[extropy-chat] evolution of food

[MB]

Hm. What an interesting thought! Agreed, more food is available more
often... summer fruit in winter, fresh vegs year round, etc. But...
still the quality is frequently "off" so I buy locally fresh when
available. And grow what I can because even locallly grown isn't as
yummy as fresh picked off my own plants!

The expense of pre-prepared food in the grocery is too high. I buy
bread and milk and butter and such, but people think of those as
basic although they used to be made at home. I look at the "pre-cut"
"fresh" veggies in my supermarket and they are nasty, all brown edges
and wilted leaves, even though they're in special "fresh-keeper" bags
and twice the price. I don't buy them. Tried a few, not again. Ugh.

IMO pre-prepared food has a *long* way to go before it replaces plain
food. Krispy Kreme donuts are an occasional treat, though! :)))

Regards,
MB

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004, Bryan Moss wrote:

> Spike wrote:
>
> >Extrapolate this trend into the future.  Is there any
> >reason to believe that food is as good as it will ever
> >get?  Why?  If it continues to get ever more irresistible
> >as time goes on, what scenarios can we imagine?  Will flab
> >continue to overtake an ever larger percentage of people?
> >Or will we eventually reverse course and demand less tasty
> >foods?  Will better nutrition education help?  Will more
> >and more people perish of diabetes and weight related
> >heart disease, or will it soon level off?
> >
> >
> Food is hard.  Creating food is still an unsolved problem; we're still
> learning.  As with most things, our initial reaction to the problem of
> the inadequacy of (processed/fast) food has been nostalgia: we want
> people to go back to the old way of doing things.  I think, however,
> that fast food is a  genuinely positive development.  Food preparation
> is difficult, arduous, and requires a great deal of knowledge.  Fast
> food is no less great a development than, say, the introduction of the
> washing machine; it just has some wrinkles that need to be ironed out.
> I think, for the most part, as we solve the problems the solutions will
> be taken up by industry: if it was healthy to eat McDonalds every day,
> they'd have more customers than they do now.  It's a straightforward
> incentive.
>
> I think also that it's primarily the fact that McDonalds et al can't
> reach the larger, more health-conscious, middle-class demographic now
> that causes them to take the strategy of foisting large portions of food
> on the unfortunate demographic they can reach (i.e., the poor and people
> in a hurry).  As fast food is able to serve more of the population
> (i.e., relatively wealthy return customers), the incentives to tailor
> food toward addiction and inadequancy of fulfilment drop off.
>