The article misconstrues multiple food movements from by taking three words, natural, fresh, and local, and not understanding the context around them. The article therefore boils down into a straw man argument.
The slow food movement particularly is a tiny minority, it’s like bringing up the Tea Party, for a political debate. There is a much larger movement against fast food, and that’s mostly because of chemicals used in fast food. Nitrate preserved meat has links to cancer. Azodicarbonamide, a dough conditional, banned in Europe/Australia, was in US Subway sandwiches till last year. Then of course there is soda, a food engineered to be over-consumed, which leads to diabetes and obesity.
No one outside of Raw Vegans, again another tiny minority, is against preservation of foods. In fact, it’s common and promoted. The mechanism though is typically through bacterial fermentation and pickling with vinegar which is how most of the foods (soy, tofu, kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, herring, yogurt etc) are prepared, stored, and used during winter times when no vegetation is available. Synthetic preservatives have been linked to negative health outcomes.
The local food movement is really just about eating produce locally when possible. Why should? Typically it’s cheaper, more varied, and more nutritious. All of the words agriculture is bred for maximum shelf life. You aren’t getting the best tasting food, you are just getting the food that won’t go bad. That also means it’s less genetically diverse. There 10k varieties of tomatoes, you can only buy about 5 commercially. Emphasis here is on produce, no one is abstaining from imported spices.
Most of these movements come at the heels of rising obesity epidemic in the US and around the world against an industry that’s for profit and not for pro health. Some are extreme, but that helps swing the pendulum the opposite direction. You can see the rise of more ingredient conscious and more delicious Chipotle, which sources all ingredients within 350mi and the fall of the heavily processed McDonalds. This is a net positive and not something we should be condemning.
The slow food movement particularly is a tiny minority, it’s like bringing up the Tea Party, for a political debate. There is a much larger movement against fast food, and that’s mostly because of chemicals used in fast food. Nitrate preserved meat has links to cancer. Azodicarbonamide, a dough conditional, banned in Europe/Australia, was in US Subway sandwiches till last year. Then of course there is soda, a food engineered to be over-consumed, which leads to diabetes and obesity.
No one outside of Raw Vegans, again another tiny minority, is against preservation of foods. In fact, it’s common and promoted. The mechanism though is typically through bacterial fermentation and pickling with vinegar which is how most of the foods (soy, tofu, kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, herring, yogurt etc) are prepared, stored, and used during winter times when no vegetation is available. Synthetic preservatives have been linked to negative health outcomes.
The local food movement is really just about eating produce locally when possible. Why should? Typically it’s cheaper, more varied, and more nutritious. All of the words agriculture is bred for maximum shelf life. You aren’t getting the best tasting food, you are just getting the food that won’t go bad. That also means it’s less genetically diverse. There 10k varieties of tomatoes, you can only buy about 5 commercially. Emphasis here is on produce, no one is abstaining from imported spices.
Most of these movements come at the heels of rising obesity epidemic in the US and around the world against an industry that’s for profit and not for pro health. Some are extreme, but that helps swing the pendulum the opposite direction. You can see the rise of more ingredient conscious and more delicious Chipotle, which sources all ingredients within 350mi and the fall of the heavily processed McDonalds. This is a net positive and not something we should be condemning.