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The complex nature of food

11/3/2009

By Nicholas Cox

Two experiences in recent weeks have made me think not only about the quantity of food produced in Barbados, but also about the quality of the food we consume.

This line of thinking was inspired by the documentary movie “Food Inc.” and the completion of a book I’ve been reading since summer – “In Defence of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”. In Food Inc. the filmmaker presents a startling insight into the American food industry that uncovers its many shortcomings in a way not seen since Upton Sinclair’s muckraking masterpiece of a novel – “The Jungle”.

Much like how The Jungle exposed the corruption, unsanitary, and unsafe conditions associated with the meatpacking industry, Food Inc. highlights how control of the American food industry was systematically removed from farmers to become almost completely integrated into the corporate structure. With corporate bottom lines and the generation of dirt cheap food to feed burgeoning appetites taking over the industry, as well as the prevalence of subsidised corn, and its by-product high fructose corn syrup, the food industry has once again become guilty of churning out mass-produced, unhealthy, and in many cases, unsafe food.
Why is the American food industry important to us here in Barbados? Well, as author Michael Pollan, who narrates segments of Food Inc., and points out over the course of “In Defence of Food”, the Western Diet is becoming more and more prevalent around the world, as people seek out the convenience and low-cost associated with how Americans eat. However, this diet of fast, processed, low-quality food has become responsible for substantial weight-gain, and a disturbing increase in lifestyle diseases among Americans; and it is spreading to the detriment of the rest of the world as traditional diets disappear.

For Barbados, a substantial segment of our food imports come from developed countries and bear the mark of products processed there; products conceptualised by food scientists in labs, engineered to provide certain nutrients, which also requires high levels of preservatives, almost always bearing the high-calorie high fructose corn syrup, and which cannot really be considered “food”. With the industrialised nature of food production being imposed upon us due to the prevalence of convenience foods in our supermarkets and at bulk stores, it means that Bajans are eating food of unknown quality, but purchased because of the pressures of higher cost of living, expanding tastes, and lack of options.

Concerns
Even though agriculture was one of the only productive sectors that saw some of expansion in the last quarter, this new information raises some concerns about the amount of food being produced locally. In terms of quality, I would hope that the cattle reared in Barbados are actually allowed to graze and have a diet of grass and not corn, which then requires the consumption of vast amounts of antibiotics and has become the norm in industrial beef production. I also hope that our chickens get to see the sun and move around, and are not just confined to dark pens being forced fed steroids to make them grow as quickly as possible to meet demand.

At the end of the day, we are quickly rivalling America in the sense that the healthy items for our diets are vastly overpriced, while it is so much cheaper to buy something that is not good for you, but quite filling. Pollan offers several suggestions to combat in his book, too many to repeat here; but his central thesis is: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

It sounds simple, but many of his other suggestions can prove difficult to achieve, such as eating foods that contain less than five ingredients in these days of highly-processed products. However, suggestions like, don’t eat anything your great grandmother would not have experienced as food, eat slowly, reduce portion sizes, avoid health claims, and get out of the supermarket to buy food whenever possible, all suggest a more pure way of eating that is connected to the farmer and the soil, and might just be what is needed for many people to turn around unhealthy lifestyles.

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as of close 9/15/2009


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