The Wall Street Journal had a book review this weekend for "Feed the People!" a book that sings the praises of modern industrial food and supermarkets.
From the review:
In “Feed the People!” Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg deliver the news—well-known to many Americans, if not to the frequenters of farmers markets—that the American food industry is wildly successful at keeping us safely and even delectably fed. Not only is it not broken, we can’t live without it.
As if that weren’t sacrilege enough, the authors offer a series of additionally shocking revelations. Food deserts are a mirage. There is no shortage of access to Brussels sprouts; people simply prefer to eat the wrong things. Local is fine, but not if you live in Chicago and want good produce in winter. Oh, and if you’re on a tight budget, Walmart is your best bet for healthy victuals.
The authors—Mr. Dutkiewicz is an assistant professor at the Pratt Institute, Mr. Rosenberg is an associate professor at Duke University—harbor few illusions about the past. They remind us that nostalgia for the food culture of our grandparents overlooks the prevalence of rickets, pellagra and food-poisoning in those days, to say nothing of hunger. Nor do the authors believe processed food is inherently evil. They disdain raw milk as dangerous and ask instead that we appreciate the role of pasteurization and fortified bread, to name two examples, in reducing nutritional deficiencies and food-borne illnesses. The coup de grâce? “The sooner we snap out of our distaste for genetic modification, the better.”
The book isn’t out yet, and I have added it to my reading list. Far be it from me to disengage with differing perspectives.
The review:
The authors have the temerity to report that urban community gardens, those itty-bitty lots where neighbors grow snap peas and the like, don’t amount to a hill of beans. “Qualitatively invaluable, quantitatively valueless,” they write. “Harsh but true.” Yet they acknowledge the role of such gardens as “sites of resistance to unchecked development,” rather than as barriers to much-needed new housing.
Still, odd as I’m sure it will appear to many people who know me, I can’t think of anything better for people to do than gardening. This may be fanciful for the vast majority of Americans living in cities with tiny plots. Still, a family of four can eat year-round from a plot that is 60×40 feet. I am not sure how we can look at the obvious food shortages during WWII and the need for Victory Gardens and rationing of meat and bread and disregard the independence and homemaking skills that so obviously aided an important effort. To say nothing of the reduction in trips to a store. Or, at the very least we can recognize a useful garden is fresher, more nutritious, less reliant on dyes and preservatives and chemical fertilizers, and does not require a plastic container, shipping costs, and excess trash.
I am reminded once again of Truman’s maxim, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know."
- The excellent book The Poison Squad covers the years-long effort at the turn of the 20th century to protect our food supply from, you guessed it: industrialist food manufacturers. Dairy farms that laced milk with formaldehyde so they could waste less product, despite knowing it was obviously harmful for people (especially babies). Or meat producers who laced meat with sawdust to pad it.
- Food deserts are a mirage, they say, apparently not recognizing the home-bound Americans who struggle with mobility and can’t just waltz across town to the supermarket. I do not know how we can look at an 80-year-old woman living on East 38th Street and Post Road in Indianapolis and think, "Yeah, see, that gas station over there has a sign that says "We have bananas!" No desert here!"
- Common sense would dictate that fortified bread is a curious exemplar. "What if took a grain that has nutrients and minerals, stripped that out, refined it, added a bunch of sugar, and then to appease the lawyers and moms just sprinkled some of those minerals on top like a dessert topping?" That’s most bagged bread today. Does anyone think that if we could do the same with carrots — removing the vitamins and minerals — to make "processing" easier, so we could fold carrots into little dinosaur shapes or whatever, and then sprinkled some vitamins back on top that it’d be the same? A significant body of work recognizes our bodies need whole foods. It is the literal difference between eating an apple and eating apple sauce, or, worse still, apple juice. Yes, thank goodness for industrialization for pre-digesting my apples for me.
- I agree some of our fear of genetic mutation is unwarranted. Often, we’ve crossed one plant’s defense mechanism against, say, moths with a plant that doesn’t have it (like corn, because Iowa votes early, I guess), to help protect it. Taking some genes from lavender and adding it to corn doesn’t seem the same to me as some lab-grown Frankengene, or, worse, some chemical resistance from Dow or to resist glysophate (Roundup).
I recognize the authors have valid arguments for much. It is true we have a lot of food in this country and much of the world. But we seem to be framing this as "Look how much abundance we have." Like saying, "Look how warm we are!" at the same time the house is on fire.
It seems to me our problem here might actually by the fact most Americans have been rendered helpless. We have children who can tell you how to make a baby but not how to make a potato. And if anyone can tell you how to make a potato, it’s probably high-level, like, "You put it in the ground, water it, and hope for the best." That hardly seems like gardening for independence. That’s gardening as a hobby. A thing you do in between checking your phone. There’s a difference.
A person who undertakes growing a garden makes an effort to preserve his or her plot of earth, seeks not to exploit the soil, and has set their mind decisively against what is wrong with us, seeking depth and pleasure, and, more importantly, will look at rain and drought as not some abstraction, but as something that, perhaps, has been influenced by other ill-gotten means.
