The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the Struggle for Healthy Eating. By Anthony Winson (original) (raw)
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Agriculture and Nutrition: The Food Revolution
Well-being, Sustainability and Social Development, 2018
The chapter analyses the fundamental changes in the agriculture and foods supply chain between 1850 and 1910 and investigates the consequences for the food supply, in particular for the poor. Initially, agriculture profited from the liberalisation of international trade. The mixed crop tillage farms in the region of the large rivers and on the sand grounds commercialised and specialised themselves. After 1880, cheap, especially American, grain imports cast Dutch agriculture into a profound crisis. In part because of this crisis a number of innovations were introduced, like the use of artificial fertiliser and the founding of agricultural cooperatives. In addition, common lands were to disappear and large tracts of heathland were to be reclaimed. The 1860s proved a turning point for the food processing industry. The revival of the domestic market in these years was a key factor. Also, a number of sectors oriented to foreign markets like the potato starch and the sugar beet industry flourished. The steam engine gained ground at the cost of horse-mills and windmills. Moreover new sectors like the margarine and the dairy-processing industry were established. The modernisation of agriculture and the food processing sector had contributed to the improvement of the food situation. That also resulted from changes in the tax structure, whereby taxes on food were lowered and from increased welfare.
Contemporary food production, given the degree of technology being applied in it and the present state of scientific knowledge, should be able to feed the world. Corresponding statistics show that in fact the volumes of modern food production confirm this statement. Yet, the present nutritional situation across the globe leaves much to be desired: on the one hand the numbers of undernourished and malnourished people are still high and even growing in some regions, and on the other hand there is an increasing number of overweight and obese people who are experiencing (or are at risk of) adverse health impacts as consequences. The question arises how this situation is possible given the present state of food production and knowledge, and also in terms of nutrition basics when talking about the latter. When arguing about the main causes of the present situation with nutrition across the globe, it is the modern food system with its distortions that is often criticised with emphasis placed on inappropriate food distribution as one of the key problems. However it is not only food distribution that shapes inequalities in terms of food availability and accessibility -there is a number of other factors contributing to this situation including political influences. Each of the drivers of the present situation might affect more than one part and have outcomes in different dimensions. Therefore it makes sense to apply a holistic approach when viewing the modern food system, embracing all the elements and existing relationships between them for this will facilitate taking appropriate actions in order to target the desired outcome in the best possible way. Applying a systematic approach and linking various elements with corresponding interactions among them allows for picturing all the possible outcomes and hence finding the way for a better solution on global level - a solution to the present problem with nutritional disbalance across the globe.
Question: How have the industrial revolution and the mechanization of society impacted upon our food consumption habits and choices? INDUSTRIALIZED FOOD CULTURE Current societies are defined and constructed by the last transformations in the world of thought. Without a shadow of a doubt the rationalization process on which the current societies are built is the most staggering time of passage impinging people's ways of thinking and accordingly their general mores of life. With the industrial revolution, the most efficacious tool helping rationalization get rationalized societies, the ways people produce and consume their foods inevitably have gone through changes. These alterations in the food culture were so dramatic that it is now even possible to speak of an 'industrialization and rationalization of food sector'. In this paper the changes in the eating habits after the industrial revolution will be discussed within the scope and in the light of sociology. Despite the fact that industrial revolution's impacts on food culture are so scattered and vast it is apt to say that industrial transformation of society by means of machines changed the way people produce food, the way people consume food and the purpose people eat. Rationalization is the life paradigm that encourages and covenants people to get the best efficiency by calculating every details and thus increasing the predictability of life. Industrial revolution the embodiment of the rational notion paved the way for people trying to apply the principles of rationalization on food production. Consequently, people reached at a level enabling them to produce giant and very efficient machines for agricultural affairs. The conventional food 1 Abdullah Talha Sevindik
The SAGE encyclopedia of food issues
Choice Reviews Online
When used in discussions of contemporary food issues, the term agrarianism most commonly refers to a cumulative mix of philosophy and ethics, political platform and critique, the social critique of industrialization, the environmental critique of industrial farming, and a prescribed normative way of life. It takes as its central premise that humans are inherently tillers of soil and that they need to produce and thus consume products of photosynthesis and their derivatives, including especially livestock, in order to survive. Given this human role and the 10,000-year history of humans as agriculturalists, agrarians believe that the healthiest way to produce food for land, soil, and culture, and the healthiest way to structure society, is as self-sufficient, internally reliant farming communities that are built around the art of agriculture. For contemporary agrarians, this art should ideally employ sustainable farming practices, and there is an implicit recognition that scale-of farm acreage, of human settlement patterns, and of consumptive lifeways-matters ecologically, politically, aesthetically, and culturally. Thus, ideal agrarian communities are smaller in scale, largely independent, and based on face-to-face interaction and sharing, and they cultivate the virtues of thrift, fidelity to place, ingenuity, independence, holism, and frugality. In its most recent manifestation, agrarianism criticizes industrial agriculture, industrial culture, and the politics of consumption and perceived corporate takeover of food supplies and politics that such industrial lifeways generate.
The food system is continually evolving. The development of agriculture, the invention of the plow, the dawn of agricultural chemicals and the ongoing process of industrialization are among the revolutions that have transformed nations through food. Many of the most dramatic changes have taken place over the past century, ushering in an era of relatively abundant food production.