Our so-called “food system” is a complete mess, one that must be set to rights if the people are to have a chance of thriving in the coming years, which are likely to be stressful because of other messes. This dire situation has been described in Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet by Stuart Gillispie (September 2025). This book will live up to its blurbs, from Chris Van Tulleken, for example, “The essential food book of this year and years to come,” whose Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food, was discussed here in March 2024. As Marion Nestle points out, Gillispie’s focus on the international food system is natural, given that he has been working on international nutrition for more than forty years. He begins with this:
The problem we face now is the simple fact that our global food system is an anachronism. In the last century it has performed miracles [1], but in this one it’s a source of jeopardy. We should not speak of reform and repair, because it’s not actually broken. The system we have is working just the way those who control it want it to work. For capitalism to sustain itself, it needs to generate (continually increasing) profit (through growth instead of development). And in 2025, after nearly fifty years of neoliberalism, the most profitable food system is the one that manufactures ultra-processed products which are marketed aggressively across the world.
Throughout Food Fight, Gillispie demonstrates how:
The global food system has itself become a large part of the problem (of a persistent if well camouflaged colonialism from our perspective), having been captured by transnational corporations who profit from public ill-health while using an array of tactics to stop Government (and the people such as they have any agency) from getting in their way.
The main problem with our current food system is that those who are caught up in it (poor and rich alike) are at the same time undernourished and overfed. Thus, we have an obesity epidemic that has penetrated every part of the world, while at the same time producing malnourished people at a large profit. Research has shown that undernutrition in the early stages of life causes physiological damage and aftereffects that potentiate obesity later in life. This is a virtuous cycle only for the purveyors of poor but tasty, and habit-forming if not addictive in the clinical sense, food-like substances. Earlier books on this subject include Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal (2001) by Eric Schlosser and Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (2014) by Michael Moss, along the essential work of Marion Nestle (pronounced “ne-sel”).
Perhaps the first modern food fight is exemplified by Nestlé, the Swiss corporation (“Good food, Good life”) that brings us the Kit-Kat along with other delectable delights. In 1867 Henri Nestlé developed a “formula” to mimic human milk. A hundred years later the eponymous transnational corporation sent sales representatives dressed as nurses into what at the time was inelegantly called the Third World, where:
They promoted formula foods as a replacement for breast milk. Mothers were provided with one free can when they left the hospital – a potentially lethal freebie. Most mothers lived where the water was not safe, where the feed could easily be contaminated in preparation lead to diarrhea, dehydration and often death. Bottles were not sterilized. Mothers would over dilute the formula…which meant the newborn was not able to absorb the nutrients…after starting the baby of formula…they couldn’t switch back to breastfeeding – it was too late in the lactation cycle.
No wonder the Nestlé Boycott that began in 1977 continues, albeit without apparent effect, in 2025. The handiwork of Big Food:
In a 2018 study, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) estimated that 10,870,000 infants had died between 1960 and 2015 as a result of Nestlé baby formula used by “mothers [in low and middle-income countries] without clean water sources”, with deaths peaking at 212,000 in 1981 (See Mortality from Nestlé’s Marketing of Infant Formula in Low and Middle-Income Countries, pdf).
In 2024, a report by Swiss nonprofit Public Eye and IBFAN stated that Nestlé adds more sugar to baby food sold in lower- and middle-income countries compared to healthier versions sold in affluent.
And as Gillispie puts it, the jump from this first Food Fight to the subsequent Fake Food Flood was a natural progression. Baby formula is an ultra-processed food (UPF), and the food science used to produce it was adapted to produce “food” for children and adults with alacrity, initially with breakfast cereals and later with the modern ultra-processed manufactured items that fill the central aisles of the typical supermarket in row after row after row of ersatz abundance.
The NOVA system to characterize ultra-processed food was developed by Carlos Monteiro of the University of São Paulo:
- Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed (e.g., frozen vegetables)
- Group 2: Oils, butter, lard, sugar, salt derived from Group 1 foods or from nature by pressing, refining, grinding, milling, or drying
- Group 3: Foods processed by adding Group 2 ingredients to Group 1 foods (canned vegetables, sauces) [2]
- Group 4: Manufactured food-like substances
The simple definition of UPF from Gillispie is: UPFs are industrially produced foods wrapped in plastic, containing ingredients not available in the home. UPF is formula food for all ages. [3] Food scientists have developed these by manipulating sugar, salt, and fat to hit the bliss point of taste and mouthfeel. They are really quite remarkable. Speaking from recent weak-minded experience, a Nabisco Pinwheel is the perfect synthetic food-like drug. NOVA 4 products are not meant to nourish people, but they are delicious.
Ultra-processing also allows manufacturers to alter their products in virtually unlimited ways. Reliance on a few crops (e.g., maize, wheat, soy) is not a barrier to Big Food when these feedstocks, the exact analog of oil and natural gas as industrial feedstocks for plastic and fertilizer manufacturers, are so changeable. These few basic materials can be “transformed into a kaleidoscope of products with different shapes, size, colors, tastes, flavors, smells, textures,” limited only by the imagination and techniques of food scientists…UPFs are really profit-generators disguises as food.” Gains are privatized and costs in environmental degradation, illness, and disease are socialized. And most remarkably:
In 2022, Nestlé acknowledged that most of its products weren’t healthy and never will be. In April 2024, nine out of ten shareholders at the annual general meeting in Lausanne voted to continue to prioritize unhealthy foods.
Or maybe this is not remarkable at all. Shareholder value is only a trope invented by Milton Friedman in an article in the New York Times Magazine in 1970. But its foul myth has become another feral fact, along with “growth must be pursued at all costs” in a finite ecosphere, belying the notion that capitalism can be “reformed.”
The virtuous corporate cycle continues. “Diet” UPFs have become an antidote to UPF-induced disease:
The stratospheric popularity of GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic and Wegovy has provided yet another example of industry capturing new markets created by the harms of their products. As users report cravings of protein-rich products in smaller portions…to reduce gastrointestinal (GI) side effects, the industry is innovating to provide them what they need…(in)…a brand-new market estimated to reach 15 million people by 2030. In May 2024, Nestlé announced Vital Pursuit, a new line of frozen, high-protein foods. ‘We want to be there for every moment of our consumers’ lives – today and in the future,’ said Steve Presley, CEO, Nestlé North America.
So, to simplify, but not by much: UPFs led to the obesity epidemic, virtually everywhere in the world. GLP-1 agonists are then developed to help those who can afford them lose weight. But while doing so these people who are living with sociogenic obesity need high-protein UPF ready-to-eat “meals” to lessen their GI discomfort (one can only marvel at the name of this website: “goodnes.com”). These new UPFs are provided by the original UPF manufacturers. This is the perfect progression of modern capitalism in the form of an industrial, ever-growing, self-licking ice cream cone (naturally, the ice cream and the cone are UPFs).
The consequences of our UPF addiction are also maladaptive in other parts of the ecosphere. Our current food system presents us with a bleak landscape filled with food swamps and food deserts. A food desert is an area where finding any healthy food is a challenge. [4] A food swamp is an area inundated with outlets selling calorie-dense, ultra-processed junk and fast-food intended to be eaten on the street or in the car. These food swamps are often healthy food deserts.
Food swamps filled with UPFs are also environmental nightmares:
Ultra-processed foods account for 30-50 percent of diet-related energy use, biodiversity loss, greenhouse-gas emissions, land use, food waste, and water use. Emissions from UPFs increased by 245% between 1987 and 2018. Nestlé’s emissions are three times those of its host country, Switzerland. [5]
Two of the largest environmental culprits in the UPF business are palm oil and soy, feedstocks of the category error that is industrial agriculture. Palm oil is used to increase their caloric load and to stabilize UPFs (saturated fats are solid at room temperature). During the last fifty years more than half of the virgin rainforest in Indonesia has been destroyed to produce palm oil. Soy is used to feed livestock (for example in CAFOs and feedlots):
At over 40 per cent protein, soy is ideal for bulk-feeding animals. Soy protein isolate is used to improve ‘mouthfeel’ in UPFs and to allow the product to be marketed as high in protein. In the meat, fish, cheese, eggs and milk we eat and drink in the UK, we’re effectively consuming over 60kg of soy every year that comes from a Wales-sized chunk of land carved out of the Amazon rain forest.
The three major consequences by Big Food’s UPF production are (1) loss of agrobiodiversity and soil health caused by the industrial production, not farming, of wheat, soy, and maize; (2) destruction of water sources for the production of UPFs, including fizzy drinks and bottled water; and (3) plastic pollution. None of these problems needs further elaboration, but the key point is also the primary reason that capitalism “works”:
“Negative externality” is bloodless economist-speak for the price to be paid for capitalist economic growth. A price to be paid not by the employer, but those who couldn’t insulate themselves from it by living elsewhere. Unintended and hidden consequences that are not reflected in prices paid by consumers or received by producers.
By ignoring externalities, market prices of foods are delinked from the true cost of production. The more costly production of healthier, more sustainable foods becomes less profitable for farmers and food businesses than the production of unhealthy food that has lower direct costs but much greater externalities.
Food systems are now destroying much more value than they create.
This is not a problem with only the food system, But in the words of the author, Nil desperandum! Despair not, there is reason to hope. The high costs associated with the food system, US$15 trillion per year, including $11 trillion in health costs associated with malnutrition, point to a potential payoff that is unimaginably large even if it is overestimated by 50%, if only we could fix the food system. This is covered in The Economics of the Food System Transformation (2024, pdf).
Which brings us to how this transformation might be accomplished. But it is essential to remember that business per se is not the problem. Instead, a near monopoly held by a handful of transnational corporations of neoliberal late capitalism is the problem:
Private sector is not a helpful term for us here: it’s way too broad. We need to distinguish small- and medium sized enterprises that could collaborate in the social change process from the giants that derive their power from peddling junk food.
Nor does the solution like in public-private partnerships, because there is always incompatibility between a private interest and a public duty…For-profit corporations have a conflict of interest when they engage in public governance.
This will always be true, just as it is for Big Philanthropy, which is neocolonialism on steroids. We as a citizens of the world must learn to ignore the “dark arts” of the persuaders and Merchants of Doubt. This will require the removal of money from our “electoral democracy” in which one dollar equals one vote. At the moment this is unimaginable, but we can proceed with a thought experiment that assumes a true democracy of one citizen-one vote. Our solution will not rely on the transnational “private sector,” which is not private and will never be democratic.
Gillispie’s focus is international, as befits a global catastrophe of neocolonialism. However, the end of this food fight will not come from Big Food or Big Philanthropy, such as the Rockefeller/Gates Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The solution must come from below instead of above, the world over. It is a mistake to view colonialism that happens only in the periphery – Africa, South Asia, South America. Colonialism happens in the Global North, too.
For example, the former rural culture of Norfolk, where most of the fresh produce in the UK is grown has been supplanted by Big Ag, is a colony. The same is true in the American South, which has been a colony since before the American Civil War, and the American Midwest and Great Plains, which became colonies slightly later. In each of these colonies, commodity crops are produced, not farmed, for the benefit of Big Ag and Big Food instead of the people.
In any case, food cannot be “global,” despite its commoditization in the global trade. Food can only be local. If we, again as citizens of the world, focus on the colonies closest to home and revive local and regional culture and foodways, the problems of an unhealthy but very profitable global food system that ignores negative externalities will dissipate and eventually disappear as Big Food shrinks into oblivion. Yes, a thought experiment.
Still, we must figure out a way to sustainably and profitably produce food for use. [6] This can be done, perhaps through the lens provided by Mariana Mazzucato in Mission Economy, where her plan is to mend capitalism rather than end it. A better approach might be found in Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, which seeks “to create a balance between the needs of the people” and planet Earth. Some would prefer that we simply pay attention to Herman Daly and start developing a better life instead of growing our way further into polycrisis.
But whatever we do, and Food Fight is a very good place to begin to plan, it will be different in the coming smaller world as the climate changes and real needs are addressed of necessity. Eating Will Be an Agricultural Act once again, without the need of industrial “farms” mono-cropped in maize, wheat, or soy that extend beyond the horizon, and the feedlots that use their products.
Notes
[1] Primarily in the form of the so-called Green Revolution, for which Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The Green Revolution was a success by the metrics used in the 1960s. But the eclipse of indigenous and regional agriculture by unaccountable transnational corporations engaged in industrial agriculture was not sustainable, except as a wealth-taking enterprise that continued colonialism in an ostensibly benign form. Modern hybrid seeds did not improve nutritional status even as they increased productivity by conventional measures.
[2] The Michaels of Brooklyn “Fresh Tomato & Basil” sauce in my pantry that contains only tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh garlic, Italian olive oil, salt, black pepper and fresh parsley is a Group 3 food. It is good enough (I have no desire to imitate Stanley Tucci, yet) and was purchased at a local Fresh Market, which simulates an old-fashioned market in that everything is not pre-packaged and wrapped in plastic, including at the meat counter. The Fresh Market is more pleasant than Publix, Kroger, HEB, or Safeway, and marginally more expensive. Conventional sauces with extenders, chemical preservatives, palm oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil, and the like are NOVA Group 4.
[3] NOVA 4 includes Fizzy drinks; packaged snacks; chocolate, ice cream; mass-produced packaged breads and buns; margarines; biscuits, cookies, pastries, breakfast cereals, energy bars; energy drinks, fruit yoghurts. Also, pre-prepared ready-to-heat pies, pasta, pizza; chicken nuggets; pre-cooked meatballs; powdered and packaged instant foods; meal replacement shakes and powders. These industrial products take up most of the space in the typical American supermarket. None of them is healthy or nutritious. All of them are manufactured to taste good and feel good. When the occasional NOVA 4 item is considered a treat, all remains right with the world (e.g., the 6.5-ounce reusable glass bottle of Coca-Cola of my childhood). But UPFs have become dietary staples. And the Pause that Refreshes (ignore the AI-generated workslop at the top of the page) has become a 32-ounce, or larger, Big Gulp instead of that pause.
[4] On more than one occasion I have needed to remind a medical student that thousands of people within a few miles of our building live in food deserts where the only thing on offer at the independent “convenience” stores and bodegas are beer, other non-alcoholic fizzy drinks, UPF snacks and ready-to-eat microwavable meals, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. Local public transit might be a four-hour round trip to a supermarket for our fellow citizens. The people in these neighborhoods are afflicted with the usual consequences of our food system: malnourishment from being undernourished but overfed, along with hypertension, dyslipidemia, and obesity, the latter three usually undiagnosed. The same goes for those at the local country club, too, where most of the shirts for sale in the pro shop are XL and XXL, with a few XXL. Ozempic has become very popular in those circles.
[5] While reading Food Fight, I paid close attention to the references and sources cited. They seem sound throughout. The references supporting these environmental conclusions can be found here, here, and here. They are convincing. The only “scholars” who dispute the obesity epidemic, plastic pollution, profligate natural resource (water) and energy use, and the consequences of anthropogenic climate change are the usual economists and Merchants of Doubt along with the occasional adventitious Nobel laureate who maintains that anthropogenic global warming will not really have much of a deleterious effect on the economy. But see the business of property and casualty insurance, Florida and California Divisions; my homeowner’s insurance has increased by 80% in the last 6-7 years despite making only one claim, far away from either state, for roof damage caused by a hailstorm, in 37 years.
[6] Profitable for the farmer, the grocer, the rancher, and the trucker instead of the shareholders and executives of Nestlé and similar Big Food transnationals.
“…industrial production, not farming…”
I don’t think most people realize this, but it is so true. There are very few farms left in America. I grew up in dairy country in upstate NY. When I was a kid the average family dairy farm was between 60 and 100 milking cows. When I go home these days none of those farms exist anymore. Of those who still milk cows they are milking at a minimum 400 cows. Most are milking 800 or more cows.
A family we know well that’s still milking has 4 locations in upstate NY. The one site where our families grew up milks about 800 cows. It has 2 stainless steel silos (around 40’ tall each) to house milk. It takes 7 tanker milk trucks a day to keep those silos from overflowing. That is not a farm that is a damn factory! And they own 3 other locations as large or larger! And this is the new normal (sadly).
it’s death by 100 cuts….one of the main reasons: intense price pressure from consumers and retailers. Costco has gone to extensive lengths (for a retailer) to keep its $4.99 chicken. There is only so many excess costs to squeeze from standard milk, only way for farmers to stay profitable is to get bigger….and have regional specialization.
Always amazes me how much more expensive milk is in Florida, and the Southeast. usually <$3 per gallon (regular store-brand), <$7 organic in my neck of the woods.
but the store brand is cheapest for a reason, as in it is the most industrialized…not that the typical organic milk is a panacea
my cousins used to have a dairy farm in upstate new york but moved to a different farm to be closer to family. their farm is organic and mostly caters to people who are willing to pay more for organic milk and yogurt. they have people who drive in 2 hours from boston to buy their stuff. it’s been really hard for them since trump cut the subsidies. they had a grant to build a well, so they built a well and were supposed to get like a rebate, but that got cancelled so now things are difficult.
i know the massachusetts state food program would to buy their products and give them to food pantries. sometimes i would see yogurt from my cousin’s farm when i volunteered and get excited. a lot of state programs buy food from local farms and distribute them. (my college also sells products from my cousin’s farm.) i dont know the details but the state purchases of local products is probably part of why we still have a decent number of farms in massachusetts.
This is what Separate Blue State Survival looks like.
My nephew Chris Hughes is featured in a short video by Airstream Wanderer about his recent endeavor to teach greenhouse food production to interested area entities. He resides in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona at 6,000 feet elevation. He calls his non-profit adventure “Another Way Farms”. I was quite impressed watching the video as I hadn’t known he was into all this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS5mNfwPh4c
damn!
thats cool.
and also pretty much what ive been shooting for for 25+ years.
plus the other parts of The Plan Tam and I cooked up back then, when it became apparent that i wouldnt be able to cook for a living forever.
lack of funds, lack of support from those who had funds(including active resistance,lol), now lack of body…and bodies…and in spite of all that, i can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
all i have left is finishing the Big Greenhouse(most materials onsite and paid for)…and then a whole bunch of cleanup, including whatever of my debris piles i dont end up using, as well as getting the across the road weeds, etc under control(prolly the main thing i’ll need helpers for(im thinking WOOF, after mom’s gone…hence the cabin, etc)
tell yer Nephew that he’s an inspiration.
A standard mega-dairy here has 6,000 Bessies going at it, and the only 2 non tree crops you’ll see grown around these parts are alfalfa and corn for silage.
A fellow cabin owner is a long haul trucker within the state, and one of his milk-runs if you will, is picking up milk powder from a mega-dairy and driving it to San Pedro and then onto to the Middle Kingdom.
I was at a party some years ago,and met this interesting fellow who knew all about the dairy process, and I asked him where do the milk cows end up after they’re done with them?
He smirked and said, Campbells steak and potato soup.
That, or glue. As someone who has had the misfortune of eating steak from an old dairy cow, I can attest that it leaves something to be desired.
Sounds harsh, but on a small farm, those cows have a pretty good life. The cows eat well, spend most of their time outside in a green pasture, and my uncle would brush them off regularly to keep them clean when they came in to be milked.
I swear some mega-dairies {family blog} with the Bessies, by having an apron of grass just outside their CAFO enclosures-Arbeit Macht Frei Dicohondra
Matured meat from ex milkers (Txuleton) is very much an exclusive delicacy in northern Spain and the Basque country – you pay a lot for it in many fashionable European restaurants.
Its become an increasingly popular option for farmers who don’t want to give up their milkers for cheap burgers. It can make sense in grass based farms where there is some grazing thats substandard for the prime milk cows.
When I was in graduate school back in the mid-90’s I drove out to Pheonix, AZ with my buddy’s wife. They were moving there but he wasn’t able to leave his local job for another month. Anyhow we were driving through NM when all of a sudden there was this awful stench in the air, but there was nothing in sight to be the source of it. That said we found the source about 5 miles down the road as we drove by one of those mega-dairies!
When I was a kid I loved the smell of a farm, but these monster operations produce such an awful fowl smell.
And those factory farms that displaced family farms house immigrant labor in dormitories converted from old farm houses. Some have the H2A visas, others do not. None are entitled to overtime. The few remaining small farms are either tiny CSAs, hobby farms of the rich (and staffed with immigrants) or the few dozen Amish families. Half of the local farmers markets sell as much crafts as food and the big regional market allows non-NY state produce (which had been a requirement). My kids went to school with farm kids; besides a 1/3 enrollment decline, the diversity of students is much smaller. Even home vegetable gardens are few and far between.
ag labor is not counted under the New Deal Era labor regs…no overtime, let alone double time…etc.
i was shocked to learn this working the peanut harvest out here, back in the day.
and, interestingly, that idea ,or utter lack, carried over into food service, etc…ive had to take numerous cafe owners into the “break area”, and point to the sign/poster that they themselves hung, to educate them about the need to pay overtime,lol.
Montgomery County Maryland once had over 500 dairy farms. Now there are zero. The Mooseum.org that is all that is left. A tour of that little homage to a bygone era will bring you to tears. It’s a former dairy barn situated in the middle of a huge housing development. All the farmland in this DC suburb has been turned into housing developments. Now the area is overpopulated, traffic is terrible, and all the food comes from out of state.
Get big, or get out!
– Earl Butz, US Ag Secretary, Nixon Admin
Anyone remember or recently re-read E F Schumacher’s, “Small is Beautiful”? Great read, sentiments.
Someone named George McRobie wrote a “follow-on” book called Small Is Possible.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1502420.Small_Is_Possible
Wendell Berry vs. Earl Butz. (1977) Butz’s policies were quite successful in: 1) concentrating ownership in the hands of fewer and fewer locals; and then 2) transferring ownership ultimately to rich outsiders, er…. investors, primarily through the local bank. It also succeeded in changing a pretty little area with good hunting and fishing, tasty pot lucks and friendly pool halls into a cutesy, Disney-fied small town surrounded by a wasteland.
You are channeling my uncle here. My family milked 60 cows and their farm went under not long after all those anti-Russia sanctions went into effect under Biden and the costs of farm inputs increased. They had the choice to either then go big or go home. My uncle had pretty much aged out of being able to do much work, which was left to my two cousins in their 60s. They decided to sell the herd. My uncle said he didn’t want to work his boys to death trying to hang onto the farm, and that if they had to get any bigger just to survive, it wouldn’t even be a farm anymore, it would be a factory.
My extremely small contribution to a world with better food is growing beans in my yard, saving the seeds year over year. I plant about ten different kinds of beans/legumes every year. If anyone needs some heirloom seeds, call me!
Do you have something like this?
https://gardenseedsmarket.com/fasole-galben-francez-gazelle.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqSrtXkO_1dg6GMdsO6t3cx24g1aJfXJp5SrftMFUfqFFwyW5W3
Food deserts and food swamps are without a doubt prevalent throughout both urban and rural America– this can pose real difficulties especially if you travel for a living and you wish to eat healthy, or, as stated within the post, if you lack transportation to a decent grocery store: grocery delivery can be pretty darn expensive even if it’s available.
Eating well can be difficult for the many time-stressed Americans who are working multiple jobs just to get by and who must spend hours a day on commutes between these: most would choose to take time to sleep over time which could be spent prepping food– having not enough time to do both.
I don’t think Kennedy’s MAHA initiative is going to amount to any more than window-dressing and a puddle of warm spit– hell, surely they’ll find a way of making the problems that we face.worse. Ultra-processed “foods” offer great margins vs. real foods, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the multinational conglomerates purvey both empty caloric chemical crap as well as purported remedies to the resulting weight gains– the Nestle annecdote seems a fitting reminder of how evil these bastards can be.
Is it wrong to suggest that we’ve come full-circle and are facing The Jungle again?
Thanks for the post.
I live in the land of the monocrop…
Ag finds something they can sell for mo money than another tree foodstuff, and they tend to be export oriented, and yeah I do my bit with almonds-must devour 10 pounds a year, they have the best crunch when you eat ’em.
There’s 350 million almond trees within a few hundred miles of me, and over 70% of it is exported, currently at a loss to each and every farmer so engaged. I can’t think of any other tree crop that needs road-trip bees to pollinate them, and we’ve done our best to ruin apiary in the process-not the mention the die-offs that never happened before almonds became a big thing.
You see very little in the way of stone fruit grown here, which is kinda weird, but I get it. Summer fruit is perishable, whereas almonds, pistachios or citrus have a much longer shelf life after harvesting.
You know what i’ve never seen in the Central Valley?
An Ag orchard with multiple tree crops, 50 acres of nectarines there, 50 acres of peaches there, 50 acres of pistachios over there, etc.
Thanks for this: It reminds me how lucky I am.
In any case, food cannot be “global,” despite its commoditization in the global trade. Food can only be local.
Here in the Chocolate City, besides buying chocolates made in town, I am eating cheeses (delicious) made in the region, tomatoes grown locally, and shopping at the local market from farms not far away (still in the region).
Second, a comment on ingredients: I have come increasingly to suspect that the cause of many health problems in the U S of A is the use of oil that is garbage. I have serious reservations about cottonseed oil, which is waste product. Likewise, I have misgivings about corn oil and soybean oil. (Nevertheless, according to the category above, there are considered NOVA 2 foods. Hmmm.)
Here in Italy, I see plenty of olive oil. I see much sunflower oil. (Yes, some crackers and prepared foods use palm oil — there’s endless controversy about Nutella and rumors of palm oil.)
But the crap oils — I don’t see them. This includes canola / rapeseed oil, not much in use in Italy.
Did I mention butter (which is local). And not margarine.
I’m going to suggest looking at Slow Food, which isn’t just a gastronomic society of buongustai. I was at the yearly meeting of members of the Chocolate City Chapter of Slow Food (the largest in Italy, for obvious reasons). The discussion was about the ethic of Slow Food: Cibo buono, pulito, giusto.
Good, clean, just.
And there was plenty of discussion about involving younger people, about getting food to those in poverty (and there are plenty), and other activities that don’t consist only of wine tastings.
In fact, Slow Food has a group called Slow Fabric that is trying to maintain and preserve traditional methods of production of cloth, especially wool.
In the US of A, the clubs for preserving heirloom varieties and the many farmers markets give one some hope. But they don’t cure the food deserts, which are, not to put too fine a point on it, evidence of class warfare.
the human brain is essentially a blob of cholesterol and blood vessels.
I’m convinced(though it’s only truly atthe hypothesis level) that lousy oils and lousy diet in the womb and the early years = (in part) sub-optimalbrain development,
100 %.
Also class warfare.
And perhaps steering the lower class majority to lousy oils and lousy diet, including in the womb, is part of the Upper Class war against the lower class. Make them brain-damaged, keep them controllable.
And by the way, keep them all immuno-compromised so they are likelier to mass-die in every upcoming pandemic, as per Operation Long Jackpot.
The US school system was designed to create obedient workers… this is more of the same.
https://medium.com/@sofialherani/the-dark-truth-of-the-educational-system-shaped-by-john-d-rockefeller-77bf1b0167dd
I have come increasingly to suspect that the cause of many health problems in the U S of A is the use of oil that is garbage.
Seconded. Although often much more expensive, I stick with olive oil for low-medium heat cooking (and recipies which call for added oil), and peanut oil for higher.
I am currently on an unplanned, extended stay, but fortunately in a part of USA that still has a fairly extensive number of small, family-run farms– at the least, our farmer’s markets are the real deal. It is not difficult to “eat local” here, and only every blue moon have I a need to travel to Aldi for toilet paper or juice (alternatives being dollar stores or Walmart, which I refuse). I am taking full advantage of this while I can.
In my opinion, for eating well, a person’s two best friends can be a crock pot and an InstantPot (which can be used as a crock pot). These make it easy to make sure that you can have at least one healthy meal a day throughout the week.
aye. i have not been able to tolerate rapeseed oil(canola is a marketing term) for decades.
originally an industrial lubricant.
i do olive,…sometimes sunflower or one of the fancy asian oils…and lard, butter, bacon grease,lol.
if i must fry something…like fish or shrimp, due to family cultural things…i use peanut oil.
rendered goose and chicken and duck fat, too…usually in spring.
the former and latter especially have been loaded with orange fat.
the word for that is “schmalz”, and it is awesome for cooking fancy.
Lard, yes.
I render shank bones prior to giving these to the dog, skimming the lard and straining the bone broth.
The lard usually I usually mix into wheat or corn flour for tortillas, and the bone broth is saved for soups or rice. The bones usually keeps the dog out of my hair for a few hours, because she can be a real pain in my a….
Bacon grease I hoard to sautee/brown meatballs in, although on occasion I’ll use it to sear steak (on the very rare occasion I have steak). After steak is seared, I reduce the red wine, garlic, onion, pepper and mushroom marinade in the bacon grease to serve over the steak (rare/medium-rare).
“Vegetable” oil is pure evil in my book– I don’t know how they can get away with marketing something so toxic as if it were good for you.
Excellent thought-provoking article, but I am less optimistic: it’s a convenient albatross to blame a few megacorporations – we see this in the climate change arguments – Big Oil is blamed for climate change; however, who buys their products?
If Nestle et al. all went bankrupt tomorrow, does anyone doubt new mid-sized companies would prioritize profits over public health to deliver UPF crap to the masses? The neoliberal system is the problem. My SWAG is that until neoliberalism collapses (and is regulated out of existence to prioritize societal good), our oligarch-bought politicians will NOT regulate our food for the public’s good (as opposed to greater wealth for the oligarchs).
At its basis, this is why empires collapse – they do not follow the greater good, but the good of the oligarchs (or other narrow, unrepresentative, power center(s)). Once constrained by other rising empires / ecological collapse, they cannot respond intelligently. And from the ashes, new systems arise. And the US seems to have decided to collapse Europe on the way down.
During a recent visit to China, I was truly impressed with the quality of the food – I recognized the garden-fresh taste in the produce. In the US, even at farmers’ markets, I never find the equivalent taste of a tomato or zucchini picked five minutes before, to say nothing of highly perishable, just-picked lettuce you’ll never find at the grocery store.
Its hard to avoid buying Big Oil’s products when Big Oil has worked with Other Big Black Hat Bad Actors to carefully exterminate existing alternatives to Big Oil’s products and abort any re-emergence of such alternatives. It is still possible for some people to avoid Big Fuud’s fake fuud products if those people live in a food jungle rather than a fuud junkyard.
An example of that is the conspiracy in mid-twentieth-century America to tear up and destroy trolley and streetcar lines and systems all over America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
It is still possible for middle-class and upper-working-class people to find, make and eat real food if they have the knowledge and skills to find it/grow it and cook-and-eat it. Those who can do that should go right ahead and do that.
Oil price (we eat oil) has been down and hovering from $58-$62/ bbl for a while now. And yet food prices are raging. Must be those astronomical wages.
This is UK adjacent, but certainly applies elsewhere:
Why food prices are still rising: butter, beef and milk to blame
Household staples including butter, coffee, milk and chocolate are driving food price inflation, with extreme weather playing a part in pushing up the cost of living.
In the context of the original post, I’d expect to see a lot more Soylent Greens on the market as the production costs of real foods rise and wages fall/stagnate.
Where I’m located in farm country, small and family farmers are getting nailed by higher input-costs from seed to fertilizer, equipment and everything in-between and less return due to trade-war, tariffs, and buyer/market consolidation. Oh, yeah: unpredictable weather has been a factor as well– and that’s happening EVERYWHERE.
As a further pointer to UPF, I refer to a previous comment of mine on this very site — for the German-speaking audience.
I am grateful for the privilege that allows me to afford good, unprocessed food and the time to cook it. The small farms around here have mostly wealthy customers. Many of the farms do donate surplus to the food bank but, generally, our food bank is full of Kraft dinner and other canned and processed foods. I know people gotta eat but I shudder when I’m there. I contribute toiletries because I know what a bite toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, etc take out of one’s budget.
Our neighbours to the south have a small farm. Some beef cattle, eggs, market flowers and apiary. Most folks who live in this area cannot afford what this farm produces. The farmers themselves supplement their farming income with a contract with the local school board to have city kids visit and learn about farming. And they have a consulting business whereby they teach beekeeping and advise small and hobby farmers how to get started. They also run workshops through the year – mostly supporting the flower business – making bouquets, wreaths, etc. They recently have teamed up with a small local business to provide their honey to be made into skin care products. On the one hand it all sounds interesting and I think they enjoy their life but the school contract and consulting and workshops are necessary income not bonus money, the traditional aspect of their farm is not enough to live on.
We had 8 weeks of total drought and heat (and some wildfire smoke) in my area this past summer. It killed my small vegetable garden and some perennial flowers and shrubs. If this kind of weather persists, I don’t see how we defeat big ag and become food growers ourselves. In a radical act of hope, I planted garlic for next year the other day. We shall see.
Last, thank you for the reminder of just how evil Nestle is. I recently bought some of their chocolate chips for baking because my preferred brand was not available. I need to go back to the full boycott I have practiced for years. And clearly we can’t bankrupt them via boycott but at least I can sleep knowing I am not part of that particular problem.
In wealthy countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, ultra-processed foods make up a large part of people’s diets. In relatively poorer countries, such as Romania, Colombia, and Hungary, however, this proportion is low. This suggests that ultra-processed foods are more of a cultural than an economic issue. Protestant countries seem to be more receptive to ultra-processed foods than Catholic countries.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10561017/figure/f1/
i recently learned that the newish (passable) italian restaurant on the Square doesnt really cook anything: its TV dinners, essentially, made in some food factory outside of new york city, and shipped frozen to here.
OTOH, many, many folks around here remember my cafe…slogan was Real Food.
because, save for the bread, i didnt fool around with anything cooked elsewhere.
it was all from scratch.
always had a pot of stock of some kind working in the back corner of one of the grills(and i remain the only place in this town that never had a deep fryer)
i am proud that so many recognise that i almost singlehandedly changed the menu…utterly…out here.
in a large sense, i made the places we have now(including the winery bars) possible.
Sounds like your place was great Amfortas. Those kind of restaurants are few and far between these days. When I see an impossibly long menu, I know to go elsewhere because they they can’t possibly be making all those dishes from scratch. Restaurant food really has become crapified. Wholesalers like Sysco offer all manner of processed and frozen meals that pretty much eliminate the need for a chef. Places just need a few line cooks to do boil in a bag pasta dishes or oven heated from frozen steaks or whatever or conveyer belt pizzerias. Yuck.
It’s very easy to cook simple pasta sauces (tomato, oil, or white wine based) at low cost, and pasta (like rice) is cheap for the high volume products.
Basic sauce, 4 large prawns, and $22 for a main course…
…don’t get me on chicken salads etc in restaurants as the other ripoff.
Perhaps because I was a son of the farm (my father was hyper-allergic to the dust produced from harvesting grain and hay), I spent a great deal of time at Stanford’s Agricultural Library. There I read Sir Albert Howard. Howard was a botanist sent to colonial India to help manage British plantations. There he discovered traditional Indian composting methods, and he promoted composting techniques to European farmers. Of course, WWI led to massive nitrate production, which after the war found duty as nitrogen fertilizer and replaced the need for traditional fertilizers. Howard’s compost was better for the soil.
As an amateur historian, Howard had studied the Roman Empire and he came to the conclusion that what precipitated the fall of that empire was not Visigoth barbarians but the loss of nourishment in the grain which fed the Empire. Rome, over time, had reverted to a slave-based, industrial farming system which produced ’empty’ calories, unlike the former, vigorous agriculture practiced by freemen in relatively small plots.
If Howard is even close to being right, I can see the parallels with today’s factory farms. Instead of slaves, we employ indebted men and women and use fossil fuels for energy, pest control, and fertilization. The results of this system are the empty foods that dominate Western culture.
Amen. I bet Gabe Brown would agree with you, and so would Wendell Berry.
Composting is almost magical to me. Throw in scraps, after a while remove soil! We have a small composter where we throw kitchen waste over the winter and then switch to bigger ones for kitchen and yard waste in spring, summer and fall. The little one that we use in the winter provides about a bucket full of lovely crumbly compost each spring. It is so sad that farming became an industry.
I find myself spending too much time what the world would be like if decided to take care of each other and the planet instead of competing and profiteering.
Here is a video in this vein which I saw on You Tube. It appears these concerns are reaching the “mainstream” and “ordinary people” are beginning to notice that a lot of “food” is just fuud now.
” Why Does American Food Feel FAKE? Food Quality Crisis 2025 ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo3aljkahHo
Kate
@the_meat_lady
·
16h
My annual two cents:
1. Cattlemen raise calves. Those calves are bought by feedlots or held by the cattlemen themselves through feeding. The gross majority of these calves are then sold to a “Big 4” packer.
Meat packers are the only end user of beef cattle able to covert a live animal into beef. They are a critical piece of the American livestock infrastructure. Cattlemen don’t sell beef, they sell cattle. I see a lot of cowboys talking about “the beef business.” You aren’t in the beef business, you are in the cow business.
Net margins in slaughter average 1-3% throughout the course of the cycle. It is incredibly regulated and cash intensive. New investment into the beef packing space is difficult because it is a hard investment. You have to be able to make and lose money in massive swings.
Tyson Beef Slaughter Operations:
2024: Operating Loss – $381M
2023: Operating Loss – $91M
2022: Operating Income: $2,502M
2021: Operating Income: $3,240M
It makes money, it loses money. But they are a critical piece of the supply chain, without them we have no where to go with cattle. I really wish we kept that in mind.
2. Beef processors take beef made from packers, some are owned by packers but there are many independent companies who do this, and they make steaks, fajitas, ground beef. Processors are the main importers of lean trim.
Country of Origin labelling can create transparency in this process, but it also adds cost and does determine buying habits or patterns. A consumer that is already struggling is going to continue their buying trends. COOL does not even the playing field, it just discloses all the facts.
Bottom line: Packers are not the only ones importing. You’d be surprised by who all is on the import bandwagon.
3. FAT CATTLE DO NOT MAKE LEAN TRIM. Each fat animal produces about 100 lbs of 85’s and about 200 lbs of 50/50. Imports fill this gap BECAUSE the primary driver of beef consumption in the US is ground beef.
4. The US could make more lean trim by slaughtering more cull cows and bulls OR by adopting production practices similar to South America where cattle are grass fed and slaughtered younger. But that would take upending our current production habits and an entire value system that is based around corn conversion into high quality beef.
The only way to supplant imports is to create the right live animal in the US. Expanding the cow herd will diminish the value of fat cattle and cull cows in tandem. Imports will continue for lean trim because it is cheaper than what we can produce domestically and PRICE ALWAYS WINS. Unless, we figure out how to compete on price with our South American neighbors, we will continue to atrophy. See soybeans for another market example.
5. The United States government will always be more concerned about cheap and available food than the stability of its growers. Please see French Revolution for details.
“please see French Revolution for details”! best tagline ever
Dear Mr. farmboy,
There is a somewhat “artisanal” farm near where I live called Vestergard Farms. They grow grass-fed livestock of several kinds and have the meat processed and sell it themselves under their own farm’s name.
I sometimes buy “soup bones” which are transverse-cut lower-leg cow shanks, which are muscle/tendon/some-fat/etc. around a ring of bone in the center. I slow-cook them for stock and to eat the meat. I have noticed that the fat from Vestergard Farms’s grass-fed “soup bones” remains softer at room temperature than the average beef fat that I remember. After a time, a liquid oil fraction tries to separate out of it. I will call that fraction “beef oil” because it comes from the beef and it is liquid at room temperature . . . which is oil. ( In this case room temperature is 60 degrees which is what I keep my dwelling unit at all through the heating season).
Have you ( or anyone else here) had any experience of actually liquid-at-room-temperature beef OIL?