to satisfy the ‘psychological urge; the craving for food. People eat food to feel good, the concept of eating have changed for many people over the years, now they consider food as 'reward' rather than necessity to survive. The main ingredients that make people addicted to food as a source for seeking pleasure are salt, sugar and fat. According to Dr. Kessler "Sugar, fat and salt makes us eat more sugar, fat and salt”, the reward system in our brain demands fatty food, demands high calories food: food which is high on sugar, fat and salt because after eating these, a chemical named dopamine is released in our brain which makes us feel good, the same feel one gets from taking other drugs such as: cocaine, marijuana, weed and are as addictive as these drugs. People desire more food for more pleasure  and they can’t stop eating. Resisting temptation is so hard that one can’t tell the difference between what’s good and what’s not, temptation becomes more powerful then health. People need to understand the importance of food in our lives and should know the difference between healthy and non-healthy food. So they can make better decisions and protect their health. Excess of anything is not good, same applies on food too.

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