By DannyR
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”The following will focus on the social and environmental consequences of global food production and consumption trends, arguing that widespread reliance on convenience food, both for preparation within the home and for personal consumption away from home, has dire social and environmental consequences, including environmental degradation, loss of community, pervasive poor health from excessive consumption in developed nations and, perversely, widespread malnourishment and disease in developing nations. The essay first describes the historical shift from household self-sufficiency to supermarket shopping, the consumption of convenience foods and comfort-eating, outlining the consequences of this shift for individual health and the environment and noting that the social and environmental effects are often intertwined. We argue that the root of the problem is essentially social, and conclude that in order to rectify the environmental problem it is in fact necessary to address the social concerns.
‘Convenience food’ may be defined as “the domestic outsourcing of food planning, preparation and/or cooking” (Dixon et al., 2006, p.635). People in developed nations are growing and preparing their own food less frequently because packaged foods are seen to be more convenient (Thomas, 2006, p.4). Convenience foods are marketed as a way to overcome time shortages (Dixon et al., 2006, p.638). Americans spend almost half of their food dollars on meals outside the home (Goldberg & Gunasti, 2007, p.172). We can make a distinction between the convenient food that is purchased for preparation in the home and that which is purchased for consumption outside the home. The former involves foods that are packaged for easy storage, preparation and consumption, whether the food item requires heating or cooking or not. The latter represents a broader category, including food that is purchased at restaurants, bakeries and cafes, but also individually wrapped single portions that may be purchased from ‘fast food’ establishments, small convenience outlets and grocery stores. Common to both categories, however, is the problem of the disposal of packaging materials after consumption. These materials vary from recyclable tins, glass jars and cardboard boxes and to more heavily processed packaging that meshes foil, paper and wax or plastic.
There has been a historical shift from people growing their own food and selling their surplus to a relatively smaller number of people producing and preparing foods to sell on the market, which has in turn led to expansion of the availability of convenience foods in the 20th Century, in restaurants, service stations, vending machines, cafes and more, but especially in fast-food restaurants (Dixon et al., 2006, p.637). This historical shift is described by Dixon et al. (2006, pp.634-645), who note that although conventional wisdom places its origins in European cities in the Middle-Ages with street vendors and continues that the trend became more deeply entrenched as the industrial revolution drew ever-greater numbers of people into the cities in pursuit of work, in fact there is a rich tradition of convenience foods the world over. Nevertheless, the shift has been observed within Western nations, and the ascendancy of the West has brought about a new and pervasive convenience food culture. The transition to this convenience food culture has been motivated largely by the time constraints imposed upon individuals by shifts in the nature of paid work, and by time and space limitations brought about by changes in housing due to increasing urbanisation and the trend toward fewer people owning their own properties.
The nature of work has gradually changed over the course of the 20th Century, largely as a result of globalisation and technological innovation. This had the effect of relocating the working class into positions within the ‘service sector,’ positions which are largely part-time or casual, increasing the hardship faced by the majority of workers, creating redundancies and increasing the demand for welfare assistance (McLennan et al., 2004, pp.296-297). More and more families needed a dual income to cope with expenses, and so increasingly women entered the job market (Labrum, 2000, pp.190-191). Women’s increased participation in the workforce has contributed to the increased popularity of convenience foods and the reliance on supermarkets; the weakening of the gendered division of labour in the home has meant that people have less time to grow and prepare their own food (Dixon et al., 2006, p.638). Supermarkets are ‘convenient’ because of the wide range of products available, easy parking, long opening hours and their ability to undercut competitors in prices (Scarpello et al., 2009, p.112).
Similarly, increasing urbanisation since the industrial revolution and suburbanisation since World War II with the accompanying problems of motorway gridlock, air and water pollution, and cramped living conditions has meant that people have less time and space with which to tend their own crops on which to subsist (McLennan et al., 2004, pp.40, 175-176). Even in rural settings, however, people obtain the bulk of their food from supermarkets (Scarpello et al., 2009, p.111), indicating that the expectations we have of the food we purchase have increased. The affluent in the Western world have come to expect convenience, taste, variety and the highest quality fresh foods, available all year round. These expectations have led to the transportation of foodstuffs across vast distances, often around the globe, and this combined with the increased awareness of food contamination in the 20th Century has led to an increase in food packaging.
Food that is transported great distances needs to be packaged to minimise nutrient loss and spoiling. Fresh foods that people buy in supermarkets are often nutritionally inferior, they have been transported great distances and are not at their best when purchased; they are also less nutritious than they once were because the way that we farm reduces genetic diversity, relies on pesticides and strips the land of its nutrients (Thomas, 2006, p.4). Packaging of foodstuffs has therefore assumed an added importance; Gvozdenovic et al. (1997, pp.529-536) note that appropriate packing prolongs a foodstuff’s shelf-life and ensures a high-quality product. They describe the optimum packaging for the transportation and long-term storage of foodstuffs as the collective or individual wrapping food items in inert atmosphere or a specially concocted mixture of gasses, sealed with the most appropriate combination of packaging materials for the particular foodstuff. The intention is to create a barrier between the food item and any contamination in the external world, but also to limit the movement of carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen molecules to and from the product and thereby reduce spoiling. The barrier is almost invariably achieved through the employment of PET/PE plastics or multilayer high-barrier cling-foil, the latter being the most convenient for the preservation of foodstuffs.
Odunze et al. (2008, pp.114-117) note that convenient or packaged foods have a number of benefits for consumers, they save time, are easy to store, reduce food wastage and make the task of food preparation easier. The authors note that the pre-packaged, pre-priced goods available in supermarkets somewhat compensate for the reduced time that is available to women for queuing in stores and cooking breakfast meals as a result of increasing urbanisation. Using a surveys and interviews, the authors find that consumers prefer plastic food packaging to metal, glass or paper, particularly because of the ease of opening the packaging and the readability of nutritional information on such packaging.
The way we relate to food in the Western world has fundamentally changed. Food is quicker and easier to prepare than ever before, and as a result people are eating more frequently (Anand & Gray, 2009, p.183), eating larger servings (Dixon et al., 2006, p.635), and choosing “nutritionally inferior convenience foods” high in additives, salts, fats and sugars (Thomas, 2006, p.4). Alongside the growth of supermarkets and other providers of convenient foods for preparation in the home, another trend has emerged in the Western world. Increasingly, ever more refined ‘fast’ or ‘junk’ foods are being purchased and consumed; people are eating less food prepared in the home (Dixon et al., 2006, p.635). Total sugar additive consumption has gone up significantly since 1985 (Pollan, 2006, p.104), Americans now drink twice the amount of soda that they do water (Assadorian, 2002, pp.140-141). In recent years fast-food restaurants have also encouraged customers to ‘super-size’ their meals, delivering even greater quantities of unnecessary fats, salts and sugars (Goldberg & Gunasti, 2007, p.171). Leahy (1999, pp.52-76) argues that whereas once the individual’s sense of purpose and meaning was derived from the work they did, now to survive in Western societies such individuals must work at some remove from their product and as a result must derive that sense of fulfilment from the items they consume. Consumers in industrialised nations are thus ‘alienated workers’ who purchase luxuries as compensation or reward for work they derive little satisfaction from, sparing little thought for the consequences of their purchasing decisions.
Importantly, this trend towards consuming junk foods is not evenly distributed throughout Western populations but rather reflects the growing divisions in the West between rich and poor. People in lower-income socio-economic brackets and ethnic minorities are more likely to subsist on convenience foods and fast foods in particular as these are simply more affordable (Gittelsohn & Sharma, 2009, p.161; Goldberg & Gunasti, 2007, p.162). It is also an issue of accessibility. Car ownership is not so prevalent in lower income brackets, making transportation of large quantities of foodstuffs from supermarkets difficult. Minority ethnic communities around the world have sometimes been ghettoized within cities or placed on reserves and consequently are often at some physical distance from food retailers that offer varied, healthful food alternatives (Gittelsohn & Sharma, 2009, p.164, McLennan et al., 2004, p.176). In sum, our purchasing decisions reflect our positioning within society. These purchasing decisions have social and environmental consequences, however, and it is to these that we now turn our attention.
Of the social consequences of Western patterns of consumption, let us first consider the global inequalities they create and sustain. Leahy (1999, pp.52-76) argues that to compete within an increasingly global market economy, the global capitalist class, those very few who own the means of production and are among the wealthiest persons in the developed nations, must base the production and supply of commodities such as food from places where labour and resources are cheapest, which is most commonly the developing world. In order to survive, the global poor, located mostly in those developing nations, must damage local ecological systems to make room for the production of cash crops or luxuries that the developed nations cannot provide themselves due to industrialisation and urbanisation.
Leahy (1999, pp.52-76). argues that because traditional, sustainable agricultural practices such as polyculture and companion planting are costly in terms of labour and time, they are increasingly giving way to unsustainable and ecologically damaging practices such as overgrazing, monoculture, and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides as producers strive to be competitive. Leahy further describes the environmental and socio-economic impacts of outsourcing developed nations’ food supply, noting in particular the transition in developing nations from individuals producing sufficient food for local consumption to the production of largely luxury consumables for international trade, at the expense of local prosperity. The world’s poor have less protein to survive on, as fish stocks are being diverted to provide non-food commodities for the world’s rich, particularly animal food and oils and cosmetics (Sarin, 2003, pp.88-89).
Let us also consider the social consequences of Western patterns of consumption that are observable closer to home, beginning with the health of the individuals within Western societies. There are alarming obesity trends in the affluent western world, as many as 60% of adults in Australia are obese; this is of great concern because obesity is correlated with a number of chronic and debilitating conditions, including adult-onset diabetes, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal problems and cancer (Dixon et al., 2006, p.634). Other health risks associated with obesity include high cholesterol, high blood pressure and asthma (Goldberg & Gunasti, 2007, p.162) as well as sleep apnoea, incontinence, and more seriously a shortened lifespan and even dementia (Anand & Gray, 2009, pp.182-183).
High soda consumption, particularly, is largely responsible for childhood and adult obesity and adult-onset diabetes (Herro, 2007). The substitution of soda for milk and other healthy alternatives contributes to the prevalence of obesity in a population and causes dietary deficiencies; particularly of calcium, causing osteoporosis and tooth decay, especially as soda is generally consumed between meals and so leaves residues in the mouth for longer (Assadorian, 2002, pp.140-141). There are also distressing psychological effects of obesity for those affected (Dixon et al., 2006, p.634). In fact, the increasing prevalence of a number of psychological disorders and mental health problems, including depression and ADHD, can be attributed to poor nutrition, while other disorders that are more or less evenly distributed worldwide, such as schizophrenia, are aggravated by diets high in fats and sugars (Thomas, 2006, p.4).
Dixon et al. (2006, pp.634-645) describe what they term the ‘obesogenic environment;’ this being “the surroundings, opportunities and conditions of life [which] promote obesity in individuals and populations.” They identify the ready availability of convenience foods as a significant factor in these trends, combined with the high energy-density of such foods and beverages and the aggressive and pervasive marketing of these products. Other factors include the normalisation of individual consumption in isolation and the reduction of traditional communal consumption, the use of food as a psychological balm for loneliness, depression and low self-esteem, and the institution of ‘round-the-clock’ grazing patterns in place of regular meal times. Consumption, the authors note, has become “disembedded” from social conventions, becoming dictated by market forces rather than community norms.
Furthermore, the reliance on convenience food results in people losing the capacity to plan and prepare their own meals, losing their understanding of the nutritional properties of the foods eaten, and losing control over serving sizes. As we have already noted, it is primarily the less affluent in Western societies who are most likely to rely on junk foods for their subsistence, given the cost-effectiveness of doing so in an increasingly globalised, technologically-driven and poverty-creating society. The poor are therefore at most risk of the ill-health effects of such subsistence.
The biggest risk associated with convenience food culture, however, affects both rich and poor alike. 200 million tons of synthetic plastics are produced annually, and 12 million tons goes into packaging for foodstuffs (Rhim & Ng, 2007, p.411). Petrochemical-based food packaging materials do not degrade easily in the environment and constitute a significant risk to human health, animal life and the environment (Odunze et al., 2008, pp.114-117). Convenience food culture encourages the manufacture of packaging products that persist for many hundreds of years, bleeding toxic chemicals into soils and waterways, choking natural habitats and posing a significant risk to wildlife. Supermarkets are largely responsible for the excessive distribution of plastic shopping bags, while junk foods and sodas are excessively packaged and their disposal is equally problematic (Assadorian, 2002, pp.140-141). The packaging of convenience foods often cannot be broken down easily and is left to accumulate in landfill. Much of it is merely discarded without thought and ends up in the environment, killing fish and animals.
To illustrate; marine debris, being any processed or manufactured product that enters the world’s oceans and waterways, is one of the biggest environmental problems yet to be properly addressed, and a significant percentage of such debris is comprised of food, beverage and tobacco packaging (Sheavly & Register, 2007, pp.301-302, 304). Humans have been using the ocean as a dumping ground for centuries (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.301), which perhaps did not constitute a significant problem when the human population was smaller and when such litter was overwhelmingly organic and biodegradable. But the nature of this waste has changed as humans have come to rely increasingly on synthetic materials, particularly in food packaging, resulting in solid waste that may persists in the environment for hundreds or even thousands of years. Non-biodegradable, convenience food items such as plastic soda bottles, cling film and polystyrene containers are now common features of many rivers, lakes and estuaries. When discarded into the ocean, these items can travel great distances on currents, being by their very nature buoyant and hardy, thus posing risks to far greater numbers of marine life and ecosystems than those in the locale of their initial disposal (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.301). Although much of this debris floats, it affects wildlife and ecosystems below the surface as well (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.302). Entanglement poses major risks for marine wildlife. Sheavly and Register (2007, pp.302-303) describe some of these risks: marine organisms may be strangled or drowned by human waste materials, or their mobility may become impaired by an injury incurred through contact with such materials, meaning that they cannot pursue prey or escape from predators. Debris may become caught in their mouths, meaning that they are unable to eat and so starve to death.
Ingestion is another significant concern; a number of human waste items may resemble prey species for marine organisms. Sheavly and Register (2007, p.303) make particular note of plastic shopping bags, which are sometimes mistaken for jellyfish by turtles and which then become lodged in the turtles’ digestive tracts causing death. In addition to posing dangers to individual organisms, marine debris threatens entire ecosystems. Where floating marine debris accumulates, it can cause serious ecological disruption by reducing the sunlight that penetrates the water and thus impacting the local food chain; furthermore, floating marine debris can be a means of transport for species across oceans, resulting in new species being introduced to habitats which may then decimate local populations (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.303).
Sheavly and Register (2007, p.302) stress that approximately eighty percent of all marine debris was discarded not in the oceans, but on land; food wrappings and other waste materials that are poorly disposed of eventually find their way into rivers and streams by means of sewers and storm-drains or are transported there by wind and rain, and once again we find that dense urban populations are the worst offenders (Sheavly& Register, 2007, p.302). Public littering is a major contributor to land-based marine debris, and much of this is plastic food wrapping, a significant portion of this waste is therefore a direct result of the prevailing convenience food culture (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.302). Little research has been done on the eventual fate of synthetic micro-fibres that enter marine ecosystems or on the effects on aquatic habitats and ecosystems of the accumulation and dispersion of toxins found in plastics (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.303), and yet as findings on their impact on human health illustrate, it is unlikely that the effects are benign.
Human health is affected by marine debris, there is evidence that contact with water contaminated by discarded packaging items often leads to outbreaks of illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, diarrhoea and dysentery (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.302). More insidious still, the toxic chemicals and synthetic micro-fibres in such items find their way into the marine food chain, and are eventually ingested by humans through fisheries. There is some evidence that coming into contact with these petrochemicals has negative effects on human health. Once in the human body, these synthetic particles and toxic chemicals damage the internal organs, resulting in poor health. It is also plausible that certain congenital birth defects may be attributable to parental exposure to petrochemicals. For example, phthalate esters found in much plastic packaging have been demonstrated to be harmful to the reproductive system of the human male, deforming the reproductive tract in developing males and inhibiting testosterone production (Benson, 2009).
As with marine wildlife, so with humans; the effects of environmental pollution affect not just individuals, but entire communities. In addition to its detrimental effect on ecosystems, marine debris also has aesthetic and economic impacts, as many coastal communities depend on tourism for income (Sheavly & Register, 2007, p.302). The example of marine debris serves to illustrate that the adverse environmental and social consequences of convenience food culture are interlinked, consumer choices have environmental costs. It is hardly unreasonable to suppose that understandings of such environmental and human interdependence apply in most if not all other contexts. And yet it seems that our consumer lifestyles and reliance on convenient food are deeply entrenched, perhaps too deeply to amend? Certainly Leahy (1999, pp.52-76) would seem to suggest that the consumption of food for comfort and entertainment is an inevitable aspect of an alienating economic system.
Rhim (2007, pp.691-709) notes, however, that the negative environmental effects of non-biodegradable petrochemical-based plastic packaging materials and consumer's increasing demand for high quality food products have not gone unnoticed, and that biodegradable, renewable alternatives are being sought. Rhim notes that such efforts have been faced with “major limitations” however, in that the natural polymer-based packaging materials that have been developed as an alternative have “inherent shortcomings,” such as comparatively poor durability, resilience and water resistance. Simply put, they fail to protect and preserve foodstuffs to the standard expected by consumers. Advances are being made, however; industrial interest in the use of natural biopolymers in food packaging has been somewhat rekindled by the recent development of nanocomposite technologies. Rhim (2007, pp.691-709) notes that natural biopolymer-layered silicate nanocomposites go some way to eliminating the aforementioned packaging limitations, exhibiting increased mechanical strength, decreased gas permeability, and increased water resistance. These biodegradable alternatives to conventional plastic packaging materials may go some way to eliminating the deleterious effects of the accumulation of toxic packaging materials in delicate ecosystems.
What then is to be done? Some favour a legislative approach; one proposed solution to the problem of consumers making poor choices is increased taxation of junk food and soda producers, and the funnelling of the revenue from these taxes into countering the advertising of their products, or to ban them from advertising their products (Assadorian, 2002, pp.140-141). Anand and Gray (2009, pp.186-189) call for the creation of a deliberative economy, in which expert knowledge undergirds government intervention in providing an optimal range of choices for consumers. Others, recognising the poor quality of fresh foods that have been transported internationally and the global inequalities that such economic activity perpetuates, now advocate buying only local and organic produce, correctly surmising that ethical purchasing can help reduce the environmental impact of current patterns of food production. Yet all these approaches fail to address the underlying inequalities that shape consumer choices, the fact remains that healthier, organic foods tend to be more expensive and are thus out of the reach of those who rely most on convenient food, the urban poor.
Solutions are also proposed for the remedying of specific aspects of the issue, such as the influx of packaging wastes into the environment and the poor nutritional quality and ill-health effects of convenience foods, but these also fail in that they do not address more fundamental causative patterns of behaviour. To illustrate, for the reduction of marine debris, Sheavly and Register (2007, pp.304-305) advocate greater education of consumers as to the long-term effects of littering, noting that each piece of litter represents one individual’s poor waste-disposal decision, and thus “In a way, it can be said that every piece of debris has human fingerprints on it”. But is this enough? Would it not rather be preferable to challenge consumers’ harmful convenience-food lifestyles? Dixon et al. (2006) describe the increasing trend towards functional, pharmaceutically altered foods, or ‘phoods’ in reaction to the increasing recognition of the poor health and nutritional qualities of convenience foods, but are sceptical of its effectiveness because nothing is being done to challenge society’s overwhelming reliance on convenience foods.
A growing number of individuals now advocate the creation of alternative economies and a reliance on community gardens and ‘freeganism’ or ‘dumpster-diving,’ the eating of expired but good quality food that is discarded daily by supermarkets. Such ‘radical’ measures may succeed in challenging the assumptions that many in Western societies have about food quality, and are to be applauded. Certainly in urban environments there may be few other alternatives to convenience food culture. Significant and lasting change is only likely to come about, however, through widespread changes to individual eating habits, through individuals, families and communities growing as much of their own food as possible and coming to understand and appreciate their own dependence upon their environment. Goldberg & Gunasti (2007, p.163) note that the taking of communal and family meals together promotes healthier attitudes towards food, and indeed the near-complete loss of theses practices over the past fifty years has undoubtedly contributed greatly to the maladaptive individual eating habits described above, and to the decline of socially and environmentally healthy families and communities. We must reverse the trend noted by Dixon et al. (2006, pp.634-645) and reconnect the act of eating with social conventions and interactions, and in so doing we may regain greater quality of life and preserve the environment on which we depend for our very existence.
To conclude, as illustrated by the example of marine debris, the health of human individuals and communities is affected by the health of the environment in which it is embedded; human beings do not exist in isolation from the natural world, and thus to remedy man-made environmental problems we must address their underlying social causes. This essay has demonstrated that prevailing Western patterns of convenience food consumption, divorced as they are from both production cycles and from social context, are a significant causative factor in the erosion of both human health and natural environments. Greater awareness and appreciation is needed of the interconnectedness of human life and the natural world, and of the value of social integration.
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