Food glorious food!

When we shop at a supermarket, according to the dictates of MasterChef merchandising, we outsource our responsibility for these problems to big businesses, whose concerns end with their shareholders.

There are alternatives. In a recent essay for the New York Review of Books, the American writer Michael Pollan lauded the rise of the “food movement”, the many citizens groups digging in on issues that span the industrial food chain.

Here in Australia, the food movement is similarly flourishing. It encompasses angry parents who are demanding better labelling and safety standards, bans on genetically modified crops, and an end to the junk food ads that target their children.

It comprises chefs and climate campaigners, permaculturalists and public health professionals. It includes, too, the swelling ranks of backyard and community vegie gardeners, and the gastronomists and convivialists who frequent farmers’ markets and slow food eateries.

The movement is disparate and sometimes contradictory - for example, animal rights activists might clash with organic meat producers. But Pollan argues that the views of these citizens and activists coalesce “around the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ - that it can’t go on in its current form without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both”.

Food, then, is political.

“Food is invisible no longer,” Pollan goes on, “and, in light of the mounting costs we’ve incurred by ignoring it, it is likely to demand much more of our attention in the future, as eaters, parents, and citizens. It is only a matter of time before politicians seize on [its] power.”

Despite our renewed flair for flavour, inspired by MasterChef, we must remember that not everything of consequence appears on the plate. The corporate conquest of our kitchens is still underway.