Why is it that the United States holds one of the world’s highest percentages of overweight people? Europe, and the many other continents of the world do not posses such shocking numbers. Then again, Americans seem to be one of the only people that focus on such concepts as “calorie counting” and “eating low-fat,” whereas the rest of the world lives a healthy life without putting any attention to dieting. The term of “food industry” is always mentioned, but wait…it must be asked; why do we eat food? Obviously to sustain energy and to maintain life. But this is not the answer the food industry perceives.
In America, companies see food as a potential product. It is a need. It is something necessary and vital to humans. The same is with shelter, clothing, and shoes. These seem to be the most successful businesses since they provide needs to people as a product. There is, however, a grand, differentiating artifact within the boundaries of these “products.” It is the notion that we should all know; our body is built upon food, and not clothing, shelter, and shoes.
It was the early 1900s when America gained its status as “the land of opportunity.” People moved from all over the world by the masses “to try something new,” to basically make actions possible that wouldn’t be accepted by Europe or elsewhere. Some turned to be great successes, such as Henry Ford’s automobile, or the Wright Brother’s invention of the plane. Other attempts failed. The idea of turning food into a business though, had failed to fail. No foot was strong enough to stop it, and it grew unnoticeable to what we have today.
Why hadn’t anyone noticed? Because food had always been in the business world, but in a different way. Such places as bakeries or restaurants existed, however, not having competition to anything other than the business next door. Purchasing from local farmers and then selling at the supermarket was a common concept. People lived with better food related health conditions. Since people were eating healthy, as almost all possibilities included wholesome foods, it was not necessary to count calories, read labels, or work on a diet.
The story of how “food business” became “invented” is an interesting piece of evidence. It had begun with two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, who sought to make one million dollars before the age of fifty. At that time, they did what most money seekers did, head out west. By that time, most ideas for business were in tact, leaving food as an open option. In 1948, they introduced the “Speedee Service System.” Now this seems like anything someone could come up with to make money from food; just serve it at a faster pace. But then bring a businessman to the equation and you have the “food business.” That is exactly what happened when businessman Ray Kroc bought McDonald’s fast-served food restaurant and brought it to a whole new level in 1955. The restaurant became a company, becoming a part of the stock market.
As this concept of a speedee food business expanded, so did the ideas of making more money. In a business perspective, the idea is to make the highest profit. How can this be done? Basically, by lowering a product’s price and producing a higher quantity, attractive to a consumer, a company will make the greatest profit. Now put food into the picture. By lowering a food’s price and producing a higher quantity, a fast-food will gain more profit. This is exactly what Ray Kroc had in mind. In the 1950s, lowering food prices was impossible by general standards as the stock price was the same. This led to a new idea: by reducing food quality, the food price could be reduced as well.
A whole new field in science had opened having to do with altering food chemistry: in short, playing around with the chemistry of food until a product was generated sharing the visual and taste characteristics of the original food, but being made of other material. Who new what at the time. It was not required to display ingredients. As people became fooled by the McDonald trick, many other businessman soon followed Kroc’s idea and companies such as Burger King, Coca-Cola, and many others emerged. Soon, food business was split half in half. The innocent, private stores selling wholesome foods (which, being “true” food, cost more) versus the mass chain industries selling “fake” food at very little cost.
began to spread and spread until today, a time now when the innocent, wholesome-selling stores remaining are endanger of being extinct. Most American people now buy their food in boxes; little packages that came out of the robotic sweat shop which had gotten the ingredients from two places: genetically modified farms combined with the chemistry lab. BOOM! Cancer rates, obesity rates, heart disease rates, dementia disease rates, chronic disorder disease rates, diabetes rates, and whatever other common deadly rates all went up at the same time. Again to repeat: our body is built on the foods that we eat. Eating foods with no nutritional value will dispose a body of no value in living up to the essentials of life. People argue that the life expectancy have not fell. But of course, business makes business from other businesses, and that’s where the success comes from the pharmaceutical companies. Technology rates have obviously went up to meet the demands of the disease rates, leaving the expectancy rather stable.
It is silly to fall into this trap. It causes harm to all. Europe, which still hasn’t put much effort into the food industry is why they are living such healthy lives. Today you go to some supermarkets and you are not even given the option to buy wholesome bread but enriched bleached flour instead. Dieting companies try to control the consumer’s mind, leading them to believe unhealthy foods as healthy, prompting people to purchase processed foods. Most people do not know that counting calories has no significance as so many factors as speed of digestion and how the food is digested affect a person. What is the importance of low-fat if no clue is given to the type of fat eaten and health benefits? Why is sugar the only major sweetener available when many other natural ones exist? Many studies have found it to be addicting.
People notice the many dangers lingering around them with weather, shelter, and politics yet do not notice, if not, the greatest danger to their health: the food that America eats.