Food or Feed

We've all heard the saying, instead of asking why is eating well is so expensive, we should be asking why is eating poorly is so cheap, but I've got another one, " is it food, or is it feed?"

So, here's the goal of most processed food manufacturers: produce as much caloric value, that is safe to consume (pathogen free) and meets the basic macronutrient needs of most humans for the cheapest price to the consumer at greatest amount of profit possible.

I am not against companies making a profit, nor am I for individuals and families spending more money on staple grocery items than is necessary. Too many of us don't know where their next meal is coming from and the food system that is in place does help some families put food, or at least calories, on the table where as healthier choices are not available, let alone affordable. In other words, inexpensive processed food does keeps families on the margin from slipping into food insecurity. But most of us, can afford to do better for ourselves that we are, and it wasn't so long ago that I didn't see a problem with eating the cheapest most convenient food possible.

My food and nutrition journey started with a different species. A few years ago there was a large recall of cat food because of tainted ingredients.  I was lucky enough not to loose any of my four-legged family members, but some of the tainted food did make it onto my pantry shelves and into my cats. I received a crash course in pet nutrition during that scare, even going so far as sitting on the floor of the food isle reading every single label trying to find pet food that was safe, and nutritious for my pets to eat. I realized very quickly how much of the information was cleverly disguising the truth, and how much I had perhaps naively trusted my pets health to a corporation. My pets feed was predominantly generated from waste products of meat production, and derivatives of three commodity crops, corn, soy, and wheat. Not the grains themselves, of course, but as thickeners, fillers, and emulsifiers. Within one brand the ingredient list read the same regardless of what flavor the feed claimed to be on the bag. The thing that brought me close to tears was the realization that no matter which brand or formula I chose there was a compromise to be made. I even considered making my pets food from raw ingredients to nutritious pate, and, I even made a couple attempts before realizing that wholesome food was of no use, if the cats refused to eat it.

The story gets even more frightening when I started to read the labels on the processed foods that featured as a large part of my diet at the time, and I found exactly the same derivatives of the same three crops. Good news, I wasn't feeding my pets anything I wasn't prepared to eat myself, but bad news, neither of us should have been it in the first place!

Moving on to the second revelation of the pet food scare, a wide variety of the foods on the market were being manufactured in just one facility. Do I need to tell you that the same holds true for many of the processed foods on the grocery store shelves? I am not saying that each brand doesn't have it's own, highly specific formulas, and proprietary ingredients, but what we're not told is this: manufacturing equipment is very expensive to build and maintain. When it comes to economies of scale it only makes sense to share highly specialized equipment than for every brand of (picking something at random here) frozen meat pie on the market, than for each brand to own and maintain it's own equipment and facilities. These are, or have become, economic realities of the world we live in. The unfortunately down side of this, is that even the maker of your frozen meal or dehydrated noodle packet may be at least one or two, or several, steps removed from the process of actually making the food.

Before I get too far afield here, I will try to provide the pathway of logic that led me to the question is it food or is it feed. With real unadulterated healthy food becoming more and more the privilege of the more affluent, and cheap processed food made from recombinations of the same commodity crops the necessary sustenance of the less fortunate. Are we not creating a dividing line between healthy food, and baseline feeding of the masses with substances that administer to only our most basic macro nutrient requirements, just as a cheap can of cat food reportedly does for our pets?

I am not suggesting anything as Marxist as a deliberate plot here. I think the individual parties are simply acting in what they perceive to be there own best interests, whether that is in the name of greater profit for their company - and therefor a better living for themselves - or if the acting forces actually believe they are providing a vital service in the form of more calories for everyone's dollar. I am prepared to say that the fact that many of those calories are empty and of questionable provenance is a consequence of not prioritizing human nutrition - food - over calories consumed - feed. They are - bottom line - the consequences of choosing profit over human beings.

This is by no means complete, I will return to many of the subjects I've touched on again and again because they are, in part, the motivation for the way I have chosen to live my life.