Tuesday, July 22, 2008

More from Pollan

Again from The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"The executive patiently explained that selling unprocessed or minimally processed whole foods will always be a fool's game, since the price of agricultural commodities tends to fall over time, whether they're organic or not. More food coming off the farm leads to either falling profits-or more processing.

The other problem with selling whole foods, he explained, is that it will always be hard to distinguish one company's corn or chickens or apples from any other company's. It makes much more sense to turn the corn into a brand-name cereal, the chicken into a TV dinner, and apples into a component in a nutraceutical food system. [...]
TreeTop has developed a 'low-moisture, naturally sweetened apple piece infused with a red-wine extract.' Just eighteen grams of these apple pieces have the same amount of cancer fighting "flavonoid phenols as five glasses of wine and dietary fiber equivalent of one whole apple." [...] We've apparently moved from [the dream of] the meal-in-a-pill to the pill-in-a-meal, which is to say not very far at all.

The news of TreeTop's breakthrough came in a recent Food Technology trend story titled 'Getting More Fruits and Vegetables into Food.' I had thought fruits and vegetables were already foods, and so didn't need to be gotten into them, but I guess that just shows I'm stuck in the food past. "

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The idea that brand recognition should trump the potential environmental and health benefits of local whole foods makes me sick. Apparently corporate market share >> health and sanity. Cause honestly, I don't give a fuck who's logo is on my food, and actually I would far prefer to buy food WITHOUT a brand logo at all.

I feel like I've been paying to have myself slowly poisoned, all so the voice actors who play the Keebler Elves can keep their jobs. Oh, and how could I forget about the global-catastrophe-averting need for the 24-carat gold, diamond-studded spinners on the tires of ProcessedFoodCorpX CEO's Humvee?

Have you heard their jingle?
"If we ain't makin' money, it don't belong in yer tummy!"

/blech