This Left a Bad Taste in My Mouth

If this segment from last Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes didn’t disturb you on some level, than watch it again. I think you could be overlooking something. When it comes to our food, I believe we’re best to leave it up to God. Why do we need to create flavors of foods to enhance the things we eat? Why don’t we just eat those foods for which we mimic the flavors? Every time I see a story like this, I’m convinced that large corporations should have little-to-nothing to do with the food we eat. I don’t mean to imply that the flavors this company creates are necessarily bad for you. I just think it’s indicative of a bigger social problem: Corporations getting in between you and the food you and your family eat.

Corporations are not stupid. They’re filled with very smart people who are paid to figure out how to make more profits. The only problem is that there is a limited amount of money to be made from food. (And most of that should go to the farmers. They’re the ones doing the real work!) Once you’ve grown the food, transported it and sold it. There isn’t a whole lot of profit to be wrung out. A corporation has to process that food in order to add value, ergo profit. So if corporations can make better tasting food in a laboratory, you’ll buy it over real whole foods.

There is something inherently wrong with extracting flavor from real food and then combining it with fat, sugar and salt in an effort to create something inferior that’s supposed to taste better than the real thing. If we would just eat real food to begin with, we wouldn’t have a need for flavors created in a laboratory. I don’t care how many variations on strawberry flavor you can make in a lab, it’s never going to be as good as the real thing.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The fewer people between you and your food, the better. Leave good tasting food up to Mother Nature and the farmer. Just remember this: Good food doesn’t require a lab coat.