{"id":114,"date":"2008-04-22T20:31:23","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T18:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/wordpress\/why-do-they-make-so-much-crap\/"},"modified":"2015-02-12T20:18:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T01:18:25","slug":"why-do-they-make-so-much-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/why-do-they-make-so-much-crap\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do They Make So Much Crap?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/strong> There are so many food products that are bad for us out there!\u00a0 Why do food processors make\u00a0so much\u00a0crap?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong> Because they can.<\/p>\n

That was simple, wasn’t it?\u00a0 But that’s really what it boils down to: food is a consumer item, no different from cars, video games or clothing.\u00a0 And –\u00a0just as it is in other consumer-driven industries\u00a0–\u00a0manufacturers both respond to, as well as create, demand.\u00a0 As always, it’s profit \u00fcber alles.\u00a0 The competition is stiff: so innovation is the key to competing successfully.<\/p>\n

And food processing\u00a0is a rich field for innovation.\u00a0 Each product on the shelf represents the collective effort of microbiologists, biochemists, chemists, engineers and other technicians\u00a0– food is simply an area of specialization within these fields.\u00a0 Research and development is an ongoing process, and new products are rolled out every month<\/a>, to swim…or sink<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, raw agricultural products have their own, unique characteristics, which dictate what you can do with them.\u00a0 But even within those limits, there are\u00a0a staggering array of physical and chemical manipulations\u00a0you can do to\u00a0achieve different characteristics.\u00a0 You can make physical modifications using heat (wet or dry), cold, pressure (high or low), shear forces (as in grinding or extruding), pH changes and so on.\u00a0 The wide world of additives provides even more possibilities: emulsification, stabilization, changes in water-holding capacity, flavor enhancement, color, texture, shelf-stability, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Food ingredients are essentially building materials, just like concrete, glass, steel or wood. When I was\u00a0studying Food Tech at\u00a0UC Davis, for example, I did my graduate and (and some post-grad) research under Dr. Larry Merson.\u00a0 Dr. Merson was a food engineer, so it was no surprise to see a blueprint for a cream-filled cupcake hanging on the wall of his lab.\u00a0 It wasn’t a joke, either: it was a real, honest to God, technical schematic summarizing how you “build” a cupcake – just like the ones created for cars, buildings and bridges.\u00a0 To me, it was the perfect example of the food processor’s mindset.\u00a0 Manufacturers hold a completely mechanistic view of food, that’s largely divorced from concepts of nutrition or health, except as factors that can be manipulated to\u00a0target\u00a0specific markets\u00a0or to satisfy regulatory requirements.<\/p>\n

A lot of people see this as immoral, and they’ve got a point.\u00a0 It’s easy to paint food processors as “evil”, as this narrow perspective all-too-often leads to products that are “food” in name only: they’re high in calories, fat (the wrong kind), sodium, and\/or sugar; as well as low in fiber and naturally-occurring nutrients.\u00a0\u00a0This is, however, where new profits lie: there’s not much you can do – by definition – to whole, minimally processed foods.\u00a0 And people (literally) eat this stuff up! They’re designed to be appealing, after all.\u00a0 It’s no accident that one of the professors who taught my “sensory analysis” classes was a psychologist.<\/p>\n

Personally, I’m more inclined to see it as amoral: unlike the depictions by various conspiracy theorists, food scientists aren’t so many Lex Luthors, intent on world domination and the destruction of humanity. They aren’t sitting around in board rooms, rubbing their (chubby) hands together and high-fiving each other when new reports on increasing rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes come out. After all, it’s not as if they’ve stopped producing basic “whole foods” either, and where demand for healthier products exists, the industry responds with alacrity.\u00a0 If they can make money off Oreos, then Oreos will be sold.\u00a0 But if they can make money off organic broccoli sprouts, then they’ll be sold too (and they are).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The grocery store is a minefield, but when you know where the landmines are hidden, it’s possible to navigate through it in relative safety.\u00a0\u00a0 How to do that will be explored in future posts.\u00a0 Stay tuned…\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: There are so many food products that are bad for us out there!\u00a0 Why do food processors make\u00a0so much\u00a0crap? Answer: Because they can. That was simple, wasn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[443,692,694,808,1862],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7904,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/7904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}