Corporate vegetables
Eat more fruits and vegetables. That's the watchword of nutritionists, vegetarians, and, now more than ever, the US government, which has come out with dietary guidelines that include 13 servings of vegetables a day. That's a quantity that wouldn't be easy even for most healthy eaters to choek down, and might be considered child abuse by the burger-and-pizza crowd (and no, ketchup does not count as a vegetable).
In the unlikely case that Americans might stampede the produce aisles of their local supermarket, it's worth taking a look at what is sitting in that department. Increasingly (as we've shown), produce is going from a loose collection of whatever's fresh from the farm to the same kind of prepackaged and preprocessed experience as in the rest of the supermarket. Much produce is sold by a handful of big companies, not by farmer Jones. Increasingly, produce is not laid out randomly in piles, but is rather packaged and branded in the same kind of ordered rows as are cookies or breakfast cereals.
Bagged salad, for example, is something that did not exist before 1990. That has its own interesting economics. AN article in The Guardian ("Bugs, Sweat and fears", 5/1/2004) traces that category in the UK, but the trends are likely similar in the US or in other industrialized countries. Author Felicity Lawrence's observartions:
- 2/3 of UK households buy bagged salads regularly
- The value of the UK salad vegetable market grew by 90% between 19912 and 2002
- But overall salad volumes had grown only by 18% in that period
- Conclusion: People were paying a lot more for almost the same amount of salad.
- New packaging which seals cut greens in the optimum air mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide gives these salads a much lengthen shelf life (10 days or more). This allows salad vegetables to be sourced anywhere around the world.
- Scientific tests from the Rome Institute of Food and Nutrition have indicated severe loss of vitamins and anti-oxidants from the bagged salad due to preparation techniques. This is also due to the use of chlorine to disinfect the salad and kill any bugs, listeria, and ecoli.
- These salads, more than ever, are prepared in massive, intensive farms using illegal labor.
The article also goes on to talk about fruit, and how standardization driven by the markets have made for apples and plums that look bigger and have consistent color, but are lacking in taste, and, possibly, nutrients. More and more varieties that differ from the ideal model in terms of timing, consistency, and size are not wanted. Of 32 varieties of plum that can grow in England, for example, only 3 are wanted by supermarkets. On the biggest growers can deal with the big chains.
In other words, you may want to eat more fruits and vegetables, but those fruits and vegetables are becoming more like the manufactured junk food in the rest of the store. The reason for eating them, their healthful properties, are becoming less and less available. So, better up thoise servings that from 13 servings to 18 or 20.
12:02:21 PM 
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