Not sure where I stand on this, because as Jamie says, many of these are the 3rd generation of people who don’t know how to cook. The problem is societal, and the solution is a public health issue. And solving the problem through the kids is the easiest way to go.

Good thing nobody has a feedback system that is broken! You’d be condemning those people to continued expansion.

Back when we were all hunter-gatherers, people with crummy eyesight probably didn’t live very long. It’s hard to throw a spear when you can’t even see the end of your arm. Along comes technology and zap!!!: eyeglasses fixed that problem once and for all. No reason to act superior when the same can be done with weight tracking and calorie counting.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html

I guess we’ll have to wait a bit more until image recognition techniques can recognize any type of food.

http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/future-of-mobile-search-for-diet/

Short answer – the food lobbies.

At one point they did have to mark processed food as “imitation” but then the lobbies got the national debate to start revolving around nutrients instead of whole foods. At that point the FDA changed its labeling rules to not require the “imitation” label if the food contained the equivalent nutrients of its unprocessed name sake. This is where we get all the additives from. The problem is there is a lot of evidence that processed nutrients are not as effective or in some cases not effective at all when compared to nutrients from whole foods. Nutritionists may be able to identify useful nutrients but to this day do not fully understand the complex interactions between the nutrients, the foods themselves and the way they are ingested, that make them effective.

Also, I will pimp the hell out of my series on food which includes some great stuff from Pollan and others:

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/category/food/

Lots of long-attention span stuff in there, but certainly worth watching.

I’ll have to add the Jamie Oliver talk to that series. It’s quite good. I can’t imagine if I like it more or less given he’s so much of a showman. Probably more.

As a last note on consumer confusion between food and food like substances, your picture of a cow eating grass is in fact food but most meat found in super markets can’t be categorized as such. Since meat is as nutritious as what it was fed when alive, any animal fed with processed foods will itself lack the normal nutrients found when animal is fed its natural diet. Not to mention the things they do to extend shelf life, make the meat more moist and hormones they use to make the animal grow faster and bigger.

I blogged about something relevant recently: http://www.peachfriedman.com/2010/02/24/from-nprs-marketplace/

beets, however… well, maybe if their grandmother is eastern european…

“If what you’re eating has a barcode, it’s not food. It’s a food product. So, yes, you registered for a website and installed an app on your iPhone, but you’re still eating processed crap. The only difference is, now you think it’s ok.”

Well said.

Fernando – I had a tangerine and some dates with lunch, and will probably have a banana after dinner…gotta get that 2 fruit/3 veg a day minimum!