this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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I remember 50% vegetables, 30% carbs, 15% protein, 5% other from somewhere.
Another place (especially USA) we're falling down is snacking foods, like prepackaged chips. They're designed to make you consume more while not providing anything of value to our diets. And not so surprising, the wanting to snack constantly goes away when I'm able to cook and consume food made with real whole ingredients. Even jarred sauces or canned vegetables are lacking /something/ vital.
Frozen veg and a bag of potatoes has become a cornerstone of my cooking.
Certain produce like tomatoes I try to buy the multicolored heritage versions. Even produce is suffering from enshitification with the modern versions losing flavor and nutrition in favor of appearance, shelf life, ship ability, etc.
Anyway, I went on a high rambling rant. Sorry, I'll go hit my pipe again before i start some aluminum origami
I have had a crackpot theory since my 20s that the grand obesity epidemic of the Americas was caused by industrial food production, even of the supposed "fresh" foods. My mother has always been a gardener. When we lived in a nice bungalow in Edmonton she grew vegetables and flowers. When we lived in a short row house in Inuvik, she would garden in the very short summer and then take everything indoors using grow lamps and humidifiers to keep as much alive as she could. When we lived in an apartment block in Germany she'd purchased a bunch of planter boxes that hung on both sides of the railing to continue.
I lived my life with fresh, homegrown veg, in short. Until I left home and bought groceries from a grocery store.
What struck me most were the tomatoes. My mother's tomatoes were smaller than grocery store "fresh" produce, but were a deep, blood red. The red continued to the inside where the grocery store ones were more yellow/orange on the interior. My mother's tasted rich and flavourful. We'd cut them almost paper-thin to put on sandwiches and burgers, for example. The grocery store ones had almost no flavour at all. A bit sweet. A bit starchy. A hint of tartness. And that was it. To get even a ghost of the same impact my mother's thinly-sliced ones had on things, I needed huge slices, 5mm or more thick. It was crazy.
And that's when I got my crackpot theory that the techniques used to make large, even-looking, produce in huge quantities leached flavours out of things. The raw caloric content was roughly the same, but all the flavours were dilute. And since we evolved to desire required micronutrients by flavour, colour, aroma, etc. (lacking the ability to measure them in our bodies) the lost flavour, et al makes us eat more to get the same feeling of satisfaction.
And what happens when you eat more…?
(Now note: I identify this as a "crackpot theory". As in I'm not saying it's the truth simply because I lack the scientific evidence to support it and lack the time or energy to find said. I'm sticking with actual fresh, not factory fresh, produce and other foods because they taste better. I just think the issue might be a lot deeper than taste.)
I've watched documentaries where they touched on it. I don't think it's a crackpot theory at all.
I used to have a friend that gardened (tbh it was weed) and he did a lot with mixing nutrients for his babies, commercial fertilizer doesn't put nutrition back into the soil or the plants in ways we can benefit. They're only designed to benefit the plants in ways that are profitable for them.
The most satisfying food I've had came from my relatives gardens that had healthy compost piles. On our own, my parents used chemical fertilizers and the results were lacking.