Just two months ago, I came upon an article in the New York Times in my Twitter feed called The Science of Junk Food. It was a 14 page article and there was no way I was going to read yet ANOTHER rant about the evils of our food supply. It was old news to me. As someone with a long and vested history in the food supply, being allergic to just about the world, I skipped it. Just the previous week my roommate was telling me about some guy that changed the food industry by conducting an experiment to see what kind of flavors people liked best. It had opened the door to companies such as Ragu to recreate their entire line of food to offer a plethora of options. I thought that was kind of cool. I loved Ragu sauce growing up! I went on with my Twitter scan and moved on to my daily Facebook newsfeed scan. Then, in an attempt to procrastinate, I went back to Twitter and saw that article again. I opened up the link and thought, I'll just scan it to see if there is anything interesting. Its a 14 page article and I got to get ready for work soon anyway but I still have some extra time.
I started reading it, and it was unlike any food article I have ever read. It wasn't about the evil of our food supply. No PETA pictures. It read like a book I had read about the financial crash from the perspective of the exec's on the inside. It was full of politics and intrigue and manipulation and injustice..... but not the abstract kind of statistics that usually get thrown out there about obesity rates and the like. No, the politics and injustice of CEO's vying for power, manipulation of scientists and marketing campaign managers wanting to do the right thing, and whistleblowers being screwed over.
I got through about half and I stopped. This was describing a version of our food supply that was different than I had ever heard of, and I thought I had seen and heard it all. I started thinking about my own relationship with the food industry.
Growing up, I LOVED hotdogs, chips, cottage cheese, cereals, McDonalds, etc, etc. When I visited my grandparents during the holidays it perplexed me why my grandmother would not keep things like hotdogs and cottage cheese in the house. Each time I brought it up, my Grandmother would describe to me the horror of visiting a factory as a child for a school trip where they made hot dogs and cottage cheese. I saw images of pink slime and the smell of oozing, rotting dairy just like the glasses of milk I sometimes forgot about in the basement mixed with Mr. Rogers footage . It didn't deter me (much), but the images still stuck in my mind.
In 10th grade chemistry class, we had a guest presenter from the local Kraft factory who was a food scientist. My mother had worked at the Kraft factory where they made Cool-Whip long before I was born. He showed us what he did for a living by mixing chemicals to make food last longer, taste better, and look prettier. While part of me was horrified, for the most part I thought it was kind of ingenious that food could be made better. Hey, I loved cool-whip on my hot chocolate!
After high school I did an exchange program in Germany where I lived out in the country. My neighbors had an industrial cow farm and not too far away was a chicken farm. They were small scale, so for the most part all I saw was the milking barns, the stench of chickens from down the road, and trails in the dirt where I supposed they peacefully grazed all day when I was out at school or traveling. At night, the bright lights of the distant barn would reflect on my walls. Neighbors warned me to stay away from the chicken farm but never really said why. I envisioned clouds of nasty dried chicken poop and a deadly stench with the occasional PETA image of crowed coops, but this was Germany.... not the USA, so there was no need to worry.
I went to college to study the sciences and worked in the Chemistry lab one summer. I learned all about how the chemical structure of anything was identical, no matter if I created it or nature did. Sodium Chloride is salt, whether it comes out of the ocean, or out of my test tube. What is "natural"? ALL things are "natural". In biology labs, we tested corn products to identify GMO contamination and see if they actually held up to industry labeling and then MADE genetically modified organisms. GMO crops and animals, I learned, were saving lives. In fact, I knew this first hand because I spent spring break among the starving Oaxacan people of central-west Mexico on medical mission where they were barely eating 2 meals a day of beans and any vegetables that could be salvaged from the semi-arid terrain. They were running away illegally across the border to the USA to send home money to families because they couldn't afford flour or corn. We recommended that they boil rusty nails with their beans to make sure they were getting iron in their diets.
What has been your relationship or prior knowledge of our food supply? Next week in Part 2, I will discuss the second half of the New York Times article "The Science of Junk Food" and the nutritional content of of our food.
I started reading it, and it was unlike any food article I have ever read. It wasn't about the evil of our food supply. No PETA pictures. It read like a book I had read about the financial crash from the perspective of the exec's on the inside. It was full of politics and intrigue and manipulation and injustice..... but not the abstract kind of statistics that usually get thrown out there about obesity rates and the like. No, the politics and injustice of CEO's vying for power, manipulation of scientists and marketing campaign managers wanting to do the right thing, and whistleblowers being screwed over.
I got through about half and I stopped. This was describing a version of our food supply that was different than I had ever heard of, and I thought I had seen and heard it all. I started thinking about my own relationship with the food industry.
Growing up, I LOVED hotdogs, chips, cottage cheese, cereals, McDonalds, etc, etc. When I visited my grandparents during the holidays it perplexed me why my grandmother would not keep things like hotdogs and cottage cheese in the house. Each time I brought it up, my Grandmother would describe to me the horror of visiting a factory as a child for a school trip where they made hot dogs and cottage cheese. I saw images of pink slime and the smell of oozing, rotting dairy just like the glasses of milk I sometimes forgot about in the basement mixed with Mr. Rogers footage . It didn't deter me (much), but the images still stuck in my mind.
In 10th grade chemistry class, we had a guest presenter from the local Kraft factory who was a food scientist. My mother had worked at the Kraft factory where they made Cool-Whip long before I was born. He showed us what he did for a living by mixing chemicals to make food last longer, taste better, and look prettier. While part of me was horrified, for the most part I thought it was kind of ingenious that food could be made better. Hey, I loved cool-whip on my hot chocolate!
After high school I did an exchange program in Germany where I lived out in the country. My neighbors had an industrial cow farm and not too far away was a chicken farm. They were small scale, so for the most part all I saw was the milking barns, the stench of chickens from down the road, and trails in the dirt where I supposed they peacefully grazed all day when I was out at school or traveling. At night, the bright lights of the distant barn would reflect on my walls. Neighbors warned me to stay away from the chicken farm but never really said why. I envisioned clouds of nasty dried chicken poop and a deadly stench with the occasional PETA image of crowed coops, but this was Germany.... not the USA, so there was no need to worry.
I went to college to study the sciences and worked in the Chemistry lab one summer. I learned all about how the chemical structure of anything was identical, no matter if I created it or nature did. Sodium Chloride is salt, whether it comes out of the ocean, or out of my test tube. What is "natural"? ALL things are "natural". In biology labs, we tested corn products to identify GMO contamination and see if they actually held up to industry labeling and then MADE genetically modified organisms. GMO crops and animals, I learned, were saving lives. In fact, I knew this first hand because I spent spring break among the starving Oaxacan people of central-west Mexico on medical mission where they were barely eating 2 meals a day of beans and any vegetables that could be salvaged from the semi-arid terrain. They were running away illegally across the border to the USA to send home money to families because they couldn't afford flour or corn. We recommended that they boil rusty nails with their beans to make sure they were getting iron in their diets.
What has been your relationship or prior knowledge of our food supply? Next week in Part 2, I will discuss the second half of the New York Times article "The Science of Junk Food" and the nutritional content of of our food.
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