Home
Page
My Latest Articles
Buying the Book
Reviews by readers
Reviews by critics
More about the book
About me
Email me
- a plot to poison Western democracies
- used to make spoiled food look good
- completely unnecessary
- untested for safety
- able to prevent chemical oxidation of vitamins
- able to prevent or retard growth of harmful bacteria and fungi
Food preservation in the past
The distrust of food preservatives is one of the most bizarre examples of lemming-like behaviour in the last one hundred years. Throughout most of human history and prehistory, food spoilage has been a major concern. Even today, throughout most of the Third World, more food is lost due to insects, vermin and rot than is eaten by men, women, and children. To adopt a policy of encouraging food spoilage strikes me as quite irrational.
Food losses affected history
Problems with food losses have been an important factor in the development of civilisation, more important perhaps than the generals and kings who normally feature in the history books. In New Zealand, for instance, inter-tribal Maori warfare was restricted to periods when crops were either in the ground awaiting harvest, or after the harvest was in. The introduction of Irish potatoes revolutionized warfare, since the superior keeping ability of white potatoes gave more leeway for war parties to leave their home villages. Incidentally, it seems likely that the Mãori were conserving meat by covering it with a layer of fat, long before European housewives discovered the same technique around 1790.
European diet
Much of the traditional European peasant lifestyle and diet centred on availability and storage of food. Root vegetables could be stored underground or in cellars. Meat would initially be saved on the hoof, animals being kept alive so long as feed was available. After slaughter, the meat would be stored in a heavily salted form, smoked, or dried. Non-fatty fish like cod, which could be dried without going rancid, were invaluable; the only alternative was pickled herring. Winter was inevitably a time of poor nutrition, both in terms of variety and of total calories. No wonder ‘spring tonics’ were needed.