> All of this is true and is tangential to the theme of > over-consumption. I think it is a waste of time to argue about the > merits of low-carb or low-fat diets or for that matter, vegan diets. I > completely reject the premise of this argument that different foods > can be compared and ranked on a scale of healthiness by analyzing its > chemical constituents. This is scientistic reductionism gone mad! >
This is like saying, "I reject the premise that commodities can be reduced to their value, determination in the production process, etc." There is no healthiness scale in the discussion; but American food policy for quite a while has been constructed based on a very specific (pseudo)scientific ideology and there is no point in just ignoring it. For example, McDonald's used to fry french fries in beef tallow; when the tide turned against animal fat, they switched to hydrogenated vegetable oil. Now, you and I may not need to worry about questions like that at the dinner table, but for a good deal of people who eat at McDonald's the question of the chemical constituents in their meals is a vitally important historical and political issue--and, based on what we now know about trans fats and heart disease, a matter of life and death. Ok, now I strongly disagree. There is no need for any new science to > get us healthy food. All over the world, people have always had a rich > tradition of food and there is a wealth of knowledge accumulated over > the centuries about food, which is now being lost thanks to industrial > agriculture. Instead of going around trying to invent new fancy > technologies for growing food we would do well just to preserve this > existing knowledge. > There are many rich traditions that badly need to be preserved. They were attacked not only by industrial agriculture but also by nutritional ideologies that now require a response. However, industrial agriculture (remember that ordinary agriculture was already a dramatic shift in the organization of human society and caused a great deal of suffering at its introduction) did not emerge just because it provided an opportunity to increase suffering. Traditional agricultural systems work on small scales, and they are extremely unstable. You may be well nourished one year, but if next year the harvest is bad, or you cross paths with a virus--you're dead. And if you already have widespread, politically produced famine, pollution and malnourishment, it is impossible to simply retreat and tell people to just move back to the farm (not to mention moving back to the pre-industrial family structures, social roles, etc, that were an inextricable part of an agricultural economy). What would help the human species in the future is a hybrid system. So let me rephrase myself: preserving the existing knowledge produced by the world's rich traditions of food will require high-tech, innovative farming solutions!
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