But Is it Food?

I’m distressed at the lengths food manufacturers will go to create product. The concept of “food manufacturer” and the reference to food as “product” in itself is troubling. I have a problem reconciling industrial food production with the way I cook. I worry that you can buy raw dough in your grocer’s dairy section that will bake up as smiling Halloween Jack O’lantern cookies. A large conglomerate recently developed an oven-ready turkey that has been brined, seasoned and packaged in a plastic baking bag; all you need do is shove it into a preheated oven and hello Butterball.

Oscar Meyer makes lunchables for kids’ lunch bags that contain over-processed meat, cheese and crackers. Quaker Oats manufactures single-serving containers of artificially flavored, sweetened, microwave ready, oatmeal. Take a walk down the aisles of your supermarket and look at the volume of absurd packages of snacks, cookies, mixes and goofy MRE’s.

I admit to occasionally buying pre-packaged spinach or rotisserie chicken and canned sauce when I can’t take the time to poach chicken or grind chiles for enchiladas. Otherwise, I prepare fresh. My chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies cost a fraction of those prepackaged lumps. They taste better too. One single-serving oatmeal cup costs $1 at my local quickie mart. A 42oz. container of oatmeal will yield 30 servings at a cost of about 8 cents per. While I admire the crumb and texture of certain Dunkin Hines cake mixes I’m bothered by the fact that the way the company achieved that result was through very technical chemical processing. Unfortunately, by now there are millions of civilians who believe Dunkin Hines canned frosting is butter cream. Every once and a while I run into one of these people at a birthday party and when they taste my mousseline, their eyes light up.

It’s just all so artificial, dishonest and disposable. Have we arrived at this point because our parents failed to pass along certain skills? Is it because we spend too much time and energy chasing imposed concepts of wealth, success and prestige that we’ve lost sight of the real value of sustenance? Why on earth would anyone choose Baco-bits over freshly prepared, crumbled, crispy bacon?

Some of the finest minds in the country spend their talents chasing the next Keeblers snack. They do this because huge corporations pay them ungodly amounts of money. These food scientists don’t seek cures for diseases or pursue innovative procedures to better the lives we lead. Rather they exhaust themselves creating tortilla chips that taste like cheese puffs with fewer calories. Instead of spending 90 seconds preparing quesadillas using fresh tortillas and a little shredded cheese, people seem happy to burst open a nitrogen filled cellophane bag of replicant engineered tortilla product.

Don't lose sight of the value of preparing fresh meals for someone you care about or for yourself.