Globalization of Food

Anthropology of Food ANTH 2301 Globalization of Food When most people think of food, they usually conceive of it as a personal, local decision based on financial constraints and taste. However, food is a worldwide good that is promoted by multinational companies, medical facilities, marketing efforts, and both subtle and not-sosubtle cultural messages via international media like television, film, and internet video. The majority of the time, people's food choices are influenced by underlying systems that control availability and price. Even though there are now year-round hothouse farms producing fruits and vegetables, not everyone can afford to eat fresh, ripe food. Rather, items that are imported over great distances are typically found in regular grocery shops. In order to survive the days and weeks between harvesting and purchase, the majority of fruits and vegetables found in grocery stores were picked when they were still unripe, and frequently tasted bland. Anthropologist and expert in food studies Lynne Phillips highlights the "crooked pathways" (2006, 38) that food travels on in order to become a commodity on a worldwide scale in her work on food and globalisation. Food is being promoted for ever-increasing profits nowadays, with the influence of multinational businesses growing. Food is no longer just produced and consumed. Along the road, there are several turns. Globalisation of food has a lot of implications on our everyday lives: • Because a limited number of multinational firms supply the staple foods we eat on a daily basis, the food chains connecting producers to consumers are becoming more and more unstable. Failures in this food chain may result from manufacturing contamination or from disruptions in the supply chain brought on by trade agreements, tariffs, or environmental disasters. • Our food cultures are less diversified and often centre around a small number of mass-produced meats or grains; this renders the food supply to our communities more susceptible to disruption and shortage. Not only does diversity disappear, but nutrition also disappears along with dietary knowledge. • Due to the increased globalisation of food, we rely more and more on food additives to improve the flavour and look of food as well as to preserve it over the lengthy transit from factory farm to table. Additionally, the meat we consume exposes us to a rising amount of steroids, antibiotics, and other medications. Many people are at risk for health problems as a result of this exposure. • A growing monopoly on staple foods results from the genetic engineering of ever-more-sophisticated plants and animals, giving multinational corporations greater influence over food safety regulations. Growers depend on the seed sold by these firms as corporate scientists create proprietary seeds (like the genetically modified maize produced by Monsanto Corporation) that are super-producers and resistant to diseases and severe climates. Growers are forced to pay these firms whatever amount they want for their genetic material since they can no longer preserve seed for future years. • Large-scale animal farms, more than any other kind of factory farming, are a major cause of global warming. Along with contributing to global deforestation and producing considerable quantities of air and water pollution, livestock also significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming as more and more forest is converted to pasture. Livestock is responsible for around 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally (Quinton 2019). Even in the 17th and 18th centuries, when traders were looking for spices and trade routes that connected Europe and Asia, food has always been a commodity that is traded internationally. But today's food is international, with fresh and processed goods travelling great distances from their initial harvest or manufacturing, and production sometimes spanning many distinct nations. As people become more aware of the risks associated with food globalisation, there has been a parallel growth in local food movements, organic food movements, and farm-to-table businesses because these migrating foods must be harvested early or packed with preservatives that we may not even be able to pronounce. Author and food writer Michael Pollan of the United States argues in his widely read book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) that consumers should know what foods they are eating and try to buy locally produced goods. Chef and author Jessica Prentice created the word "locavore" to describe people who eat locally and are aware of the source of their food shortly after the book's release. The word locavore was selected as the 2007 Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.