The Analysis Of The Breeze Harper’S Book "Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak On Food, Identity, Health, & Society"
The Real Backstory
Have you ever wondered how your food or products you love came to be? Have you ever thought of what is behind your delicious hamburger, and what sacrifices have been made to make that burger? Many people in today’s world go about their own lives eating food as well as keeping up with their daily routines of drinking a coffee. As well as coffee, people enjoy donuts that are sugar filled and ever so delicious. Most people don’t even question where their food came from, or how it was made; they just don’t think twice and go about their normal day. But people fail to recognize where and how their food was made.
According to the text by A Breeze Harper, people in this world have an addiction and overconsume products such as meat, sugar and caffeine, that affect not only the person, but the beliefs and the community around them, locally and globally. A Breeze Harper’s Book, “Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society,” is very convincing in that it makes you think about how you are living and what food you are taking in. It starts off with identifying the types of class involved and bringing up the idea of factors that don't allow certain classes of people to practice plant-based diets and the overall idea of how we take in our food. It is then led to bring up an idea that questions the reader, which is that our food choices and diet may perhaps cause social change. The next part of the essay talks about mainly the black population and what diet it has and how it is unhealthy and becoming compromised.
This part also talks about how the Soul Food, which is traditional southern American food, according to Google, is related to the black population and how Soul Food, based off of A Breeze’s Harper’s opinion, can wipe out a group of people the quickest. The final part of the chapter in the book starts to go more in depth about what addictions the world has had that come at a terrible cost. It elaborates on the real backstory behind our food we love and how an animal or a human is killed to make the food that we love. Sugar, for example, slaves have to make it and harvest it in order for our sugar products to be delivered to us, such as coffee, donuts, tea, etc. Not only by eating loads of sugar a day (daily coffee) are we harming ourselves, but we are also making other people in other countries suffer, by making them slaves for our product.
Harper's book continues to elaborate off of this one main idea and adds more details explaining our effect of enjoying junk food, caffeine, and meaty foods. It tells an overall theme throughout being, that we should consider a more plant-based healthy diet instead of the meaty, sugary diet that most Americans go on for our benefit, while others, sacrifice and risk their lives to get us our fix. Harper's book is very convincing since it questions and challenges the reader to think at multiple points throughout. It makes us wonder, but not only wonder; It makes us wonder what other people have to risk for our enjoyment of our food.
Many people in America eat junk food and they look at that as a normal diet for them. These people lack the knowledge about what is really going on to get the food they love. They were never told the truth about their delicious foods origin and how it was made. Harper's main idea and overall goal in this chapter of her book is to convince and influence us, readers, to think about what we eat, where it comes from, and how it was made, to gear us toward a more healthy diet. I agree with Harper's ideas, but with a few exceptions, in that, I think people should be told about the real backstory about how their food came to be, then they can decide whether or not they want to still eat junk food or gear toward a more plant-based diet and or healthy diet.
One of the main points supporting Harper's argument is America’s addiction to sugar and caffeine. Harper explains that Dunkin Donuts slogan of “America runs on Dunkin” scares the life out of her. This is a topic that has more to it than you may think. America has an addiction: coffee. Coffee contains the drug caffeine which is supposed to keep you more awake, as well as sugar which is sweet and in almost every coffee product. Most Americans have sugar almost every day and the number of Americans consuming sugar is increasing according to William Dufty, author of Sugar Blues, who was brought up in Harper's book. Harper compares sugar to the hard drug and or illegal drug of cocaine. The same effects of not having caffeine, being depressed, withdrawal, all are similar to the effects of cocaine, a powerful drug that destroys a person from the inside, and its addictive like caffeine.
Sugar affects a lot of people in the same way, it gives highs, lows, paranoia, etc. Harper includes a point in the text that is about Dufty’s book and how he went to summer vacation to notice that a girl introduced him to dope, which was served as a cola, it was known as Coca-Cola, which points to the Coke we all know today, used to have cocaine in it. Harper states that sugar has no nutritional value and that comes to show how many people in this world are drinking products with it and hurting themselves and others. Harper includes a statistic in this chapter of her book that indicates how many people don’t have access to food in certain countries where slaves are used to harvest our goods for our fixes, “Eight hundred and thirty million people in the world are undernourished, and 791 million of them live in so-called developing countries” (Harper 23).
This stat comes to show how not eating right and healthy can affect others because they have to constantly work under harsh conditions to get us or fix of the food we love. Another key aspect of Harper's argument is the argument of meaty foods and junk foods. How many times do you look at a burger and think where it came from? Not much I assume. But actually, the burger that you are eating from time to time whether if it’s from McDonald's, Wendys, Burger King, or from the grocery store and or supermarket, the meat comes from the same place. Harper then explains as an example of a pig that was enslaved and then eventually slaughtered in order for us to get our pork or bacon.
Harper then elaborates off this idea and connects it to the use of water and how it's being wasted more and more. Harper states that “nonorganic meat and dairy farming production is over consuming and contaminating the world’s water supply” (Harper 24). This means that since animals drink a lot of water and they are eventually slaughtered for meat on hamburgers, and meat in stores, a lot of water is wasted by this process. Harper also explains that fast food meals require land to be deforested so that people can graze and eventually slaughter the meet for the fast food meals we know today.
According to harper forests in general recycle and purify water and many of the forests around the world produce a good amount of oxygen. This goes to show not only who is at risk or suffering, but what is also. Harper then goes to more depth and summarizes and connects what she is trying to say with some examples that she made earlier. Harper elaborates more on the fact that we need to actually think about what we eat, and put ourselves in the shoes of the people sacrificing their lives to get us the food we want. Then Harper explains what is going on in the Coca-Cola industry in more depth. She then explains and points to consumers that support the Coca-Cola company, and how they are unknowingly supporting a company that supports very risky working conditions and ideas of torture and murder; basically not treating slaves right.
This idea gives the image that America doesn’t care about what happens to other people making their product they love, they just want it, since most Americans have sugar and soda in their daily lives. Harper then connects and elaborates on more problems, relating them to each other to reaffirm here argument. She then goes off of the meat topic and states that, “If you think a cow is the only way you can get your protein, then how does a cow itself get protein” (Harper 34). This quote is saying that there is more that meets the eye than you may think there is. Cows and animals that are slaughtered mainly get their meat from plant-based substances that are organic and from nature. This comes to show that by eating plant-based diets people, like animals, can be healthy.
The standard American diet mainly consists of junk food, meat, and dairy with very little plant-based products. This is a bad diet because it harms everyone not just yourself, and every time you eat these foods with no nutritional value you are basically saying you support the slaughtering of animals and very risky work conditions for others in foreign countries. Harper continually tries to influence the reader by using real-life experiences and revealing the hidden backstory, to eat a more healthy diet, which is more plant-based than meat and sugar based, as well as reflect and think about what foods you consume and what could be changed to better your health and others around you locally and globally.
Harper then gives final support of providing a list for us to follow to change our ways, diets, and impact on the rest of the community locally and globally. Harper's essay is very convincing and informative. She uses details and real-world examples to get her point through. I would’ve thought differently if I didn’t read this but after reading this I feel enlightened. I feel as though Harper used a lot of examples and gave us a true insight of the truth and the real backstory of the food we crave and enjoy every day. I feel as though everyone should know what they are eating to make an informed decision. When people do eat they should think about where it came from and if they actually support the suffering that goes on when they eat junk food or sugar-filled products. Everyone has a right to make their own choice and that choice is fair if all of the information is known. Harper's main point of this book was to influence you to change your thinking and possibly change the food you eat and making that food healthier, plant-based, and more eco-friendly.
Works Cited:
- Harper, A. Breeze. Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society. Lantern Books, 2010. Accessed September 26, 2018
- Dufty, William. Sugar Blues. Warner, 1993. Accessed September 26, 2018
