3 Taking Stock
ries blur between what is and isn’t food. Here certainty gives way to
opacity.
Highly processed ingredients are a food manufacturer’s best friend.
They enable high-volume, low-cost manufacturing. Seasonality, avail-
ability, spoilage, and quality are easily managed. Taste, texture, color,
and flavor are created using artificial flavorings, colorings, emulsifiers,
and thickeners. Shelf life and food safety are satisfied with preservatives,
temperature control, and packaging. Some ingredients like salt, which
is abundant and cheap, bring enormous added value for little additional
cost. As a preservative and flavor enhancer, salt makes it possible to
substitute more processed ingredients for less whole food.
If all that consumers asked of food were readily available calories,
then manufactured foods would easily fit the bill. But instead, we pur-
sue an oxymoron: heavily processed foods that are tastier, easier to
clean up, and have a longer shelf life than whole foods, yet are still
somehow wholesome. Creating this illusion is critical to a product’s
success. Catchy phrases and bold labels are tested. Packaging is re-
designed. New conveniences are added. Not surprisingly, the majority
of information consumers receive about food comes from the food
industry itself. Marion Nestle, who has written extensively for years
about food policy and practices, puts the phenomenon succinctly:
“The more extravagant the health claims, the more extravagant the
price.”
That aphorism can be extended: The more extravagant the prepa-
ration, the more extravagant the price. The in-store prepared foods
section is our final stop. Aware that people spend the majority of their
food budgets on meals and snacks away from home, supermarkets
are now competing with restaurants.^ To be profitable, they turn to
centralized kitchens and bakeries to scale up cooking and prepare
sauces, breads, salads, and soups. They rely on mass-produced ingredi-
ents to bolster taste while tempering costs. Their approach mirrors
what regional and national restaurants have done for years.
For consumers, the trade-off for meals prepared outside the home
is more calories at a higher cost. Services like processing, packaging,
transportation, retail space, utilities, labor, advertising, preparation,
service, and cleanup are all part of the bill. Of every dollar we spend to
eat, as little as seven cents goes toward actual food.