Problems with Contemporary Eaters

Problems with Contemporary Eaters

Looking through fancy magazines, food related periodicals, or even daily newspapers every one of us has seen advertisements depicting a candle-lit room with a view on a twilight sea landscape and table with lush mouth-watering food, and a bottle of brand wine taking most of the advertisement's area with fine print saying, "Drink responsibly." However, very few of us focus on the background food and how juicy, fresh, and perfect it appears to be. It is reasonable why we don't pay attention to the superficiality of this food because we, contemporary consumers, are used to this supermarket image and subconsciously perceive it as ordinary. We don't ask ourselves where does this cast-from-plastic-and-polished-type-of-food come from. The point is besides putting "Drink responsibly," we have to put, as Wendell Berry mentioned in "The Pleasure of Eating" article, "Eat responsibly" clause to prevent the danger of ignorance of "industrial eaters."

Social revolutions transformed us from hunters and gatherers to an agricultural society and then to an industrial society and now, with the development of microchip, to an information society. But, we got stuck in an industrial trap that made us unaware or, rather, ignorant to all information about the food we have available. People tend to gather so much information about all sorts of things from how to pack your luggage efficiently to how to break atoms to generate enormous amounts of energy, but not so much about the origin of meals we consume on daily basis. Wendell Berry brought up the concept of "industrial eater" emphasizing our loss of connection to foods we eat and acknowledgement that eating is an "agricultural act" (1). As industrial eaters, we care so little about what we are eating that we are willing to almost eat anything just to fill ourselves up. In one way, we are saving time, but the consequences of this ignorance cause danger to others, just like alcohol. People don't just hurt their health, but, like drunk drivers, ignorant industrial eaters cause even more harm on a large scale by not questioning the foundation of food industry.

As Wendell Berry assesses food politics are restraining human kind. Food is the second most critical element for human survival besides oxygen. Therefore, with the birth of capitalism and industrial age, the greedy industrialists have made people, by means of advertisement and psychological appeal, get mass produced industrial food as their first, fastest and easiest way to fill up their ever hungry bellies. By this dependence on industrialists, human beings are losing their freedom to connect with nature as our predecessors did for millennia. The ideology of capitalism in Western nations, especially in the United States, is so deeply carved into our involuntary perception of right and wrong, that we don't see the truth behind the food industry. Food industry is exploiting us and "[t]hat they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because have found no profitable way to do so" (1). Moreover, "[t]he ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from food factory directly into his or her stomach" (1). Wendell Berry might sound harsh and unrealistic, but the meaning is clear: modern food politics keeps people ignorant, uninformed and "make[s] the selling of pigs in pokes an honorable and glamorous activity" (1).

In recent times, people are trying to fight with this concept of the industrial eater to get closer to the nature. Ironically, the industrial revolution that brought us the food industry that was able to feed people and change a social structure from a family dependent on farming has caused the environmental concern. This issue of global warming and our nature being endangered made people like Wendell Berry rises against people's ignorance and disconnection from nature. Only when we are in danger of losing something do we understand how important it is.