Despite the complaints I may have about the confusion of today’s food products, at least we’ve come a long way from 100 years ago. Although it was a work of fiction, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle describes quite gruesome scenes about the manufacture of products around the turn of the century. In fact, the descriptions were so shocking that they partially influenced the formation of the FDA and the “Pure Food and Drug Act”.
If you are interested in worker’s rights, early immigration, or food manufacture from around this time, definitely give this a read. A humanitarian work through and through, it shows the journey of an immigrant Lithuanian family and their struggle in the Chicago stock yards. It follows their rise, fall, rise, and fall again as they are cheated by the system of political machines and wage slavery.
It relates to this article because there are several descriptions of how the food is doctored. Milk is watered down and has chemicals added, which makes the children sick. Various undesirable cuts and bits of meat are mixed together and given several different labels, even though it all comes from the same mixture. Old and sour meat is given chemicals to hide the rotten flavor and sold as fresh, and even lard is made out of the sludge on the river. That particular description holds some morbid curiosity for me. The lard isn’t made from anything even close to the original. Even the rotten ham came from a pig at some point. No, instead a man goes out onto the river where the sludge is so think you can stand on it and cuts out blocks. Although the chemical usage may be bad at now, at least it isn’t being fished out of a river.
If you are considering vegetarianism or veganism, this book will definitely make the decision for you. There are rather graphic scenes from inside the slaughterhouse and even a suggestion of cannibalism when two workers fall into a vat full of what eventually becomes potted ham.
Although this book sounds disgusting, it is definitely worth a read. The story is excellent and funny when it needs to be. It’s heartwarming when the family gets a break and then heartbreaking when an opportunity is taken away. It’s also ironic at one point when a group of intellectuals is discussing the wonders of mechanized farming. They praise the fact that machines will soon be doing all the work, saving people from backbreaking labor. Now that we are living in that time, it’s starting to create more problems than it is solving. I wonder what those intellectuals would think about the modern movement of home gardening.
In any case, read The Jungle. But never while eating!
(image from here)
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