How did real become revolutionary?

Photo: www.mccain.ca

I've been reading some recent news on McCain Foods and came across a (sponsored) Globe and Mail article called McCain's "real ingredients" revolution pays off. Basically, McCain has started to use only actual food ingredients in many of their frozen food products. As the article puts it: "As part of the It’s All Good initiative, Florenceville, New Brunswick HQed McCain has reformulated the recipes for over 70 of its pizza, pockets and potato SKUs to include only recognizable ingredients." Don't ask me what they put in there before, but you can read all about the current plan here.

On balance, I think this is a very good thing. Never mind that the driving force behind an initiative like this is undoubtedly marketing, I'm happy to see that a major brand has committed to using actual food ingredients in their products. One my consistent issues with the food industry is the almost unavoidable array of highly processed "food" products that are manufactured from apparently edible constituents into something resembling food. They come with long ingredient lists consisting of modified and reconstituted substances, chemical additives, conditioners, artificial colours, flavour enhancers, preservatives, and occasionally some actual food. I've often thought the labels should include a statement along the lines of:

"Product may or may not contain actual food."

Maybe it could go right next to the allergy warning that the product was "manufactured in a facility that processes nuts and may contain traces of nuts." Market-driven or not, eaters are much better off with products that contain actual food rather than the results of some chemistry lab experiment.

It's not all good, though. McCain and other companies (not yet enlightened about the value of eating actual food) still wield immense power in the food system. For people without the time, facilities, desire, knowledge, or ability to cook for themselves, the giant food manufacturers get to decide what they can eat. People can only choose from what is made available to them. For farmers who grow the food that ends up in these products, the manufacturers set the terms and conditions under which they must grow and sell their produce, and those terms usually favour the companies.

It's great to see the food industry responding to demands for healthier and more natural products. But it is also important to remember that buying manufactured food products is not the same as cooking from scratch. It's easy to get caught up in celebrating the small victories and forget the state of affairs in which the food system finds itself. That state of affairs, in my opinion, can be summed up by the fact that McCain's switch to using only actual food in their food products can be considered "revolutionary." How did we get to a place where food stopped containing food?