AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade
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This article is the second of a four part series looking at how the United States' food system may be fueling a global health crisis. Many trust that the Food and Drug Administration can adequately protect them as consumers. A recent report put out by a subcommittee of the FDA itself, however, doubted its ability to serve its mission. Follow parts I-IV through a hypothetical example of how motivated groups could successfully disrupt and undermine the health of the United States and countries abroad.
Part I
Part III
Part IV (Contains References)
Food choices are made on the basis of taste, cost, and convenience, rather than health and variety (Glanz, et al., 1998). As part of a homegrown bioterrorism plot, synthetic chemicals could be added or substituted into foods in order to enhance consumer satisfaction and shift purchasing habits among United States' citizens towards inexpensive, disease-promoting foods that are easy to manufacture and increasingly palatable for consumption.
For the sake of fulfilling the demand of the developed world, developing countries would become less competitive in the global food market and begin adopting Western industries and agricultural practices that effectively pollute their nations’ land resources. Developing countries would eschew century-old agricultural practices and cultural traditions and adopt a taste for these chemicals in their own food supply. This process would increase global instability due to increasing economic divides between the rich and the poor. Rogue leaders could eventually arise and create global chaos.
An interested group could work diligently to take whole food material and break it down into its individual parts, making sure to selectively remove important elements of the plant only leaving those nutrients necessary to maintain consumer demand and minimal health requirements. They could then limit agricultural production to only a few varieties of fruits and vegetables: in some cases shifting 1000’s of cultivars of a specific vegetable to a quantity you could count on your fingers. They could even take naturally purple carrots and make them orange. They could then heavily subsidize corn, soy, wheat, and dairy and use these products in as many foods and industrial products as they could. They would deplete the nutrient content of the soil and subsequently undermine the nutritional status of entire populations.
Read More:
Part I
Part III
Part IV (Contains References)
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