Look Before you Eat
Preface. This post is a book review of Be Wilson’s Swindled. From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats.
With likely world peak oil production in 2018, the price of food will rise relentlessly, since fossil fuels are used to fertilize, plant, harvest, distribute, package, cook, and refrigerate food, and oil is the master resource that makes food and all other goods possible through transportation.
So how to cope with future food shortages and improve your health? Whole grains, corn, lentils and dried beans not only last 10 to 25 years if stored properly, they’re cheap and healthy. Consider milling your own grains, and though this is a bit out of date, here’s a piece I wrote up for my book “Crunch” on how to do this: Which Grain Mill is best?
Energy decline will make all goods more and more expensive and scarce, so maintaining your health is a key strategy to weather the long emergency ahead. There is no plan to cope with the energy crisis yet, for many reasons.
Wilson makes it clear clear that cheating has always gone on and always will, especially in societies with laissez-faire governments who prefer promoting commerce to protecting their citizens. In the United States and Britain, there is very little testing of chemicals added to food and most chemical additives don’t need to be listed on labels.
Food in many nations is sold on a “buyer beware” basis. I personally can’t afford to test rats over decades with elaborate chemistry sets at home, so I try to cook from scratch with whole grains, vegetables, fruit, etc. And buy organic produce that are the most pesticide laden like peaches, strawberries, apples, and so on, see: Dirty Dozen – Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce – EWG
…click on the above link to read the rest…
