In America, we get our food from a broken system. A system that exploits animals, workers, and the average, everyday person. A system that remains inhumane, unfair, and artificial.

Most of the food that we eat every single day is produced at industrialized farms – these farms pay employees poorly, treat the animals even worse, and barely even pass health and sanitary requirements. Corporations don’t care about consumers’ health– just profits. The use of genetically modified crops allows them to make cheap food quickly and more easily than they could organically – genetically modified crops are cheaper than their organic alternatives, and grow bigger and faster.

Why are so many Americans obese? It’s simple. The price of eating fattening foods is far lower than their healthy alternatives, so Americans who cannot afford healthier, organic food are forced to purchase greasy and fattening fast food. Fourteen percent of Americans still live in poverty, which adds up to roughly 42 million people. Forty-two million people who have much bigger concerns than eating healthy, and who couldn’t afford to even if they tried. On top of this, the corporations behind the factories pumping out food are the same ones who often employ citizens in poverty.

Large-scale meat processing plants offer minimum wage pay in awful working conditions, putting workers at a high risk for injury. These workers are expendable and can be replaced extremely easily, meaning that anyone who stands against the condition or pay is sure to be fired. In these plants, animals are put through near-torture before being slaughtered; this is putting profits above morals and humane methods of slaughter.

This is the system that puts out the food on our dinner tables. One we support every single day because there’s no alternative. So many Americans still remain clueless about how our food industry works, much less understand the darkest aspects of it – where our food comes from is one of the biggest horrors of our nation, that nearly nobody knows about.