Comment by chrisdone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisdone | Hacker News Reader

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At some point I just stopped buying anything that isn't fresh or obviously a food I recognize. I live in a modern first-world country with a decent salary, I enjoy walking to the shop a couple to a few times per week, I'm not slaving away on my job so much that I don't have time to sit down and prepare a proper meal throughout the day.

The realization seems to be that there's really no reason for me to buy these kind of sugar/salt-packed opaque possibly-dangerous glorified ration packs that we call food in our supermarkets.

The irony is that the ambiguity/confusion of nutrition has been a good way for the industry to sell its garbage for generations, but now people are so cognizant of the complexity of diet that they want to narrow down the possibilities to the simplest thing possible, and that's not good for the complex food industry. This also makes sense:

> Confectioneries have held up in part because there was never any confusion over whether they’re an indulgence.

It's the rest of the food that people eat when they're "being good" that they care about.

I had a comment ready to add but you nailed it. The only thing I'd add w/r/t packaged food, people are right to develop their own priorities in life - but if you buy into this system, clearly your own health and the health of the environment are not a priority for you.

Food and nutrition should not be an industry. What I mean by that is there needs to be more concerns besides production efficiency and profit.

I don't believe you can throw production efficiency by the wayside until the world is fed. While any population starves the utmost priority is feeding them. True believers of 'organic' food and its massively lower crop yields should not have children and probably should commit suicide to make their dream even a remote possibility.

Organic food does not have massively lower crop yields. and your violent opinion on the matter is discouraging. Here are two studies/resources you can look at (not funded by vested financial interests) 1. "Organic agriculture and the global food supply" Badgley et al.

2. http://civileats.com/2014/12/10/organic-nearly-as-productive... References several as well

While yields are marginally lower in a given swath of land under certain conditions (example when there is perfect climate and water supply, an increasingly rare trend in the United States), it is my belief that if equitable research dollars were devoted to organic production as opposed to corn, soy, soy and cotton (which also don't feed people in starving countries, but rather meat in rich ones) those small differences in yields would be overcome. Further more, many studies note that industrial agriculture is significantly less resilient and that organic ag, and other forms of agroecology, are actually more productive during times of drought.

Furthermore, 70% of the world's food supply comes from small farmers using agroecological methods in developing countries, not large food industries. Increasing their capacity is the solution to feeding starving people while maintaining our planet's health. Sorry for the late response.

The thing is, we grow far more food than is required to feed the world on aggregate today. Distribution is a huge problem though, and growing more food without improving distribution strategies really doesn't help anyone.

Distribution strategies will improve as a result of market forces. When company A has way more product that it can ever hope to sell locally they will be forced to invest in exporting that product globally.

The distribution strategies you allude to (though no one can describe them) have yet to materialize over the decades since Earl Butz decided to ruin American agriculture policy by promoting the type of farming you seem to favor. America has been subsidizing and exporting commodity crops internationally since the 70s and we still haven't solved hunger. The only thing that has come out of it is even more subsidies distorting a free agricultural market and reduced capacities for farmers in developing countries. Why do you think we should keep pursuing this model?

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