The Rural Voice, 1980-09, Page 21KEITH ROULSTON
When it comes to food,
do we know what we're missing?
It's a hot, muggy summer day.
Something cold to help you cool off
would be nice. How about some ice
cream?
Sounds nice, but did you know that
when you eat ice cream you might be
eating plaster of paris? According to a
recent magazine article I read that is
one of the additives sometimes used to
keep ice cream smooth and increase its
storage life. Oh there were plenty of
other additives mentioned too, some
with long complicated names. Some of
the additives may have been even more
questionable than the plaster of paris
but somehow it was that name that
caught my attention. It was so easy to
understand.
The story of ice cream follows an
interesting path in the food industry. Ice
milk desserts first were discovered
thousands of years ago in Rome where
they were the secrets of the Roman
emperors. In different countries in the
years that followed the recipes for ice
cream and sherbet were carefully
guarded by the upper crust of society.
It was in the late 1600s before even
the middle class began to discover this
delicacy when a cafe opened in Paris
that served the precious commodity to
the rich of the city. Eventually the
recipe was published in cook books.
Ice cream became more accessible in
the middle 1800s when an American
woman, Nancy Johnson, invented the
hand -cranked ice cream maker. It made
it easier to make ice cream but it was
still work.
The demand for ice cream grew in
equal proportion to the dislike to work in
our leisure time in the present century.
Manufacturers began to fill the gap by
providing ice cream already made. Of
course transportation and storage of ice
cream meant changes had to be made in
the recipe because it was no longer a
food consumed minutes after it was
made. Additives were included to keep
it smooth and creamy, to help increase
the shelf life.
So today we have the delicacy of kings
available in any corner grocery for even
the poorest of families. But do we?
Canadians consume 60 million gallons
of ice cream a year but those who make
their own ice cream from fresh products
in their own homes probably wouldn't
agree that these people are eating ice
cream at all. In the interests of making
something special readily available our
modern food system has taken all that
was special out of the food. Ice cream is
readily available today but it bears little
resemblance to the original product.
AN OLD STORY
It's an old story visible in nearly every
other food offered in your supermarket.
Orange juice comes in many different
forms but how much of it really tastes
like juice squeezed from a fresh orange?
Today's bread has the consistency of
playdough when compared to the
homemade bread that once dominated
our diets. People eat tomatoes in winter
that are picked green, turned pink by
gas and taste like wet newspaper.
And yet we call it progress. We have
after all made food a smaller and
smaller portion of our overall family
budget. We've been able to add so
many more pleasures to our life thanks
to the industrialization of the food
industry. Instead of spending time
growing our own vegetables and
preserving them, instead of hours of
drudgery baking bread or cranking an
ice cream maker, we can devote our
time and money to colour television
sets, expensive stereo sets, snow-
mobiles and vacations in Mexico. We've
gained too much being free from the
work of food making.
But it seems to me we've lost so much
we don't even realize. Oh 1 know that
this worry about additives in food may
be the hysterical reaction of a few
overreacting consumer groups (it may
also be a real danger for all I know) but
what really hits me is that for all our
affluence we're not getting as much out
of our food as we were a half century
ago. People today are willing to pay SO a
couple to go out to an expensive
restaurant to get an unusual taste
experience when if they could simply
taste food the way it used to be they'd
have an unusual taste experience in
their own kitchen.
MODERN SYSTEMS
Take the modern food systems way of
handling eggs, for example. 1 keep a
few chickens out back as much for
relaxation as food but I have friends
who will drive miles out of their way to
buy fresh eggs rather than storebought.
There's but one drawback. You can't
hardboil these eggs, not without letting
them sit in the refrigerator for a couple
of weeks. If you don't let them age the
shells won't peel off easily. Yet you can
hardboil eggs from a store the day you
buy them. It shows how long it takes our
modern food system to move eggs from
the farm to the store. Fifty years ago, in
the day of the horse and buggy, it took a
day or two. Today it takes a week or
two.
There are consumer activists who
make this sound like a plot of the
farmers and the food manufacturers
perpetrated on the unwilling consumer
but ladies this is something more than a
classic case of rape. The consumer has
been so conscious of having variety and
low prices at the supermarket that she
has necessitated the current changes.
Through the power of the shopping
basket she has wiped out the small
farmer, the small manufacturer and the
small retailer. She deserves what she
gets. The problem is she probably
doesn't even know what she's missing.
Winthrop
GENERAL STORE
Open Mon. -Sat. till 9:00 P.M.
Grocery 8 Hardware
Work Boots
- Rubber Boots
CEDAR POSTS
FENCE SUPPLIES
45 Gal. Steel Barrels
-Gas-
DOUG & GAIL SCHROEDER
527-1247
THE RURAL
VOICE/SEPTEMBER 1980 PG. 19