Hello Everyone!
I've noticed that there has been a lot of scapegoating of modern nutritional science and food science lately. According to many authors such as Michael Pollan the mere idea of trying to create "new fangled" food is unecological, unethical and doomed to bring about bad health. According to Pollan one should buy a "high quality" multi-vitamin, but when it comes to edible foods one should only select items that one's "great grandmother would recognize as food".
Now I don't know what Pollan's background is, and who his great grandmothers were. My great-grandmothers were Irish immigrants. Do I plan to keep eating things that they would never recognize as food? Skippy yes!! I eat loads of things that I'm confident would be completely foreign to a 19th century Irishwoman. For that matter my mother claims to have been in college when she first tried pizza, as was I when I found out that kefir was in fact sold in America-not just Russia where I first encountered it.
Another thing I remember learning first as a college student is that to people in much of Northwest Europe and the American colonies tomatoes (aka "Love Apples") were widely believed to be poisoning and one attempt to assassinate George Washington involved putting one in his soup. In fact, one elderly professor I had in college in the 90's told stories of his mother giving tomatoes to an old lady on his street, after which she asked "Are you trying to poison me?"
But without getting too much into all the horrors of 19th century food from beer as a caloric staple and hard liquor served to small children at breakfast to stories of food hygeine in those days, I'd like to ask with all do respect to our great-grandparents whether there really is any such things as "traditional" food wisdom and whether it is really something that is "threatened" by modern science.
It may be true that some inventions of the modern food industry such as monoculture crops, high fructose corn syrup, spam, or pink Nestle's Quik are genuine monstrosities. But does that mean that all food science and nutritional science is worthless?
For one thing our methods of having food available that are not in season have gone from drying, to canning, to freezing, to now freeze drying. All of which have represented improvements in nutritional quality, taste, and aesthetics. And without these technologies the only alternatives involve either eating only what is in season locally, and/or relying on transported food. Food fortification has come under a lot of attack at by people like Michael Pollan, however many nutritionists are actually arguing for an increase in fortification. For example many argue that level of vitamin D should be increased because of widespread deficiency of vitamin D. While food fortification is not a cure all for nutritional deficiencies, the criticism that it is somehow coming at the expense of more "natural" eating habits or is corporate in nature is by and large misplaced.
Because originally food fortification was designed to be inexpensive and accessible to poor people. It was not meant to "replace" fruits, vegetables, or homemade foods.
For that matter it doesn't necessarily require a multinational corporation to do food fortification. With appropriate supplies even a very small food related plant could do it.
One can actually find books from the 1960's with detailed instructions on how to fortify certain foods at the "commune level". And for that matter it is completely possible for the businesses that sell all the related supplies to operate at a relatively local level. So the idea that the concept of food fortification is a harbinger of corporate rule of the food supply simply isn't supported by some obvious facts. What it really does is give people options.
Nor does Pollan's idea of a "tyranny of nutritionism" stand up to scrutiny. For example he blamed "nutritionism" for the fact that many food with high fructose corn syrup were labeled as containing various nutrients and antioxidents, while the produce section remained unadorned. Can the man not distinguish between science and marketing? Does he not realize that we have nutritional science and food science to thank for the fact that people know-at least intellectually-that fruits and vegetables are important instead of simply seeing them as "poor people's food" as was often the perception in many places as recently as the 19th century? Or that it was cutting edge science that is now showing that HFCS actually is different from table sugar? Apparently he doesn't.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the new foodie movement is that anytime concern for the environment is high (such as during the debate over global warming) concern over the nature of the food supply inevitably follows. On another level, people have seen a lot of recent food scares such as the melamine from China, E.coli, and more is not a fix. And eating mostly foods that greatgrandmothers would recognize, which would include a lot of meat, potatoes, white bread, and coffee or tea filled with sugar for a high percentage of folks in the US, clearly won't solve anything. Nor does the anti-food science crowd understand that once upon a time the things they worship such as sourdough bread, kefir, red wine, dried fish, tofu, liquamen, and more were "newfangled inventions".
Nor will doing away with items such as fortified food, peanut butter, or our ability to can and freeze dry food, be a good idea for a world that may potentially face a good deal of famine, refugee crisises, disaster, water issues, and more.
Of course, there are some very legitimate issues associated with controversial innovations such as GMOs particularly loss of genetic diversity in crops. But the answer is not to get rid of crop science but to ask some very serious questions about where the priorities have been involving the research money. And that's something I'm sure many of the so-called "crunchy cons" would never want to waste time with.
Say Goodnight Readers!
No comments:
Post a Comment