Here is a thought provoking article by Chef Kurt Michael Friese on one of the reasons our current food system is in such deep trouble.
The primary purpose of capitalism is to perpetuate itself in the most efficient manner available. One needs money
to make money, which in turn of course makes more money or is lost to someone else who uses it to make money. There are two purposes to making money. One is to spend it, the other to save it in order to spend it later or to use it to make – you guessed it – more money.
Capitalism accomplishes these goals rather well. It really began to hit its stride with the industrial revolution and the invention of the assembly line. It was pretty expensive to build one Model T by hand. However, add the efficiency of the assembly line and the miracle of volume production and just about anyone could afford a car in any color they wanted, it was said, as long as it was black.
Now it is at this point in Capitalism 101 class that obsessed foodies like myself become stuck on the horns of a dilemma. When food meets capitalism, one system or the other is going to get damaged. The assembly line is a great thing when making cars or microchips, where each one being identical in every way to the previous one and the subsequent one is considered an asset. Conversely, it is precisely a food’s uniqueness that provides not just interesting, pleasurable flavor but also nutritional value and cultural importance. More…
