Pretty great article. It really blows my mind how different the food we eat today is, as compared to 500, 100 or even 50 years ago.
For a long time, salt was precious and highly sought after. Sugar, at least the granulated form, has been "non-exotic" for only a few hundred years -- the article talks about sugar beet milling, and refers to the massive plantations of slaves used to harvest sugarcane. Even tomatoes are a New World crop -- imagine Italian food without tomato sauce.
Heck, I remember when some fruits or vegetables were strictly seasonal -- now, we can get everything year-round, for basically the same price.
Sure, there is a lot of chemically laden, industrially processed crap on supermarket shelves. But it is also easier to eat better now than ever before, not to mention the sheer variety of foods we have available.
I read in Fernand Braudele's "Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century Volume 1" that bread in many regions was only baked 2-3 times a year. Bread would grow mold or get that hard that people would chop it with an axe!
Very interesting! Another book that touches on food history is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which talks a bit about the domestication of agricultural crops. So much of what we grow today bears little to no resemblance to their wild varieties. Eg, cabbage, broccoli, kale, and brussels sprouts all come from the same wild plant. Organic and GMO fuss aside, humans have been very, very good at manipulating our environment and food sources for a long time...
For a long time, salt was precious and highly sought after. Sugar, at least the granulated form, has been "non-exotic" for only a few hundred years -- the article talks about sugar beet milling, and refers to the massive plantations of slaves used to harvest sugarcane. Even tomatoes are a New World crop -- imagine Italian food without tomato sauce.
Heck, I remember when some fruits or vegetables were strictly seasonal -- now, we can get everything year-round, for basically the same price.
Sure, there is a lot of chemically laden, industrially processed crap on supermarket shelves. But it is also easier to eat better now than ever before, not to mention the sheer variety of foods we have available.