Food culture and food systems have dramatically changed over the last hundred years with a focus from food grown all throughout the country by many different farmers that don't fall under corporate ties to food produced on an entirely massive scale where big agrobusiness has been dominant. It seems to be that the quality of our food is now being sacrificed for the accessibility and cost of it. This is a contrast from the way food used to be thought about with one understanding where their product was coming from, the rush to heightened urban systems has eliminated the sourcing of food and in general the inability to meet the kind of standards people may want for the handling of the animals.
Urban centers have grown so large within the last 60 years that the overall demand for meat that must be sourced from outside the city has caused the whole agricultural system to be changed in a way that highlights quantity and focuses less on quality and the care of the product. With the ability to receive food from across the country and for it to appear on major grocery store shelves week to week people typically overlook or ignore all the factors that account for this food phenomenon. The mass creation and consumption of food has allowed for much lower prices as compared to food products sourced directly from farms. With heightened streamlined practices for the optimal size outputs of animals and the mass growing of different vegetables one wouldn't immediately question their purchase as it is easy to get and cheap.
With food so easily available and at prices that can meet the demands of an average consumer it seems that the food system won't change in a way that shies away from mass, cheap and somewhat unruly production.
It's a shame how the evolution of food and the growth of variety, at a cheap place for all has such a high cost in terms of health and the condition of our planet. Cheap food on a mass scale is great but not if it destroys our environment. Right now I'm eating tortillas with soy that came from Brazil and loaded with preservatives and a bunch of ingredients that sound like my lectures from organic chemistry. On the back of the package it says "aluminum free". Looking at it I question "did tortillas before regulations have aluminum in it?". It just shows that cheap food can have a plethora of nasty, undigestible components and that the savings in cost of food will definitely come up elsewhere in healthcare and environmental clean-ups.
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