The struggle to eat right and eat well is real, but the fight is not fair says former New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman.
He says Big Food farmers marketers and processors thrive on a food system that isn't good for us and isn't good for the planet.
Photo: AFP / FILE
He has written about it in his new book; Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal
“There’s almost nothing we can talk about that isn’t affected by food, the way we grow it, process it and eat it,” Bittman told Jesse Mulligan.
Food in the US is deeply tied up with the history of empire and colony, he says.
“In the States, in the 19th century, land was stolen from indigenous people and given to white males and then that system was consolidated by an alliance between those businesses, farms quickly became factories and food processors and the Federal Government, which was not always acting with bad intent, but sometimes with ignorance or naivete.”
That laid the groundwork for the industrial style of farming we see today, he says.
And that style of farming feeds a vicious circle of unhealthy food and environmental degradation.
“In the states it’s estimated that 60 percent of our calories come from ultra-processed foods.
“We have to eat what is available and what is available is absolutely determined by what most profitable.”
Mono-culture farming and junk food are inextricably linked, he says.
“If you are growing a lot of corn and soy beans and those are the easiest and most profitable crops to grow then the question becomes what can we do with the stuff that we’re growing?
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“It’s an odd kind of reverse farming. Rather than saying what do people need? We say what can we grow and then once we grow it we say how can we sell it?”
The idea that people can make choices about what they eat doesn’t factor in the huge influence Big Food has, Bittman says.
“In this country the marketing budget for junk food is roughly 400 times the budget for education about good foods.
“It’s not a fair fight without the intervention of government and we haven’t seen much intervention since the ‘70s.”
Vast tracts of land in the US are given over to corn growing, he says.
“In the States 90 percent of our calories come from industrial farms and when you think of those you have to think of a thousand acres at once or even 3000 acres at once of corn.
“That is not growing food for people, it’s not really a blame question for the people who own that land, who grow that corn are responding to market conditions.”
That in itself is wasteful use of resources, Bittman says.
“If we are growing 12 million acres of corn in one state in this country, which we are, and then using that corn to produce ethanol which is an inefficient fuel, using it to feed animals which we then torture and eat too many of, and use it to produce junk food, I’d call that wasteful.”
He proposes a form of agroecology to move away from this industrial model.
“To take agriculture to the next level, we have to be stewards of the land, we have to create a kind of agriculture that respects the earth, respects the fact that resources are limited, respects the fact that there are other creatures on this planet and respect the fact that we are each other’s relatives.”
He acknowledges that this sounds “touchy-feely”, but says it is nevertheless true.
“Then we are moving in the direction of a food system that can actually serve all of us and minimise the impact on the Earth - and those are important principles.”
