This Sustainable House

Posts Tagged ‘processed’

Recently I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” A book I have been meaning to read for some time.

This book examines the basis of the industrial food system in the US. A system which is not only prelevant in that country, but most of the western world.

It demonstrates the precarious reliance of our entire food network on a few crops, notably corn and soya beans, and the incredible success the food marketing machine has had in overcoming the ‘fixed stomach’ of it’s consumers. This concept revolves around the fact that no matter how abundant food is, there is only so much we can eat. However, even given this biological imperative, the system has encouraged us to eat more calories than necessary. This has lead to the improbable state where over 1 BILLION people suffer from over-nutrition, eclipsing the 800 MILLION suffering from malnutrition. (UN 2000) Certainly not a state that I was previously aware of.
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