No, really. What is safe to eat?

After writing the previous post I have been thinking a bit more about the idea of cleanliness of food. Specifically, I began thinking back to my time in India and a common concern I found while speaking to folks there. Opposite the general American viewpoint, there was a bit of skepticism about the cleanliness of packaged foods there. While initially confused by it, I eventually came around to see that the skepticism as pretty understandable. Food has been coming to us as just plain food for millennia - and then suddenly it began to be forced into plastic pouches and frozen lumps - the sudden change should make people a little wary. While packaged foods have existed for decades, the real onslaught of industrialized food in India is relatively recent - only since the Indian government loosened intense protectionist policies against foreign corporations in the early 1990s - and consumers are still warming up to the idea.

Several folks talked to me about the idea that Indians like to know what is happening with their food from start to finish. These suspicions are relatively well founded - there have been a number of incidents of tainted foods in the country in the past. Poor regulation of pesticides and insecticides, use of food colors which cause cancer or other serious ailments, unstable refrigeration make many foods, etc., etc., etc, all make food which you haven't produced yourself a bit suspect. Even minimally processed foods like flour are subject to scrutiny, with horror stories about various adulterants being slipped in to save a couple of pennies.

Additionally, there seemed to be an inherent mistrust into just the notion of packaging foods. Even without the practical fears from contamination like have historically existed in India, there is good reason for a visceral hesitancy to eat products of industrialization. Food is inherently raw. Coming from the soil or being cut out of an animal, food is something which is gladly decomposable - it is in being able to break down that food is actually edible to us. Spoilage is practically inherent to the notion of food. Things which bacteria, maggots, or rats can eat are more likely to be things we are interested in eating as well. Making a food such that other creatures don't want to touch it should be a warning sign that something might not be right.

It's this healthy skepticism has meant that companies have had to do some convincing to get Indians to eat industrialized food. The most apparent result of this quest is the somewhat absurd labeling on packaged food there - much like that on western foods describing various (supposed) health benefits to eating a product - but instead described how sanitary and clean the food is. This reassurance is needed because really, who knows what is in them? In France, I have begun to notice that at many retailers there is an emphasis put on the idea of traceability. Some products, restaurants, and bakeries are bragging that they can provide complete documentation showing the origins of each of the ingredients in a food they sell. Whether it is as needed in France as it is in India is up for debate, it is more interesting simply that consumers feel as if it is necessary here.

I feel like in some backwards turn of events Americans want as much distance as they can from what they eat - vegetables shouldn't come to us with a trace of dirt on them, they need to appear at the supermarket looking as if they sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. Meat that we have seen raised, slaughtered, or cut is often seen as gross or disturbing. While some foods can be eaten with your hands, generally it is felt that food in the West needs to be handled with metal instruments so that they touch as little of us as possible. Many an American omnivore profess to me that they believe that ignorance is bliss, but really it's just a way of delaying or distancing unhappiness. Due to the sorry monotony of the American diet we lack a palate able to discern the difference between good and evil in our meals. This allows the transition from consumption of food to nutrient supplying (and sometimes not even that) nonfoods to march on at an ever increasing pace.