|
May 29, 2010
In The Food Movement, Rising in the New York Review of Books Michael Pollen, an ethical food guru, says that, if the advent of fast food (and the culture of cheap processed food in general) has become an indispensable pillar of the modern economy, then it has given rise to criticism that industrial food production (agri-business) is in need of reform because its social/environmental/public health/animal welfare/gastronomic costs are too high.
Public health is central given the current concern about the health of the population:
perhaps the food movement’s strongest claim on public attention today is the fact that the American diet of highly processed food laced with added fats and sugars is responsible for the epidemic of chronic diseases that threatens to bankrupt the health care system. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that fully three quarters of US health care spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are preventable and linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and at least a third of all cancers. The health care crisis probably cannot be addressed without addressing the catastrophe of the American diet, and that diet is the direct (even if unintended) result of the way that our agriculture and food industries have been organized.
The food industry's claims, that it merely giving people the sugary, fatty, and salty foods consumers want, ignores that it actually helps to shape these desires through the ways it creates products and markets them. Don't expect the Rudd Government to take on agribusiness in Australia, corporate food or the subsidies to these industries in consumer capitalism.
However, the food movement is broader than this, as evidenced in the slow food movement and farmers markets. Janet Flammang in The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society indicates a wider conception of the politics of food:
Significant social and political costs have resulted from fast food and convenience foods, grazing and snacking instead of sitting down for leisurely meals, watching television during mealtimes instead of conversing”—40 percent of Americans watch television during meals—”viewing food as fuel rather than sustenance, discarding family recipes and foodways, and denying that eating has social and political dimensions.
The cultural contradictions of capitalism—its tendency to undermine the stabilizing social forms it depends on—are on vivid display at the modern American dinner table.
|
One of my favourite topics.
How many decades passed between the knowledge that smoking was bad for you and campaigns to stigmatise smoking, limit advertising and ban smoking in particular places? Will it take a similar amount of time for the same to happen in the case of fast foods? India has a better record on this than Australia.
I don't think that what people do while they eat is as much of a problem as it's thought to be. Or at least, it can't be isolated from the rest of our domestic lifestyles. Take a look at the floor plans of new houses and you'll generally find the kids' rooms are at the other end of the house from their parents, and the new must-have domestic space is the 'parents retreat'. What are they supposed to be retreating from if not their kids? Or maybe one another? What does that tell you about the dynamics of the contemporary nuclear family?
If they're all sitting around in front of telly eating, at least they're together. We're hooked on Masterchef at the moment, so we sit around in front of the tv eating our dinner and talking about food, the dominance of the two big supermarkets and whether our mash could have been 'plated up' more prettily. My son wouldn't have been inspired to make a banana custard pie from scratch if we'd been watching The Simpsons.