Why isn't there a fight against unhealthy food like is for drugs?

[The Grand Nudger]

Fair enough - I can believe, that a lot of produce from modern farms contains more water per weight. I wouldn't be so quick to attribute that entirely to nefarious motivations, though - it's just that more primitive ways of cultivation tends to produce smaller fruit and veg. Also - ripening fruit, like tomatoes, bananas, avocados or mangoes, after they've been harvested is hardly a new practice. You can do it at home, without gassing them and I'm fairly certain it used to be a common practice in the days before refrigeration.

Except that gassing them isn't anything like ripening them at home in a paper bag or what not.  The gas turns them red, that very instant.  Voila, done.  

OFC it's not done for any nefarious motive, it's just a market reality for the producer, who has bills to pay.  Most of the guys I know who grow tomatos in florida, for example, like to tell people they wait an extra week before they pick em.   They're trying to deliver a quality product insomuch as the market allows them to do so.  

Also - I do not believe that obesity problem is caused by consuming water. So if that's all there is to it - just eat an extra tomato, or whatever and you'll get all the nutrients you want and piss out the water. It's still cheaper, than buying "organic" (which still has no guarantee of being more nutritious).

You'll also get all of the extra "other stuff"...which, granted, isn't the sole cause of obesity...but if you have to eat more food to get the required nutrition out of that same food it is a factor in obesity.   Yes, it's cheaper...and organics are gassed too...so there's no difference there (surprise)...but like much of cheaper food..it's not quite as healthy as it could or should be. We eat more, in part, because food is both inherently and designed to be less filling (in one case because of production process, in another so we eat the whole box).

Sure - processed foods may be a problem, especially when one relies on them entirely for one's diet. Still - processing food is not a modern invention.

Processing as-practiced is a modern invention.  It has little to nothing to do with salting foods, for example.  

People used to have to do it by themselves, at home, by making preserves and compotes, salting, pickling and so on, so that they had stuff to eat in the winter. All of that reduces nutritional value of food, but it's simply a necessity in a world, where we don't want half of our children to starve during winter. And since most of us don't want to spend most of our free time making pickles and jams - it's only natural, that there's an industry providing those products.

People have -never- processed foods the way we do commercially, privately.  How could they?  It takes a lab and a factory floor and equipment beyond the ken of mere mortals.  That shit isn't exactly sitting down in the basement, in granny's canning box.

And let's not forget - supermarkets throw away massive amounts of fresh food, that goes bad and food waste in the western world is huge. If they were to stock the shelves mainly with fresh, ripe fruits and vegetables that waste would by multiplied, requiring larger percentage of land to be used for agriculture, in order to feed the growing populations. There are some sacrifices we have to make, if we insist on breeding out of control. And - ironically enough - most people insisting on outdated methods of agriculture, seem to be the same ones, that have large families...

The food required to restock the shelves is already grown.  It would cost them more, but it wouldn't take any more land.  It really is just a market thing.  No excuses, no nefarious intent, nothing.  The people who insist on outdated methods of agriculture are largely single, upper middle class (my market, bless their hearts). Poor people with tons of kids eat the shit whats on the shelves.



I tell you these things not because I think "modern ag bad" - I think it's awesome. I'm just not interested in hiding it's dirty bits. It's awesome even -including- the dirty bits. The thing we can't forget in any of the above is that before we did it this way, a hell of alot more people starved - and people still do starve. So, any issues with the nutritional density or taste quality of a tomato are decidedly first world problems. I certainly don't advocate for (and don't live off of) traditional agriculture. There's no money it it, firstly, lol.