01/22/2019
Indeed!
Did you know that in the 1950s, General Mills invited all the major food companies to gather to address the backlash at the time against processed food? They collectively decided to make convenience their core value. Convenience was the strategy.
They actively subverted a home-economics movement that taught families to cook and garden. They invented Betty Crocker and created a cookbook that integrated processed food— Ritz crackers, Velveeta cheese, Campbell’s soup, and more— into the recipes. Big food companies told us that they were actually lifting a load off our backs by making the preparation of our meals easy and cheap, but all they really did was make us sick and fat.
In 1900, 2% of all meals were eaten away from home; now it is 50%. Nowadays, cooking gets a bad rap. We've been brainwashed into thinking that cooking real food costs too much, is too hard, and takes too long. Hence, we rely on inexpensive convenience foods. But these aren’t so convenient when we become dependent on hundreds of dollars of medication a month, when we can’t work because we are sick and fat and sluggish, or when we feel so bad we can’t enjoy life anymore.
Cooking, I have come to see, is a truly transformational act. The closer we can get to the food we eat, the shorter the link between field and fork, the better off we will all be. Taking back our kitchens and embracing the act of cooking real food is probably the single most important thing that any one person can do to create a healthy, sustainable food system. The cure for what ails us—both in our bodies and in our nation—can be found in the kitchen.
