In the early 1900s, food safety was an incredibly unfamiliar and overlooked part of America’s food industry. Written by muckraker Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, was a controversial novel that depicted the harsh living and working conditions of immigrants working in the food industry. After the release of The Jungle, thousands of meat-eating Americans were horrified at what had been happening in factories. Disgusting yet accurate details presented in The Jungle were the basis for the creation of laws to stop food production from becoming so unsanitary.
Intro: When people eat food they do not think about what is in it, or how it is made. The only thing people care about is what the food tastes like and how much they get. During the 1900’s the meat packing industry had not regulations of any kind. All that mattered to the industry was that they made as much money as possible with as little expenditure as possible. During this times people were often made sick and died either from working conditions or poor food quality.
When Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle, a book about the terrible environment of the meat-packing factories in Chicago, he hoped to motivate reform in immigrant working conditions and promote socialism. Instead, what shocked readers the most was the sordid surroundings in which their future meals were prepared. Sinclair 's audience saw these conditions as a threat to themselves, and that energized reform in the meat-packing industry. What scared audiences the most was how real this threat was to their lives. As can be witnessed in the results of Sinclair 's crusade, the most effective propaganda is that which rouses the visceral survival instinct. Donald Trump, a notorious real estate mogul, is running for president on a platform that started
Upton Sinclair, a socialist, and muckraker rallied public outcry for labor equity, he launched a consumer movement through the midst of a harsh stockyard strike from unfairly payed wage workers, socialist writer. He is best known for his novel, The Jungle which underlined the devastating exposé of Chicago’s meat-packing industry. A protest novel he published in 1906, the book as a result was quite the shocking revelation of incomprehensible labor practices and unsafe working conditions that were held in Chicago stockyards. The description’s spoken in Sinclair’s book issued the truths about diseased and spoiled meat processes that were not regulated until he exposed them. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited
People were forced to consume contaminated food especially meat on a daily basis. This gave birth to many diseases such as food poisoning and liver failure. They did not have any other options because there were no laws prohibiting the sale of spoiled food. Soon enough, in 1906, Federal Food and Drug Act was passed. One of the key things this act did was embargoing the sale of any food or drug which has been adulterated or misbranded (4).
American Dream or American Nightmare? Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Mineola, New York.
One of the most famous muckrakers that protested against the problems in food and health was, Upton Sinclair. He wrote a very famous book, “The Jungle”, that exposed the corruption and awful living conditions of the stockyards workers and the unclean handling of spoiled meat, and unsanitary conditions of the meat. They mixed rotten meat with raw meat and without any sanitary instrument. His book was an inspirational piece that drew public 's attention of the huge issue of unsanitary meat processing plants. When the people were complaining about the issue, T. Roosevelt, signed the Pure Food and Drug Act that prevented the manufacture, sale or transportation of misbranded or poisonous or adulterated foods, drugs, liquors and medicines, also it regulated the traffic.
The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was an expose on the life of those who lived in Packingtown, Chicago. Packingtown was where most of the people who was looking for work lived, it was a very crowded city. Job openings were scarce and most of the jobs were very unsafe. Most of the people in this part of town were poor, so they did not really have much doubts of food,. The Jungle exposed the horrific work conditions, the poor food quality, and the deceitfulness of the business owners.
Millions of Americans view “hard and laborious” work as mowing the lawn or going to an office job eight hours a day. Young teenagers regard these duties as “chores”, miserable and tedious tasks; however, most of these people are oblivious to the mistreatment and overworking the meat industry workers experience daily. Since the 20th century, these employees have been exploited and taken advantage of by the large corporations in the food industry. In the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, revelations are made about the evil ways of the meat factories in the early 1900s. Although the working conditions have improved in several ways, today’s industry is not much better, and food investigators Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan expose the realities
One of the problems that the people faced was working in dangerous and unsanitary work conditions. In the early 20th century many meatpacking industry 's were unsanitary and dangerous. Upton Sinclair, a young socialist journalist and novelist, spent weeks investigating the topic in Chicago. Once Upton uncovered these appalling facts he soon later
Alexis Cooper Ms. King-Zimmerman AP Language and Composition 29 September, 2015 The setting in The Jungle by, Upton Sinclair takes place in the early 1900’s. The main story line is pictured around the Chicago meat packaging industry, or “Packingtown”. The author goes into graphic detail about the different ways the meat was “tainted”. In the Chicago meat packaging industries many of the workers were killed and turned into fertilizer as they fell into the fat rendering tanks.
In “ The Jungle”, the author Upton Sinclair states that “ I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. This means that Sinclair wanted to muckrake the Meat Packing Industry to seek attention for the workers, but instead food became a bigger concern. The characters Jurgis, Ona, and Marija with fellow family members are Lithuanian immigrants who came to PackingTown in hope for a better future, however they came to realize that the whole town is run by capitalist. Although Sinclair intentionally uses metaphors and similes to depict the characters struggle in the horrible living and working conditions in Packingtown, his purpose is undermined and overlooked by his use of realism to depict the food process.
The sociological imagination on food In this assignment I am going to talk about the sociological imagination on food and the aspects it brings with it. Before starting that large process I firstly will explain what the social imagination is and what the key points of the imagination are in able to fully understand the topic; food and its history, biography, and the relation it has in society. This is my first assignment for the module understanding contemporary society so please bear with me as I will do my best to explain it in a logic manner so everybody can understand it.
The Act included the first regulation that legalized safeguards for health, life and limb (Wikipedia). Indeed, the laws were meant for the workers in the factories to have safer working conditions, but it never really worked out. Records vary, but it is known that as many as 35,000 workers killed and another million injured on the job in 1900. (Lutz,
and I was overwhelmed by this burning desire to find out how our meals are grown, created, and end up in our homes. When I found The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I read its description and realized that this book would answer all my questions in the history of food. Since many people