We need to go back to the real thing. Farmers must be able to grow honest and healthy food. The consumer needs to pay a fair price for that. Transparency in the labelling is also needed: we need to know what we eat. No artificial additives, which fool people and may harm public health. Back to honest commodities and a pure taste. As citizens we should demand healthy and honest food, affordable for everyone. These insecure times give us a chance to discover what actually gives taste to our lives.
In the supermarket I was standing in front of the shelf of sugar (in 2009). Instead of resolutely bending down to reach out for the cane sugar, I took time to study the whole sugar section. It struck me that half of the products did not contain sugar, but artificial sweeteners, notably aspartame. Observing the people who put these products in their shopping trolley, I was wondering if they were aware that the use of this artificial sweetener is debatable.
Probably not, because the use of aspartame is very common in products which are labelled ‘light’ or ‘without sugar’. That is deceptive: they have a healthy image, but are they really? Should not the research that warns us as consumers that aspartame is a health risk, be taken more seriously?
When one dives into the issue (the word aspartame in Google yields hundreds of thousands of hits), it is hard to understand why there is not much more debate about this. From the artificial sweeteners it is just another click to the flavour enhancers. These are also not all good for one’s health, even when they have the letter E in front, meaning ‘approved by the European Union’! This applies for example to the flavour enhancer MSG (E621), which is present in many products and in nearly all ready-made meals. Since I am myself allergic to this, I know how difficult it is to find products, for example stock cubes, that do not contain this additive. One needs to go to an organic shop to find them. Interestingly, a well-known producer of Dutch smoked sausages announced in the past winter, that he was replacing the artificial taste makers with natural ones.
We consumers are being fooled. Misleading labelling implies ‘this is the healthy choice’ and while it may indeed contain less fat and less sugar, it often is full of unhealthy additives.
Why are these additives necessary? Is it because our present day food has lost so much of its taste? Or because the food industry wants to produce cheaper food with less fat and sugar? Or is it that the soil our foods grow on has become less healthy? Or because our food does not get the time to ripen? But instead of tackling the root causes of the problem of tastelessness, makeshift measures like flavour enhancers are used. A deep red sun-ripened tomato does not need any additions to taste. Nor does an organically grown carrot.
Ingrid Franzon, a nutrition practitioner from Sweden, is convinced that we need to consider some of the modern Western diseases and our health problems as signs that are warning us that we are on the wrong road. Not only cancer, but also chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME), obesity, infertility, allergies. They are all signals that should make us reflect on our lifestyle and the food we consume.
Last October consumers, farmers and food specialists from 11 European countries took part in a conference on food and an alliance was formed: a Food and Sustainability Network. This network will be responsible for a part of the conference Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy, which will take place from 24 till 29 July 2009 in the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux, Switzerland. Issues that will be discussed are the relation between food, health and sustainability; food security and the responsibility of the food industry; fair trade and the role of farmers and consumers. There will be an opportunity to combine actions.
Before our world ran into the financial and economic crisis, there was the food crisis. What applies to the economic crisis, also applies to the food crisis. We can draw lessons from it. We need to go back to the real thing. Farmers must be able to grow honest and healthy food. The consumer needs to pay a fair price for that. Transparency in the labelling is also needed: we need to know what we eat. No artificial additives, which fool people and may harm public health. Back to honest commodities and a pure taste.
It is ironic however that organic food is more expensive than food that is more burdensome to the environment and is bad for public health. A wrong use of financial means, one could say. What we may save on the cost of food, we then have to spend on public health. As citizens we should demand healthy and honest food, affordable for everyone. These insecure times give us a chance to discover what actually gives taste to our lives.
NOTE: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.
Hennie de Pous-de Jonge, from the Netherlands, works with IofC and is actively involved in interreligious and intercultural dialogue, and in peace building initiatives. She is author of Reiken naar een nieuwe wereld (Reaching out for a new world), which deals with the history of Oxford Group, Moral Rearmament and Initiatives of Change in the Netherlands since 1924. She is married to Johannes de Pous. They have three grown up children.
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