MEDIA Fast Food? By Karla Olascoaga Dávila
Throughout the history of humanity the search for pleasure through senses has been tireless. The sense of taste follows the same principle, although food has always been associated with our survival as a species. In our consumerist societies the fact that access to adequate and healthy nutrition is directly related to our purchasing power is becoming increasingly clear, and its misuse goes hand in hand with models of consumption which are imported and imposed on us by large food industry multinationals and corporations. Junk food and drinks are a clear example of this. While a minority is interested in “intelligent nutrition” or even in molecular gastronomy, the majority consists of the millions of people who die from hunger or are malnourished from junk food, in which the main ingredients are the “flavour enhancers” (monosodium glutamate and others) with a chemical origin which, in the long term, silently and gradually poisons the body. The tendency to consume natural food has been left behind, violently pushed into the backs of our minds by the ever growing fast societies, in which the indiscriminate consumption of artificial substances, chemicals, flavours and colours of unknown origin, named by numbers and letters, seems to leave us unconcerned when it comes to satisfying our appetites.q We have placed, also en masse, our full confidence in the unscrupulous food industries which at the cost of our health, flourish and become multinational monsters whose distribution networks exceed any local industry. We have naïvely transferred our responsibilities as consumers to them, on the basis of an inexistent social pact in which the governments and states do not
carry out any of their duties as political leaders in defence of the consumer. We have allowed ourselves to be dazzled by the lights of the processed foods industry’s belligerent publicity, without realising the adverse consequences. Our consuming dynamic is increasingly erratic. We acquire impressively sized agricultural products, without considering the chemical substances and fertilisers used in their cultivation. We ignore the origin of genetically modified foods, whose cellular-level modifications are sooner or later transferred to those who consume them. We sacrifice quality for appearance and for immediate gain. We are surprised by the growing proliferation, at a global level, of illnesses such as cancer, without even stopping to reflect on the commonly used phrase “you are what you eat”. We fail to consider that food is the fuel which guarantees the optimum function of our body, nor do we seem to see the direct
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relation which exists between low academic (or physical) performance and the soaring rates of malnutrition in our societies. Therefore, it is imperative to work towards initiating educational nutrition campaigns which start at school and aim to reactivate the ancestral knowledge and practices of cultivating seeds, plants and fruit traditionally; which were drastically substituted by fast food or junk food, since in the end, short term benefits produce longterm problems that is, deficient food sooner or later transfers to the body and affects its correct functioning and performance. If you’re in doubt, watch the documentary Super Size Me, and you will notice the visibly harmful effects of eating only McDonalds for 30 days. Eating habits can be changed without sacrificing the pleasure of taste; I can assure you of this from personal experience.
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