In the past there was enough food in the markets. Potatoes, tomatoes and onions came from the soil; we ate grapes, cucumbers and watermelon in summer and oranges and apples in winter; and a chicken took three months to reach a good weight. Now we can go to any mall and find everything we want, nicely packed. But do we ever think about what lies behind those packs, or under the skin of that shiny tomato in the middle of winter?
Rubbish in a pretty box is still rubbish. One of the worst experiences in the food industry is that of the United States. Hard to believe, in the land of order and civilisation, but it is true. In the US, food comes from big, organised companies, and you can get cheap food (noodles, McDonald's hamburgers, the KFC chicken that has swept the world, house-sized pizzas), all cheaper than a plate of salad. But what is the result?
The result is more food poisoning and more diabetes, heart disease and obesity-related illness, not only among older people but among children and teenagers. I will describe part of the American experience, because every time I walk into a shop here I see us heading down the same road, whose sign at the end reads: "Death to the consumer, the worker and nature, and life to the big companies with enough capital to control our food."
In the US, these restaurants started out feeding drivers, people with little money who needed cheap, filling food. The most famous and successful of them was McDonald's. The company grew using the idea that each worker does one small, repeated task, so any worker can be replaced at any moment, which puts workers at the company's mercy. And McDonald's is not the only one: many companies now sell beef, chicken and other products.
As the companies grew, they needed more and more meat. The pastures were no longer enough, and the animals took too long to grow for the needs of production, so faster ways had to be found. The quickest, and the closest to nature, was feeding the animals yellow corn (maize). Most US farms switched to growing corn, and the animals were fed on it. This did two things: the animals put on weight quickly, and the cost of grazing and the problem of finding grass disappeared, so production rose.
But cattle, whose guts were not designed for corn, developed many infections, especially with E. coli bacteria, in particular a strain called E. coli O157:H7, which causes stomach upsets and diarrhoea and can be fatal.
These bacteria reached the meat and killed a number of children who had eaten a hamburger at a restaurant. The fight between the families and the food companies was, as our grandparents would say, a fight between the eye and the awl.
Corn became the main animal feed. When a farmer working for a food company was asked why, his answer was simple: "Why should I wait three months for a mature chicken when I can have one in 40 days?" So going back to traditional feeding became a waste of time and money.
Thinking also changed, from removing the cause of the contamination (changing the feed) to fixing it by treating the animals with antibiotics. In other words, our food now contains germs and the chemicals used to treat them.
Corn is not just animal feed but human food too. Many products, such as biscuits, cookies, ketchup, mustard and even bread, contain corn syrup. Some researchers believe that high-fructose corn syrup doesn't signal fullness to the brain as well as other sugars do, so it is easy to eat large amounts of sugar without feeling full. That leads to obesity, and at the end of that road wait the diseases linked to it: diabetes, heart and joint disease, depression and early death.
That is part of the American experience. It may seem far away, but next time you walk into a shop, think how close we have come, especially now that a hamburger costs less than a kilo of peaches or cherries.
Processed food may be cheaper than natural vegetables and fruit, but when the price is our health and our children's lives, it is far more expensive. Let us learn from other people's mistakes, avoid blind imitation, and make our aim "better food, not more food". To be continued…
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