Internet, check this article out. Scary graphic, right? But it got me thinking. What this means, essentially, is that the way we eat is determined by a larger system of food production, which limits our choices as consumers. I think most people have known this for a long time, but bear with me. I think we pretty much asked for the food system we suffer from today. Not that we deserved it, but we voted with our dollars, with what we payed attention to and what we ignored, we gave our tacit approval (intentionally or not) to this food system, and now we live with it. What I think that means, is that it is possible to create a healthy, sustainable food system in the not-so distant future that will be every bit the unstoppable corporate leviathan that our current one is. People didn’t always eat the way they do now, and processed food was never actually forced down anyone’s throat (figuratively speaking). What happened was that these foods were invented, or a few early ones were, and made cheaply available because of the production cost, and people bought them. Then, as people began making money off processed food, the idea that people valued low cost and availability over anything else in food, processed food grew in popularity. As the industry grew, it built manufacturing infrastructure, advertising infrastructure, and lobbying infrastructure to go with it, which became entrenched and encouraged more growth in the industry until things reached the food world of today. To me, that is a story of a disastrous and harmful system built around a society that kept encouraging it, not a story of conspiracy or devious mustache twiddling on the part of food companies. What needs to happen is that we need to be extremely clear about the change in the food industry, and that will only happen with slow, deliberate cultural change. We ended up with all this terrible food because we bought it without knowing what it would do to us, and to create a new food system that is not only healthier and more sustainable, but won’t end up completely backfiring on us, we need to be better consumers. Every time we buy food or don’t buy food, that sends a message to food producers. As a country, we are still sending the message that we like our food cheap, heavily processed, and tremendously unhealthy, and that is exactly what we’re getting.
