When President Kennedy recast a food aid program as
“Food for Peace” that was later articulated as “Food is strength, and food is
peace, and food is freedom, and food is helping to people around the world
whose good will and friendship we want”, it definitely was not speaking on the
behalf of American Big Brother, who always gets your back no matter what. Food
aid, based on corn, soya oil, rice and dry milk powder – exactly the basis of
western processed foods, was in first hand given to the governments judged to
be facing a communist threat, including military dictatorships in Latin America. Though, we might be aware of the swindling tactics that
outwits people’s natural blindness for good will, we still applaud for the Big
Brother and wow to always stand next to him. Even the food aid goes around
political strategies just as another extreme – various types of Art, even
protests – interpret it. Another cause for food aid is to provoke
underdeveloped countries to open up the markets for international trade. The food
aid will be followed by import of western products, in other words, western appetites
and necessities, making the new vulnerable consumers unsatisfied with the
domestic range of commodities and making them dependent on the outer trade
flows. In sum, making the poor countries poorer and rich richer.
The processed food, developed in U.S., started to
emerge in mid-20.cent with the Marshall Plan that played a key role in
internationalizing the distribution of food and part of its legacy is the food
system today. With the plan U.S. ensured access to foreign markets by removing
tariff barriers and also by paying financial aid to increase the U.S. export to
non-communist countries. In sum, markets developed the appetite for processed
products of U.S.
In a world of energy scarcity and famine of 800
million people, we are feeding the livestock instead of traditional grass with
crops, in order to make them fattier quicker, so that an average UK’s folk
could eat 84 kg meat per person in a year. This in turn makes also the meat
fattier and in turn people unhealthy (a chicken in 1970 contained average 8,6gr
of fat per 100gr and by today it contains nearly average 23gr per 100gr).
21 per cent of the UK’s total energy use is accounted
for by its food supply – this means that today’s industrialized farming uses energy
50 times as much as traditional agriculture. And this accounts the production
only taking place in the farm. Here we must add also the packaging, transporting
(plus warehousing on the way), just-in-time delivery systems and supermarkets
centralized distribution methods that move food around and round the country,
the out-of-town supermarkets that require our cars to be fuelled to do the
shopping. Think about the energy wasted on all of these acts and proceedings. In
contemporary food industry we use 10 kcal of energy to produce 1 kcal of food
energy.
From all the agricultural products only five - corn,
rice, wheat, soya beans and cotton - keep ending up in increased number of food
products. With the help of governmental subsidies, exactly these products are
maintained cheap, although, their value is exceeded heavily when processed as
commodities. The benefits, in turn, fall into pockets of big processors, the
export companies and corporate farms (globally we could bring up 4: Cagrill (U.S.),
Archer Daniel Midland – ADM (U.S.), Bunge (U.S.) and The Louis Dreyfus group (French))
leaving small agricultural entities with bear hands.
The medium sized box of cereals that contains 1,100
kcal uses 7000 kcal of energy to make. The same calculations can be made for
frozen vegetables or canned fruit or heavily packaged ready meals. Thus,
without cheap supply of fossil fuels our food would look very different.
Quickly, calculating my own consumer habits and making
a small conscious check in my kitchen, before exhorting others, I just wish
people to think more why and what we choose to eat. The paradox is that it’s
going to be always harder and harder to reach unprocessed food and ‘clean’ food
not only because of their label bio or their shape as shiny, bright and perfect
size tomato, but because of we know where these are coming from and how these
are grown. McDonald’s and packages of Kellogg’s frost doesn’t make us fat. Our
choice of picking these products onto our food table makes us fat, as any other
processed food that is consumed in exceeded way. The key is not extreme ways of
vegan or whatever other raw diets. The key is balancing and realizing where
your food comes from and what does it contain.
(The factual data comes from Felicity Lawrence book "Eat your heart out", Penguin Books, 2008)
Wishing You all Happy Happy Happy Weekend!
Wishing my Lovely hon Hannele the most dearest Brithday. I am very very very lucky girl to have you around in my Life and celebrating together with You and Nele was only another blessing ♥
