8
It is not just farming and food-production methods that have changed during the past 40 years. The whole of Australian society has changed. We work longer hours. We commute long distances. We juggle multiple roles. We have less time to think and plan. Life is too fast. Have we lost the natural rhythm of life?
In many respects, the way we choose to live in the 21st century corresponds exactly with how we produce and consume our food. Quickly—and often badly. When it comes to food, today’s consumers want to have their cake and eat it too. We expect food to be cheap, safe, and available in great quantities and great variety, all year round. It must look perfect and be ready to eat. We want access to it 24/7. Ideally, it must also be of the highest quality, organically grown, wholesome, fresh not stored, and produced locally by artisan growers, using only ethical and environmentally friendly methods. Yet much of what we actually choose to take home is highly processed and full of fat and sugar. Could we contradict ourselves more?
Overall, Australian food consumers are becoming more affluent, sophisticated and discerning. Changing tastes and preferences for quality, product range and food safety are driving changes throughout the food-production chain. In countries like Australia, ready-prepared food and fresh food are in greater demand.
With rising incomes in the developing world there is more demand for resource-intensive livestock products—meat and dairy—and value-added foods. As an exporter of food this affects Australia. Combine increased consumer demand for quantity and quality with raised expectations of environmental management and animal welfare standards, and the pressure is on the farmer to perform.
Our 21st-century priorities are dominated by economics: what we can buy and how much it costs. Our understanding of the world is governed by science and we rely on technology to survive in it. We are hurried, demanding of our resources and we take little time to reflect upon the future effects of our actions. As a result, we have a tenuous relationship with the natural world. There is very little that is ‘organic’ about the way we live. Earthy alternatives presented to us via popular television lifestyle and cooking programs are attractive but not a reflection of our reality.
The same can be said for industrialised farming, the predominant food-production system in Australia. Food is produced on a mass scale as quickly and as cheaply as possible, often in unethical ways and without regard for the effects on society and the environment. We may not like the thought of this, but we eat it anyway. Industrialisation in other areas of life has seemingly improved our living standards through better housing, transport, clothing and entertainment. But it has also added to a culture of consumerism and materialism. With the shift from agrarian agriculture to industrial agriculture, the whole of society—not just farmers—has lost its connection to the land and to our food. This is evidenced by the way we market, distribute and even consume our food. It has been literally, and culturally, devalued. We are all responsible for this. Truckloads of fresh food criss-cross Australia daily as part of a complex, centralised transport and storage system designed to service supermarkets, specialty food shops and restaurants. The big supermarkets have purpose-built distribution centres, mainly in the capital cities, which buy in food, sort it and redistribute it to their stores throughout the country. Both the Coles and Woolworths chains rationalised their distribution systems in the late 2000s, creating fewer but larger centres placed strategically around the country. These centres are essentially massive steel warehouses up to 44 metres high and capable of housing thousands of tonnes of food.
Coles has thirteen distribution centres across the country. Its Eastern Creek centre in western Sydney includes a 75,000-squaremetre warehouse with over 100 loading bays for chilled, packaged and fresh produce. The Coles Regional Distribution Centre built at the Perth Airport Commercial Precinct in 2008 can fit three football fields inside it. There are 7500 square metres of freezer space and 17,500 square metres of fridge space. A further 50,000 square metres of storage space is cooled to a pleasant 18°C. The distribution centre uses sophisticated electronic logistics technology and the latest computer software to operate a conveying system to move stock.
Woolworths clocks up 100,000 truck movements a month and moves 20,000 tonnes of food around the country every day.[1] To supply its 800-odd supermarkets Australia-wide, Woolworths has two national distribution centres—one in Sydney and one in Melbourne—and nine regional distribution centres in all states except for the Northern Territory.[2] Woolworths built its Larapinta centre south of Brisbane on a 19-hectare greenfield, or virgin bush, site.[3] The complex comprises 7 hectares of reinforced concrete pavement for truck access, turning and loading, and 8 kilometres of stormwater drainage including the roof. It cost $195 million to build.
Woolworths’ distribution system is designed for efficiency and in the main no doubt it is. But it is not perfect. Fresh food grown in the Northern Territory has to be trucked interstate to be sorted before it is trucked back to stores in the north. Likewise, in Queensland fresh vegetables grown in the Lockyer Valley are trucked 90 kilometres to the Brisbane distribution centre only to be trucked back again to be sold through Gatton stores. One can only imagine the tonnage of mangoes, pineapples and fresh milk produced in north Queensland that could be being driven the 1200 kilometres south to Brisbane and 1200 kilometres back up the coast for sale in Townsville, Cairns and beyond. It defies logic.
And somewhere along the road, we have lost the idea of ‘local’ food. The increased distance between producer and consumer has resulted not only in a lot of excess food miles but also a lost connection between farmer and the public. Consumers know little about where their peas and beans are grown or how their meat is raised. The physical distance created by the distribution system blocks the transfer of this knowledge. It also makes it hard for the consumer to provide feedback to the farmer on what he or she wants.
As well as facilitating the exchange of goods, these gigantic supermarket distribution sheds enable food to be stored—sometimes for longer than consumers realise. In Australia, apples are picked between January and May. Outside of that period, the Australian apples sold in shops have all been stored. Once harvested, apples are kept in cold storage, sometimes for up to a year. They are first treated with 1-methylcyclopropene, a gas to inhibit ripening. This keeps them crisp and juicy. It keeps them hard and tasteless too according to consumer watchdog Choice.[4] The use of 1-methylcyclopropene is an accepted industry practice fully approved by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA).[5] Yet many consumers are completely unaware of this. Fruit which must be stored for a long time is also often sprayed with fungicides to prevent mould. The nutritional quality of fruit and vegetables stored for extended periods changes. English spinach retains only 53 per cent of its folate and 54 per cent of its carotene after eight days stored at fridge temperature.[6] Meat these days is vacuum-packed or packaged in modified atmospheric packs—plenty of plastic either way. These methods take out the oxygen, in which bacteria can breed, and replace it with carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Stored this way, lamb can be kept for 112 days and beef mince for 44 days. That is considerably longer than a piece of untreated, fresh meat would last in the kitchen fridge. The gas mixture may also contain a small amount of carbon monoxide. This gas reacts with the myoglobin in meat to make it look a healthy red colour no matter what its age.[7] But isn’t this what we all want: to look good and live forever? The modern supermarket and its clever distribution system has a knack of doing this for us, removing us from reality. The sheer abundance and variety of the contemporary supermarket tricks us into believing we can have as much of whatever we want, when we want it.
The fact remains, however, that food is actually seasonal—even meat and milk to an extent. Ewes lamb in the spring. If you are looking for spring lamb, it is likely you will find it in plentiful supply around Christmas time in Australia. A dairy cow’s milk production decreases during the winter as cows ‘dry off’ in readiness to give birth to a calf in the spring. Traditionally there is less fresh milk supplied in the winter although today’s modern breeding techniques keep Daisy productive year round. Pumpkins, beans, cucumbers, corn and zucchini grow in the summer. Peas, broccoli, cabbages and cauliflower grow in the winter. These are the laws of nature. The supermarket’s laws are somewhat different, a problem compounded by our increasing ignorance of seasonality. Our appetite for out-of-season food is also having a big environmental impact, combined with unnecessary storage and transport costs. This further demonstrates the disconnect that today’s consumers have with their food, with farmers and with nature. If we want to ensure our food is fresh, nutritious and provided in an environmentally sound way, we must start by buying food that is in season and produced locally.
Advocates for the ‘local’ food movement say consumers should buy directly from the local farmer, through farmers’ markets or local businesses stocking fresh, local produce, instead of the major supermarkets. This reduces ‘food miles’—the distance food travels from paddock to plate. While this is not always possible or practical for all Australians, the prospects of climate change and oil shortages have certainly made many people think about where their food is grown. The supermarket may offer convenience and cheap food, but many consumers are now interested in the hidden costs. One of those is the effect on the environment of carbon emissions from transport. In response, many people worldwide have taken up the ‘100-mile diet’ challenge—to consume only food that is grown in a 160-kilometre (100-mile) radius of where they live.[8]
But not everyone believes that buying locally will reduce food miles. Tim Wilson from Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs says the carbon emissions generated by producing food as well as those from transport should be taken into account.[9] He argues that in many cases importing food rather than producing it locally is better for the environment. New Zealand can produce lamb with fewer resources and, hence, less carbon emissions and transport it to Europe with a smaller carbon footprint than the Europeans can do locally.
While this may be true, it doesn’t bring the New Zealand sheep farmer closer to the London restaurant diner. The concept of eating ‘local’ food is not only important for the environment but for people. Eating locally brings consumers and farmers physically and culturally closer. It creates understanding. By getting to know the farmer, we learn more about our food and can become more active consumers. Where possible, farmers do respond to consumers’ concern. After all, isn’t the customer always right? Consumers with a connection to farmers can influence food-production practices. To learn more about our food, and influence how it is grown, we need to re-establish connections with traditional farmers. Shoppers need to send this message to their food retailer. We also need to re-learn what unadulterated fresh food actually looks and tastes like.
Tonnes of Australian-produced fruit and vegetables are wasted each day because they do not meet the picture-perfect ideals of the supermarket customer. Farmers are going broke trying to meet unrealistic standards of blemish-free, uniform shape, size and colour to supply supermarkets. Fruit and vegetables may take on an imperfect shape due to adverse weather conditions—too much rain, lack of sun or too much cold. Scarring from insects or rain or wind can cause blemishes. But the fruit inside looks and tastes exactly the same. On average one-third of farmers’ crops are rejected by the supermarkets. Queensland horticulture’s peak body, Growcom, says that for farmers to produce a box of perfect-looking tomatoes, they must grow the equivalent of one and a half boxes. Because the extra half a box is not perfect, it is thrown away.[10] As well as costing the farmer, this practice takes a toll on the environment through the excess use of water, fertilisers, chemicals and land taken up growing the wasted fruit.
Bundaberg vegetable grower Mark Horvath says this massive oversupply of produce in Australia means supermarkets can demand whatever they want from growers. He said he has had his tomatoes rejected by the supermarket because they were ‘too red’.[11] Stone fruit and apple growers from Orange in New South Wales were forced to throw out 70 per cent of their crops in 2009 after a massive dust storm covered the fruit. One would imagine a quick wash under the kitchen tap would remove the dust, but retailers have demanded perfection for so long that a generation of shoppers now do not know what ‘natural’ is. We truly are removed from our food. Retailers keep our food picture-perfect to the detriment of the consumer, the farmer and the environment. And it’s not just by accident.
The role of the supermarket is not only to supply our food but also to force-feed us. Supermarkets spend millions of dollars researching consumer behaviour to entice shoppers to buy more. This is good for their business. The layout of the supermarket, lighting, colour and product placement are important. Psychologist Dr Paul Harrison, an expert on consumer behaviour, points out that subtle marketing ploys lull us into a false sense of security and encourage us to buy more of what we don’t need.[12] They aim to keep us in the store longer and tempt us with new products bought on impulse. US research shows that upon entering a supermarket, most shoppers turn right (a biological trait linked to most people’s right-handedness) and travel around the perimeter of the store dipping in and out of aisles as needed. Shoppers travelling in an anti-clockwise direction will spend on average an extra $2 than those travelling clockwise. Armed with this knowledge, supermarkets, via the store layout, make sure that’s the way shoppers go. Product position is important. Essential products like bread and milk are placed at the back of the shop—at opposite ends, of course. Consumers must walk up and down aisles to get to these staples. Likewise, the expensive avocados and mangoes are always at the front of the fruit and vegetable section while the good old potatoes and onions are tucked away at the rear. Commonly bought items are placed along the middle of the aisles, to draw people down them. The unnecessary, high-energy, treat foods often on ‘special’ are placed at the ends of the aisles. We must therefore pass the ‘treats’ to get to the necessities. Premium-priced brands are placed at eye-level. Cheaper alternatives are found on the bottom shelves. Everything is done for a reason.
It is not by accident that the fresh fruit and vegetable section is usually close to the shop entrance. This gives the supermarket a fresh, healthy, positive image. The whole supermarket is laid out into ‘marketplace’ sections to give shoppers the impression that they are visiting several different stores: the greengrocer, the butcher shop, the deli, the bakery—just like it used to be. This satisfies many people’s subconscious desire to believe the food is fresh and natural. The bakery section smells good (even though most items are not baked on site), which reassures the shopper it is wholesome and trustworthy. Sensory overload created by the bakery, the fresh produce section or the floral section serves to seduce. Frequent rearranging of the aisles is designed to break our shopping habits and tempt us to try new brands and products. Packaging is important—it not only protects a product, but is also a silent salesman. Well-packaged items engender a sense of quality. Marketeers use packaging to communicate, to convey emotional connection with a product. Red attracts attention, yellow makes us hungry and blue reassures us. It is not mere coincidence that chocolate is packaged in hues of rich brown, purple, orange and gold. The message is that it’s a luxury, but one you can have every day if you choose.
The tricks of the retailer encourage us to buy, buy, buy—sometimes unnecessarily and often in amounts we will never use. Australians throw out $5.2 billion-worth of food a year.[13]A report on food wastage by the Australia Institute showed this is more than it costs to run the Australian army each year. The average household throws away $616 of food a year, or $239 per person. Most of the food thrown out is leftover fresh fruit and vegetables, uneaten restaurant and takeaway food, and meat and fish. The report suggested that a lack of planning by consumers causes them to buy too much food. It also suggested retailers encouraged wasteful purchasing by consumers through their promotion of convenience foods and provision of plastic bags. (A plentiful supply of free plastic bags to take groceries home in discouraged planning when shopping for food.) Food waste increases with rising household incomes. Waste also puts extra costs on the community and environment through waste disposal and increased greenhouse gases from rotting food.
Supermarkets themselves throw out millions of kilos of fresh food and groceries every year.[14] This includes food that is out of date, discontinued, end-of-season excess stock, or mislabelled or inaccurately weighed food. All in all, there is an awful lot of food wasted down the supply chain—some say up to 50 per cent.[15] The cost to society is compounded when we consider the amount of wasted resources, including the production, processing, packaging, storage, refrigeration, and transportation and cooking, needed to produce the food. The Big Brother use-by-date system not only encourages us to throw out food that is still perfectly good, it also means we lose the skills to identify for ourselves when food is spoilt. This is yet another trick retailers use to keep us removed from truly understanding our food.
We pay a heavy price—literally—for our compulsion to consume in excess of what we need. Marketing tricks encourage us to buy more and eat more highly processed, high-energy, low-nutrient foods, which in turn leads to obesity. One in two Australian adults and one-quarter of Australian children are overweight.[16] This is expected to increase during the next ten years so we can fit into our US buddies’ supersized pants. Two out of every three Americans are overweight or obese. However, it’s not just the way unhealthy foods are marketed that has led to this obesity epidemic; other factors contribute. One is the price of food. A five-year study of food prices in Queensland showed that while junk food had increased in price by 31 per cent, the price of fresh fruit soared by 112 per cent.[17] From 2000 to 2006, overall fresh food prices increased 50 per cent, which was well above the 32.5 per cent inflation rate for food. This does not encourage healthy eating, particularly for low-income families. Ironically, for families in rural and remote parts of Australia—where much of the food is grown—fresh food is even more expensive.
Agricultural policies that support the production of cheap commodity foods like corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar and vegetable oil crops rather than fresh fruit and vegetables don’t encourage more fresh food production and availability either. It is all about quantity not quality. Critics of US farm policy say the subsidy farmers of these commodity crops receive means these crops are grown in abundance. They provide cheap ingredients which are widely used to produce cheap, processed, unhealthy foods. World markets are often oversupplied further cheapening the already cheap. Let’s face it, the aluminium can is the most expensive part of a soft drink.
Ten thousand years ago our pre-agricultural ancestors survived and prospered on meat, fruits and nuts alone. They ate no processed cereal crop products. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution 200 years ago that the human diet changed to rely on stodgy, flour-based carbohydrates, white sugars and saturated fats. This dietary change is largely responsible for the modern lifestyle diseases we now face: Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, iron and other vitamin and mineral deficiencies.[18] It also helped that our pre-historic ancestors had to run down dinner on foot each evening. Perhaps if incentives were given to horticulturists to grow more fruit and vegetables, the check-out prices of fruit and vegetables might drop and we might all be a little healthier. Children who have grown accustomed to the artificial strawberry flavour of the thick shake might even have the opportunity to try a piece of real fruit.
While Australian farmers also produce large-scale commodity crops, they are not directly subsidised by the Australian government in the way that US farmers are. Instead, they indirectly receive public money for industry research and development conducted by bodies such as the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and Meat & Livestock Australia. Australian farmers themselves also contribute funds for research through industry levies. However, our farmers do participate in the world commodity market—often to their own financial detriment because of world price distortions. Either way, their product is grown for the international market and often bought cheaply for use in the manufacture of junk food sold to our children. Rather than creating incentives for farmers to grow a variety of healthy, alternative food crops to be consumed in Australia at a fair price, government research and extension efforts are directed towards increasing production of commodity crops to be exported overseas or used as animal feed or fuel.
The global food economy and industrialisation of food production has cheapened food—literally and figuratively. Today Australians spend only about 14 per cent of their household income on food. This has fallen dramatically from the turn of the twentieth century when we spent more than 50 per cent of our earnings on food, and 40 years ago when it was 22 per cent.[19] In those days food was truly valued. Today food has become more abundant and hence cheap.
While the amount we spend on food as a percentage of our income has dropped, the real cost of fresh food has actually risen by 40 per cent in the past twenty years. Compare this to the fact that the real cost of ‘junk food’—soft drink, sweets, fats and oils—has declined. Not only are we tempted to buy cheaper food products to stretch the weekly grocery budget, but marketing campaigns bombard our tastebuds with bad food temptation at every turn. It is not only the supermarket and the corner store now offering these products but the patisserie, the ice-cream shop, the donut shop, the newsagent, the service station and the thousands of fast-food restaurants that have sprung up like pimples on a junk-food-eating adolescent’s face. To compound matters, many of these urban feeding stations operate 24/7.
Just like our waistlines, the availability and variety of junk food has expanded on a grand scale. In the morning we start with sugar-and fat-laden cereals. We progress to lunch. For the busy worker a drive-through burger, chips and soft drink is cheaper and quicker than a salad sandwich from the deli next door. Treat foods like sticky, sweet, processed fruit bars; snack bars; potato chips; and chocolate bars with the odd flake of ‘muesli’ in them routinely find their way into school lunchboxes. For parents rushing off to work they are convenient. When the kids get home from school it is no longer a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. They’ve already put away a large Coke and fries on the way. But then that all pales into insignificance when at night we dine out on takeaway pizza—deep-fried.
The Americans, of course, have perfected this culinary crime. The all-American deep-fried corn dog pizza really takes the cake. Australians know corn dogs as dagwood dogs: highly processed, red sausages, deep-fried in a yellow corn batter and eaten off a stick once a year at the local agricultural show, otherwise only ever used for assisted suicide. Picture these fatty little critters (minus the most nutritious part, the stick) laid out, whole, on a thick-based pizza, smothered with sauces and cheese, cooked, cooled, cut into slices and deep-fried. An abomination for many, but filling, affordable and convenient to others. And then there is the deep-fried Mars Bar. But we won’t go there.
Australians don’t do deep-fried corn dog pizzas ... yet. But social and consumer trends suggest it may not be far away. In the meantime, we have a ghastly selection of our own fast food from which to choose (much of it introduced to us by our US buddies). In 2010, Diabetes Australia named Hungry Jacks’ Ultimate Double Whopper burger as the dieter’s worst enemy. It consists of three mince patties, eight pieces of bacon, three slices of cheese, lashings of mayonnaise and goodness knows what else squashed between a very big bread bun. It contains 80 grams of fat and more than 5000 kilojoules of energy.[20] On average, an active adult male requires about 10,000 kilojoules of energy per day and, of this, only 50 grams at the most should be fat. Pair the Whopper with fries and Coke and you’ve donged the bell. To burn those kilojoules, that man would need to chase down both the cow and pig contained in his burger.
Is this overindulgence really necessary? We live in a world where more than a billion people are starving. Simultaneously, the obesity epidemic in wealthy countries like the United States and Australia has become the leading cause of death. It’s sick. Unfortunately, fast food epitomises the values and priorities of today’s society. Fast food is full of fat, sugar and salt. It is nutrition-poor, homogenous and bland. It is also cheap and meaningless. It provides us with no emotional, cultural or spiritual context to our lives—no sense of place, connection with community or ceremony. As British philosopher Roger Scruton said: ‘The swift, solitary stuffing of burgers, pizzas and “TV dinners”; the disappearance of family meals and domestic cooking; the loss of table manners—all these tend to obscure the distinction between eating and feeding.’[21] Animals feed, humans eat.
Food is meant to provide us with more than just a full belly. Food should provide nourishment and meaning. Food has a powerful role in creating social intimacy. The discovery of fire and learning to cook differentiates us from animals. Anthropologists argue that the discovery of cooking by our early ancestors—not language, tool-making or meat-eating—made us human.[22] Cooking made food more digestible, freeing up more energy and nutrients and allowing more time for humans to do things other than hunt and gather; to think, create and develop a culture. Cooking around the fire enabled humans to sit down to a common meal rather than foraging alone and eating on the run (sound familiar?). This, in turn, encouraged eye contact, sharing and conversation in whatever form that took back then. It tamed us. It civilised us.
As with our early ancestors, when we share a meal with people we love, it fosters good relationships. It doesn’t have to be around a campfire, although the modern-day reincarnation of this in the form of the backyard barbecue remains popular. Breaking bread has been a way for people of all cultures to sustain and create a mindful or emotional bond with others. Eating a meal together can be a cultural or spiritual ritual. Think of the biblical stories of the Last Supper where Jesus dined with his disciples before his death. Eating together symbolises fellowship and oneness. In the Old Testament sharing a meal sealed deals. To share a meal meant to put aside disagreements. It facilitated forgiveness and reconciliation. For Indian Sikhs, a simple, shared meal prepared from fresh ingredients and eaten in the Langar, or community kitchen, removes caste barriers and social prejudices and promotes equality. Fasting for Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan is a time to reflect upon what is taken for granted—all the good things provided by Allah, including food. Iftar is the evening meal when Muslims break their Ramadan daily fast. It celebrates brotherhood and gives thanks for life’s gifts. It is often eaten as a community meal. Jewish people observing the Passover do not eat leavened bread during this religious feast, as a symbolic way of removing ‘puffiness’—arrogance and pride—from their souls.[23]
What people take inside their bodies represents their social identity. French social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss noted that the place of eating and drinking in myth and ritual expresses people’s belief that they are civilised and human rather than savage and animal.[24] He said that human beings belong to the world of both nature and culture. Nature is the natural world free of people. Culture is a world or abstract space constructed by people. Food provides a link between culture (ourselves) and the natural world. Other sociologists have further investigated this idea by showing that the food we eat can symbolise who we are.[25] ‘Health’ foods symbolise the organic, pure, uncontaminated, wholesome, virtuous aspects of nature. Fast food symbolises the industrialised, scientific, fast-paced qualities of modern life. The rise in popularity of the health food, and indeed the organic food movement, points to the need by some people to restore balance in an ‘over-cultured’ society. In many cultures, the attention paid to the preparation of food is just as important as eating it. In traditional Greek culture, for example, the many steps and hours of preparation that go into making meals are highly valued. Quickly prepared foods, including grilled foods, are called ‘prostitute’s food’, implying that the cook, and perhaps the food, lacks moral credibility.[26] Perhaps nowadays we are all on the game?
While fast food eaten on the run may never create social intimacy, it can still express cultural identity and be good for you. Traditional Japanese fast food does not compromise taste or nutrition for convenience. Sushi was originally a Tokyo fast food but, just like burgers and fries, has spread the world over. Based on a combination of vinegared rice and fresh ingredients, often fish, sushi is a popular, healthy fast food which, certainly in Japan, retains its cultural integrity.
While, today, Western-style fast-food franchises are now commonplace across Japan, traditional Japanese-style fast foods have enjoyed a resurgence over the past ten years. These outlets are often family-run shops selling traditional noodle and rice dishes. Street foods sold out of stalls or vending carts on railway platforms and street corners are also popular, meeting the needs of hurried workers and commuters. These dishes include oden (a stew of varying ingredients), yakitori (skewered chicken and vegetables) and okonomiyaki (pancakes containing pork, seafood and cabbage). Japanese health authorities see the growing popularity of healthy traditional fast-food fare as a solution to the increasing obesity problem resulting from a diet of Western-style takeaway food.[27] Japan, along with other developed nations, is struggling with an increasing number of overweight and obese people. Research has shown that people who eat soy and fish—both traditional Japanese foods—have a lower body mass index, and lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels.[28]
Likewise, traditional Vietnamese fast food is far healthier than its Western counterpart and just as popular in Vietnam. Banh mi—the traditional Vietnamese sandwich—consists of a wholewheat baguette filled with a variety of local fresh ingredients including ham, ground pork, pork pâté, coriander leaf, daikon (white radish), pickled carrots, fish sauce and mayonnaise. A classical banh mi contains a quarter of the kilojoules of a typical Western-style fast-food hamburger and no trans fats.[29] Sadly, as Vietnam enjoys unprecedented economic growth, the Western-style fast-food business is booming too. Traditional street stalls selling pho (rice-noodle soup) or banh cuon (thin rice-flour crêpes filled with minced pork, mushrooms and shallots) sit alongside KFC, Korean franchise Lotteria, and Filipino chain Jollibee. McDonald’s has not yet arrived but one can almost make out the colonising golden arches on the horizon.
When McDonald’s opened its first store in France in 1979 it was seen as an invasion of American culture and protested against by the French, who value their food culture highly. The enjoyment and appreciation of food is central to French life. Shopping is traditionally done daily in small shops and markets. Cooking is a daily ritual. Families come together at mealtime to enjoy the company as much as the food. France is the home of the marathon multi-course meal. Historically, low rates of obesity and heart disease in France, despite a cuisine rich in butter and cheese (a condition known as the French Paradox), have been attributed to an overall wholesome, balanced diet of fresh, local food and smaller portion sizes (and lots of red wine).[30] Unfortunately, with the advent of the supermarket and fast-food restaurants and with the depopulation of the French countryside, the small shops are closing. French life is changing. The young, in particular, are embracing American fast food and each other’s growing waistlines. Welcome la restauration rapide! France, like other parts of the developed world, has succumbed to lifestyle pressures and its people are opting for poor-quality, convenience foods eaten on the run.
But the French are fighting back. Anti-fast food eateries rivalling McDonald’s and KFC have sprung up around Paris and the big cities. French-grown chains including Cojean and Jour, and soup, salad and sandwich shops like Eatme, Bioboa and Noon offer a healthy, fast-food alternative to burgers and fries.[31] They use fresh, local ingredients in keeping with French tradition where possible. While the meal is prepared quickly, it maintains quality and nutrition, and—very importantly—its cultural integrity.
The popularity of cooking shows and recipe books demonstrates the important role food plays in our lives; or, more accurately, the role many of us would like it to play in our lives. We Australians all say we’re interested in food. A 2009 report by market-research company Sensis showed that four out of every ten Australians believed food is one of life’s passions. They loved cooking and eating and considered themselves ‘foodies’. However, in the same year in Australia, 3.7 billion meals were served by commercial food-service outlets. Of these meals, 1.6 billion were from fast-food outlets. This means that, in 2009, 4.5 million Australians visited a fast-food outlet every day.[32]
Not surprisingly, the rise of fast food has coincided with the decline of home cooking. Many of us aspire to the Slow Food philosophy of good, clean, home-cooked meals but still find ourselves whizzing through the MacDonald’s drive-thru. It is symptomatic of the way we live. As Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss point out in Affluenza, the idea that we should all eat fresh fruit and vegetables, prepare our meals at home and take our lunch to work each day is attractive. But the reality is that many of us are too busy, tired or disorganised to achieve this.[33] Instead, at night we find ourselves on the couch, eating takeaway, in front of a TV cooking show. The average American spends only 27 minutes a day on food preparation.[34] Many consider ‘cooking’ to include microwaving a pizza or reheating a can of soup. That is half the time Americans spent cooking in the 1960s. There is still hope for us though. Today the Australian woman spends an average of 69 minutes a day and men 29 minutes a day cooking—better than the American average. But it is certainly much less time than was spent 40 years ago before the advent of improved cooking technology, higher incomes, fast food and eating out.
When we watch a cooking show many of us tend to care more about who’s cooking than what’s cooking—Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay or Donna Hay. It is entertainment not education. My Restaurant Rules or Come Dine With Me are more about eating. Or if we want some Friday night sporting entertainment on a Tuesday try Iron Chef, Master Chef or My Kitchen Rules. These programs are more about competition than cooking. Cooking programs today embody celebrity and showmanship. Far from teaching us to cook, today’s cooking programs tell us that, yes, it is cool to cook if you can. But if you really want to eat like this, go to a restaurant. Buying, not making, is actually what cooking programs are all about.
Along with the increased availability of fast food and our increased tendency to eat it, the portion sizes and kilojoule content of restaurant and takeaway food has also increased. The ill effects that this has on our health has led Australia’s National Heart Foundation to call for menu labelling of all restaurant fast food. There have been many calls for Australians to get back to basics and start cooking from scratch at home.
But the definition of cooking ‘from scratch’ has certainly changed if TV cooking programs are anything to go by. Ingredients used include ones that are canned, bottled, powdered, frozen and concentrated—not fresh produce. Food campaigner and author Michael Pollan describes the use of processed foods as ‘colonizing the American kitchen’.[35] The Australian kitchen, too. Just like the celebrity chefs, many of us use pre-prepared ingredients that make cooking seem quick and easy. The food companies promote these products, mainly to women via television, as the tools of liberation that will free them from the kitchen. Why spend time in the kitchen when the traditional household cook (the woman) now works outside the home full time? And when multinational food companies are eager to do it for you and today’s technology has made this possible? Not surprisingly, the marketers also know that women with jobs have money to pay corporations to cook for them.
Unfortunately though, when the corporations cook for us they are heavy on the sugar, fat and salt, and light on morals. Humans are hard-wired to like sugar, fat and salt but these are the things that are no good for us and not found in great quantities in raw foods. By contrast, when we cook at home using fresh ingredients, we have control over our food. As well as the enjoyment of creating, boosting one’s confidence and keeping costs down, good health is one of the greatest benefits of home cooking. Dietitians believe cooking at home will enable us to take control of our weight and our health and will be critical in turning around the obesity epidemic. An Australian study into cooking and nutrition found that older people cooked their own meals at home 80 per cent of the time using unprocessed ingredients.[36] By contrast, younger people, who lacked cooking skills and cooked less, tended to consume less fresh fruit and vegetables. A lack of time spent in the home kitchen has seen a growing generation of Australians who don’t know how to cook at all. Consequently, they are not empowered to look after their health and lack high-nutrient foods in their diet.
The decline in cooking skills has been blamed on increased wealth, fast food and feminism. The feminist factor is not a new phenomenon. American feminist and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman first campaigned for kitchenless apartments in the late 1800s—a surefire way to get women out of the kitchen.[37] She and fellow feminists promoted the use of community kitchens where cooking tasks were shared by families living in the same apartment block or street. Did the idea take off? Not really, unless you call them restaurants. Some blame the removal of home economics classes from secondary schools as a contributing factor to the lack of cooking skills in younger generations. In 2000, Australian architect Greg Perlman predicted the demise of kitchens in Australian apartments occupied by Generation X singles and couples. His theory suggested that this demographic no longer cooked or entertained in the home and therefore a kitchen was unnecessary.[38]Instead this group of singles and couples with no children chose to meet and eat in public cafés and restaurants. The house was just a dormitory: a place to study, sleep and surf the Internet. By contrast, the previous generation—the Baby Boomers—were house builders and homemakers. However, in 2012 we are still building houses with kitchens. In many new homes and apartments, the kitchen may have certainly become more compact, but it has not yet disappeared. The kitchen is still open. Just.
Michael Pollan predicts the next great cook will be the supermarket. And she won’t be pretty. Supermarkets will no longer sell fresh food ingredients, but only cooked takeaway food available through the supermarket drive-thru.[39]And once people stop buying fresh food and cooking at home the industrial food production system will have won. There will be no local fresh-food economy and no local farmers. Only multinational food processors supplying processed food made from cheap overseas ingredients. Cooking skills and traditions will be lost. Our health will suffer and our families and communities will splinter.
The Slow Food Movement in Australia and, indeed, worldwide is fighting this ugly spectre. Founded by Italian food and wine journalist and gastronome Carlos Petrini in Rome in the 1980s, it began as an ad hoc protest against fast-food restaurants. Since then, it has grown into an international movement across 150 countries boasting 100,000 members. It is not all about crockpots—although traditional cooking techniques are encouraged—or crackpots, those bent on boycotting modernity. Instead, it is concerned with slowing the rhythm of our lives to a more sustainable level. ‘Slowness’ is central to the Slow Food Manifesto, the movement’s guiding principles. It says we will all be better off by taking more time to grow our food, cook our food, to appreciate the flavours, quality and meaning of food. Slowing our lives will also enable us to reconnect with farmers and the traditional knowledge, methods and culture of which they are the keepers. It will let us think, learn and reflect about our communities and relationships with others. Living a slower life will be kinder on ourselves, our neighbours, animals and the environment, and allow healthy relationships to develop.
Our industrial system of agriculture, driven by market capitalism, has raced us through the last 40 years without thought to its effects on our health, our community and the environment. Carlos Petrini in his book Slow Food Nation tells us it is time for a radical change in our mentality: ‘more complexity of thought, more humility and a greater sense of responsibility towards nature’.[40] To begin this radical change, food and its production must resume a central place in people’s lives. We must learn again to value and respect our food.