The fact that so much alleged food is toxic isn’t news. What’s news is how many people are suffering as a result. Australia used to be one of the healthiest countries in the world. Now, according to one source, about 50% of Australians “live with chronic disease”.
…And we’re doing better than some other Western countries. If you check out a search for food toxicity as news, you get two basic themes: food poisoning and how toxic the food that isn’t killing you is.
Nor is the law much help. Compliance isn’t a top priority, looking at the number of food-toxins-related cases tossed out by US courts. The deregulated legal environment thunders on, regardless of risks, apparently. Materials aren’t called toxic because nobody has anything better to do. It’s just that nobody seems interested in whether or not these foods are safe.
The human food chain is complex enough even as a simple numerical list:
- Growers
- Suppliers
- Manufacturers
- Retail
- Consumers
Note consumers are at the bottom of this list. At any other stage, contamination can and does regularly occur. Recalls are commonplace. Some people do try to do things right.
Additives
One of the most common problems is the issue of additives. The infamous chemistry lessons on every packet are universally loathed. Many additives are approved by regulators. The problem is that there is no such thing as a one size fits all OK button for everyone.
These additives take up a vast amount of space in modern food. The trouble with that is that they’re not food as such. They may be useful as emulsifiers, etc., but not food as such. So your gut gets a chemistry lesson with every meal or snack.
Pesticides
Pesticides are also infamous. Glyphosate, which I’m tired of writing about after over a decade, is suspected of many issues. (By the way – Who in the name of truly lousy science thinks glyphosate is an amino acid? It isn’t, never has been, and never will be.) Other pesticides have their problems. The simple fact is that there’s been more litigation than facts. Safe or not? If you look at the list of banned pesticides in the EU, you get a picture of a huge number of historic issues.
Manufacturing
The food industry is geared to profit. You get $X value out of X material. So you cut the food and manage the weights to get the best value out of your material. See anywhere in this inelegant equation where health might be a consideration? Sugar and salt are cheap, so they add bulk. Lecithin is actual food, (heartbreaking to think any real food might sneak in) but it’s cheap, too.
It’s an interesting point or several:
- Arguably, simply selling raw food avoids a lot of costs. That doesn’t happen.
- You could have the healthiest possible foods sold at fast food outlets and improve global health easily. That doesn’t happen.
- You are what you don’t eat, too. Dietary deficiencies, as much as too much garbage, are dangerous and can leave you prone to disease.
- Some things are literally indigestible. They shouldn’t be in anything. You might as well be eating rocks.
- Some things are basically misrepresentations. How much of a burger is an actual burger?
- Sugars are well known as dangerous in sufficient quantities. Yet high fructose is allowed. The world is currently suffering from a plague of diabetes that makes COVID look positively tame.
- Humans aren’t well adapted to the fats and sugar combination. It’s relatively recent that foods like this were created, and people have been getting sick ever since.
I was looking at the ingredients in an American pop tart a while back. The astonishing thing is that people are expected to survive eating it.
Retail
To be fair – Retailers don’t have much choice in what they can sell, particularly franchises. You sell what you’re told to sell, however grotesque. You could, in theory, leave out some of the more genocidal foods, if you can find any. You could also just stock stuff you know is food, without bothering with that pesky chemistry doctorate.
Corporate
The easy out for commentators is to blame the corporate zombies for the state of food. That charge sticks like sugar in the media and it won’t go away. It’s not quite that easy, though. The knowledge base isn’t too dazzling for non-food-technology people.
This is an each-way bet. Comprehension may be selective. Phoning a lawyer is easier than actually checking your toxic products. Genuine ignorance, however, is also possible. Someone selling a sweetener or some adorable emulsifier is selling to the corporate sector. These guys want their money too.
So it’s pretty easy to argue that the mass/value equation is the real working dynamic. To sell real food to corporations, you’d have to show a dollar value, not just a health value.
That doesn’t seem to be happening, either. I may be on the progressive side of everything, but one thing drives me to sheer fury – The constant and cretinous lack of realistic commercial perspectives from advocates.
There’s a serious problem. Solve it. I don’t know how many lives have been saved by self-righteousness, but many more have been solved by realism. Create the commercial solution, don’t just preach about the problems.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
