I came across this older piece in the Smithsonian Magazine (Jan, 2002) that looks like it could be representative of any point in the last 30 years. It’s a simple pictorial essay showing the the food an average family from a particular region eats in a week. The simplicity of the concept bears semblance to a Golden Book-style title on food and culture: See the African family with heaps of whole grains, the Japanese family with a colorful variety of fish and vegetables, and the American family with…
Good lord! What is all that?
To contrast with the turkish family’s spread above, almost everything displayed in the american household is packaged and processed, recognizable less as food than as commercial products from supermarket shelves. Arguably, the only items here that don’t contain industrial derivatives of corn or soy are those grown in the ground or on a tree (see if you can spot them, kids!) but most of these were likely shipped halfway across the world to get to that kitchen. At least the corn syrup and dextrose are domestic, right?
The visual disparity in the diets of different families is clear enough for a children’s book, but the implication seems lost on the majority of Americans. We are not eating food, we are eating food products. The unbelievable variety of colorful boxes one can find at the supermarket gives the consumer the illusion of choice, and belies a trend towards a handful of mammoth agribusinesses controlling our food system.
So what’s wrong with this picture?
In a word, everything. The industrialization of our food system is completely changing what we eat, how we eat, the safety of our food and our very health. Can you spot the items above that have had major recalls in the last couple years? Off the top of my head: frozen pizza, peanut butter, oatmeal and unfathomable tons of ground beef, most recently 825,769 pounds of it. Even the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup may be tainted with mercury. Our reliance on a food supply operated by giant corporate food providers is not sustainable, and it’s increasingly dangerous, especially without appropriate oversight.
As taxpayers, Americans support the growth of giant agribusiness directly and indirectly through subsidies. Large-scale corn production benefits from tax subsidies. Though none of it is grown for immediate consumption – it’s been engineered to be an ideal industrial product, not a food – corn by-products eventually go to an astonishing number of the foods seen above. Corn is in the soda, the bagels, the cereals, the juices, jam, peanut butter, cookies, pizza, and as a major feed ingredient for conventionally raised animals, it’s also in the meat. Corn by-products even make up some of the packaging.
All this cheap subsidized corn provides incredible profit potential for agribusiness; it can, in turn, make for cheap food, but not healthy food. As illustrated in the documentary Food Inc. we’ve reached a point in this country where it costs less for a family to eat fast food hamburgers than to buy a head of broccoli at the supermarket. Even when consumers seek healthy alternatives, they may not be affordable so they’re left with cheap foods of negligible nutritive value. One in three people born after 2000 in the US will develop diabetes. It’s clear the only group benefitting from our modern industrial food system are the corporations.
The picture of American dinner table is not a pretty one. We need to change it now.