tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post7433050460403635702..comments2023-09-06T11:28:01.234-04:00Comments on The Table of Promise: One Family's Search for a Better Meal: Food is a Socio-Economic Problem, Part Two: How Processed Food BeganCOBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08917301601937658471noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post-34265877012045121842011-01-03T10:25:58.549-05:002011-01-03T10:25:58.549-05:00Kim--I got all your comments, so sorry that you ha...Kim--I got all your comments, so sorry that you had trouble with Google. It happens to me sometimes too.<br /><br />I hear your point. The war was absolutely influential, because it created an economic engine of manufacturing that would have come to a complete stop had companies not shifted their production line to making consumer goods. It was a major turning point. Many of the prepared food companies that Shapiro cites were servicing the army and made that shift when their army contracts expired.<br /><br />However I do want to argue one point with you, that the entry of women into the work force perpetuated processed and readymade foods. Shapiro specifically states that this is a misconception of the modern era, because the idea of saving time through ready made products in the 21st century is the major theme of modern food marketing. I actually began reading the book with largely the same assumption as you.<br /><br />And while many women did take advantage of the processed foods for the reason that they didn't have time to cook or didn't like to cook, those women were a drop in the bucket compared with working women who still felt it was their duty to "do it all" and cook from scratch meals while they worked. And a closer look into the most popular packaged foods of the era tells that story. Boxed caked mixes and frozen orange juice concentrate were both items based on making difficult items easy. They were not products eaten every day, so they likely did not save anyone time....they just made them eat MORE of those once difficult to produce food items. I don't think that every homemaker was baking a cake every day. They did it occasionally until boxed caked made it convenient enough to do it every day.<br /><br />I do agree with you about the additives. This new inclusion of scary ingredients are what make processed foods so detrimental today. I wish I had time to research FDA laws. It seems like somewhere in the 80s or 90s that rules became more lax and more additives and higher levels of existing additives were allowed...If you have any info please pass it along.COBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08917301601937658471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post-90471235470648127502011-01-01T18:03:36.825-05:002011-01-01T18:03:36.825-05:00I'll get this right one of these days. That&#...I'll get this right one of these days. That's grist (dot) org, not grist (dot) com.<br /><br />-KimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post-56438771946642028492011-01-01T18:00:55.887-05:002011-01-01T18:00:55.887-05:00This was the 2nd part of my comment which Google r...This was the 2nd part of my comment which Google replaced with the comment above. It's a little confusing but I'm posting the following anonymously so Google doesn't replace 1st comment with this:<br /><br />You wrote that "...being poor means that you are more likely to be diabetic." I understand where you're coming from with that statement but that's a widely-held misconception perpetuated by the likes of Marion Nestle and others. It is the one topic that knocks Marion off the food activist pedestal that I otherwise place her on. Diabetes is no more prevalent among the poor than it is among the rich. Diet does NOT cause type 2 diabetes. Genes cause type 2 diabetes. A poor diet can and will cause a person with one or more of the genetic markers for diabetes to develop type 2 diabetes at an earlier age but it absolutely, unequivocally cannot and does not cause the disease. If you do not have a genetic marker for diabetes, you cannot and will not "get" the disease. <br /> <br />The children who have type 2 diabetes today eventually would have developed the disease decades later if they had eaten a more healthful diet and had been physically active. I really wish food writers would stop perpetuating the myth that a poor diet causes diabetes. If this were true, all fat people would develop diabetes and thin people would never develop it. Of course, that's simply not the case. <br /> <br />My knowledge of diabetes comes from my own experience as a diabetic in a family of both type 1 and type 2 diabetics. Add to that education about the disease and treatment by a leading endocrinologist and former researcher in the field. On this topic, I know what I am talking about and it's a real hot-button, soapbox issue for me. <br /> <br />A poor diet hastens the onset of type 2 and that is a tremendous concern. Let's not misstate the issue lest it serve to undermine the movement we're trying to further and support. <br /><br />Kim (comment not intended to be anonymous)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post-45182168374714405212011-01-01T17:53:46.901-05:002011-01-01T17:53:46.901-05:00This was supposed to appear before my other commen...This was supposed to appear before my other comment today (apologies):<br /><br />Christa, IMO, you are spot on when you say that food culture is a socio-economic problem in this country at present. I whole-heartedly agree that somehow, we seem to have lost our way when it comes to scratch cooking and nourishing ourselves in a healthy way. I believe that an important step in finding our way back is to understand how that happened. <br /> <br />I think that the cultural shift you described in your post was heavily <br />influenced by what was arguably the most significant event of the 20th century, World War II, and the ensuing entry of women into our country's workforce. During that war, our government recruited women to fill manufacturing jobs vacated by men who went off to war. This catapulted women into the American workforce in unprecedented numbers and created a demand for convenience in cooking (and other household chores) that barely existed prior to the 1940s. Indeed, it was considered patriotic to step away from your domestic duties and take a job in a factory (defense-related or not) to make your contribution to the war effort. Even many white collar jobs traditionally held by men were <br />filled by women during the war. <br /> <br />U.S. involvement in the Korean War extended this phenomenon into the 1950's, albeit to a lesser degree. Even as men returned from the wars of the 1940s and '50s, many American housewives had had a taste of convenience and never looked back. <br /> <br />Frozen foods, canned ready-to-eat foods, and other convenience foods were made possible by technological innovations of the first half of the 20th century. Frozen dinners and baking mixes were the smart phone and e-reader of that era. The cache of convenience foods to mainstream America was due in large part to their innovative nature. Innovation has held a strong appeal to the American psyche for centuries. It's deeply rooted in our culture at least as far back as the time of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. That appeal continues today. <br /> <br />Many, if not most, of the convenience foods of the mid-20th century did not contain the same food additives we commonly see in processed foods today. (One possible exception is hydrogenated fats which were developed around the turn of the 20th century.) HFCS was invented in approx. 1956 (can't find my source for that year at the moment, but I believe 1956 is close) and was recognized by the FDA as safe in 1976, but it couldn't and didn't become the cheap ingredient it is today until corn became a heavily subsidized crop in the 1970s under the Nixon administration. Thanks to the food shortage panic that occurred in 1973, <br />the missing ingredient for the food culture dilemma we face today was provided by the federal government's food policies that were introduced by Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, whose term continued into the Ford administration. There is a thought-provoking article about Butz's legacy that was published on Grist a couple of years ago but unfortunately, I can't get Google to accept the URL. If you'd like to read the article, do a Google search on <br />grist (dot) com earl butz<br />and you'll see a link to the Feb. 7, 2008 article titled "The Butz Stops Here."Kimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00122839996392946487noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post-61862344391866109052011-01-01T17:52:28.669-05:002011-01-01T17:52:28.669-05:00This was supposed to appear before my other commen...This was supposed to appear before my other comment today (apologies):<br /><br />Christa, IMO, you are spot on when you say that food culture is a socio-economic problem in this country at present. I whole-heartedly agree that somehow, we seem to have lost our way when it comes to scratch cooking and nourishing ourselves in a healthy way. I believe that an important step in finding our way back is to understand how that happened. <br /> <br />I think that the cultural shift you described in your post was heavily <br />influenced by what was arguably the most significant event of the 20th century, World War II, and the ensuing entry of women into our country's workforce. During that war, our government recruited women to fill manufacturing jobs vacated by men who went off to war. This catapulted women into the American workforce in unprecedented numbers and created a demand for convenience in cooking (and other household chores) that barely existed prior to the 1940s. Indeed, it was considered patriotic to step away from your domestic duties and take a job in a factory (defense-related or not) to make your contribution to the war effort. Even many white collar jobs traditionally held by men were <br />filled by women during the war. <br /> <br />U.S. involvement in the Korean War extended this phenomenon into the 1950's, albeit to a lesser degree. Even as men returned from the wars of the 1940s and '50s, many American housewives had had a taste of convenience and never looked back. <br /> <br />Frozen foods, canned ready-to-eat foods, and other convenience foods were made possible by technological innovations of the first half of the 20th century. Frozen dinners and baking mixes were the smart phone and e-reader of that era. The cache of convenience foods to mainstream America was due in large part to their innovative nature. Innovation has held a strong appeal to the American psyche for centuries. It's deeply rooted in our culture at least as far back as the time of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. That appeal continues today. <br /> <br />Many, if not most, of the convenience foods of the mid-20th century did not contain the same food additives we commonly see in processed foods today. (One possible exception is hydrogenated fats which were developed around the turn of the 20th century.) HFCS was invented in approx. 1956 (can't find my source for that year at the moment, but I believe 1956 is close) and was recognized by the FDA as safe in 1976, but it couldn't and didn't become the cheap ingredient it is today until corn became a heavily subsidized crop in the 1970s under the Nixon administration. Thanks to the food shortage panic that occurred in 1973, <br />the missing ingredient for the food culture dilemma we face today was provided by the federal government's food policies that were introduced by Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, whose term continued into the Ford administration. There is a thought-provoking article about Butz's legacy that was published on Grist a couple of years ago but unfortunately, I can't get Google to accept the URL. If you'd like to read the article, do a Google search on <br />grist.com earl butz<br />and you'll see a link to the Feb. 7, 2008 article titled "The Butz Stops Here."Kimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00122839996392946487noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2787698713835410146.post-36681550572739983132011-01-01T17:36:25.252-05:002011-01-01T17:36:25.252-05:00continued from my previously submitted comments to...continued from my previously submitted comments today....<br /><br />You wrote that "...being poor means that you are more likely to be diabetic." I understand where you're coming from with that statement but that's a widely-held misconception perpetuated by the likes of Marion Nestle and others. It is the one topic that knocks Marion off the food activist pedestal that I otherwise place her on. Diabetes is no more prevalent among the poor than it is among the rich. Diet does NOT cause type 2 diabetes. Genes cause type 2 diabetes. A poor diet can and will cause a person with one or more of the genetic markers for diabetes to develop type 2 diabetes at an earlier age but it absolutely, unequivocally cannot and does not cause the disease. If you do not have a genetic marker for diabetes, you cannot and will not "get" the disease. <br /> <br />The children who have type 2 diabetes today eventually would have developed the disease decades later if they had eaten a more healthful diet and had been physically active. I really wish food writers would stop perpetuating the myth that a poor diet causes diabetes. If this were true, all fat people would develop diabetes and thin people would never develop it. Of course, that's simply not the case. <br /> <br />My knowledge of diabetes comes from my own experience as a diabetic in a family of both type 1 and type 2 diabetics. Add to that education about the disease and treatment by a leading endocrinologist and former researcher in the field. On this topic, I know what I'm talking about and it's a real hot-button, soapbox issue for me. <br /> <br />A poor diet hastens the onset of type 2 diabetes and that's a tremendous concern. Let's not misstate the issue lest it serve to undermine the movement we're trying to further and support.Kimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00122839996392946487noreply@blogger.com