Due to the paywall I couldn’t get beyond the first image claiming convenience. I’ve no idea what the rest says so I’ll speak disconnected from the content and just to the concept.
People assume ultra processed came about due to demand side factors but it’s actually more about supply side supply chain management and the scale in size of the US. By processing the food into more constructed ingredients they always enter a state where they’re easy to package and distribute across vast distances in that state. They can then be combined into food that is palatable through additives. Indeed the process disrupts the natural structure and content of the food - but that was necessary to feed everyone at a reasonable price a variety of foods grown across a vast distance at a reasonable price.
Obviously this led to demand because the food was more complete and varied than was generally available at the fresh grocer. Convenience was a side effect as well that was well capitalized.
These arguments actually hold until pretty recently. Even in my lifetime grocery stores growing up were pretty stark affairs with a few expensive fresh products that you splurged on for a special dinner like thanksgiving. Daily food was basically processed rations with a fancy box. It’s only in my adulthood, and the lifetime of the millennials, that there was really much optionality as supply chains globally and fresh food distribution with widely available refrigerated trucking with ethylene gas storage proliferated, free trade opened, etc.
Before all this, in my parents generation, the other option for ultra processed foods was malnutrition and wide spread rickets. It was when we tried to draft for WWII and the majority of rural young men were so malnourished as to be unfit for war that things really changed.
To sit today and compare the options of fresh food available and wonder how we got here ignores the reality of how we got here. But we are here so indeed, eat fresh and be happy we have free trade!
That's a bit too naive considering how bad food became during the last decade. Formerly perfectly fine products now have artificial ingredients to increase profits.
How is it naive? You were literally unable to eat the foods because they rotted in delivery and refrigeration was so expensive it made fresh foods unaffordable to the consumer. Even then they were not edible because they were not ripened due to the lack of ethylene.
I’m not discussing the last decade, in fact in the last decade the availability of fresh food is absurdly better vs say 1930-1995 or so. The article also starts in 1950.
We are at a point where we can turn the tide, but the prevalence of fresh food in the store is counter balanced by the fact affordability is decreasing as inflation, restrictions on free trade, and stagnation of lower income takes the fresh foods away as an option. Add into it cultural inertia of 70 years of processed food prevalence as a staple food, you end up in this situation.
> fresh food is absurdly better vs say 1930-1995 or so
Not sure where you grew up. The variety reg. vegetables/fruits is larger (e.g. pomelos weren't a thing in my childhood) and the availability across the year is much better but the quality is worse. You now only get a few or sometimes even a single genetically modified kind because some big companies control seed production. Yes, meat doesn't go stale as fast as before - but it is full of chemicals now. Same for bread.
I can only see the beginning due to the paywall and weird article layout interfering with archive, and the start is an image of a person holding a 1950’s TV dinner. If it then moves in narrative into the 1886’s, it started in the 1950’s.
People assume ultra processed came about due to demand side factors but it’s actually more about supply side supply chain management and the scale in size of the US. By processing the food into more constructed ingredients they always enter a state where they’re easy to package and distribute across vast distances in that state. They can then be combined into food that is palatable through additives. Indeed the process disrupts the natural structure and content of the food - but that was necessary to feed everyone at a reasonable price a variety of foods grown across a vast distance at a reasonable price.
Obviously this led to demand because the food was more complete and varied than was generally available at the fresh grocer. Convenience was a side effect as well that was well capitalized.
These arguments actually hold until pretty recently. Even in my lifetime grocery stores growing up were pretty stark affairs with a few expensive fresh products that you splurged on for a special dinner like thanksgiving. Daily food was basically processed rations with a fancy box. It’s only in my adulthood, and the lifetime of the millennials, that there was really much optionality as supply chains globally and fresh food distribution with widely available refrigerated trucking with ethylene gas storage proliferated, free trade opened, etc.
Before all this, in my parents generation, the other option for ultra processed foods was malnutrition and wide spread rickets. It was when we tried to draft for WWII and the majority of rural young men were so malnourished as to be unfit for war that things really changed.
To sit today and compare the options of fresh food available and wonder how we got here ignores the reality of how we got here. But we are here so indeed, eat fresh and be happy we have free trade!