Due to the lack of disposable income and time most students have to spend on groceries, when shopping for ourselves many of our decisions are based on cost and convenience.
What is the cheapest and easiest option? We live in a place and time where cheap and convenient food items are readily available—lucky for us, right? Maybe not.
Because of the pervasiveness of microwave dinners and fast-food chains, many people can go through their entire university career without ever learning how to cook.
However, what seems like a trivial skill could be the start of a global revolution. The truth is, the majority of consumers in North America are completely unaware of the realities of their food decisions.
Buying cheap, pre-processed, pre-prepared food contributes to environmental degradation at home and abroad, and perpetuates global inequalities, poverty, and hunger. If everyone cooked, it would mean consuming fewer processed meals, and reducing the miles travelled by food.
For many North Americans, food just kind of exists—whether in the grocery store, or at the drive-thru window at McDonald’s. But have you ever thought about where your food comes from? As a culture, we are detached from the realities of the food system, and if asked how our food made its way to our plates, most of us would be unable to say.
Our inability to explain where food comes from is one of the most essential factors in its availability. It is cheap and it is accessible, and in many cases when it reaches our homes, it resembles neither plant nor animal. If it does—like fresh fruit and vegetables—it often costs more. The more processed something is, the cheaper it becomes.
This seems pretty counterintuitive until you read the ingredients list. Fillers like corn and soy are added to bulk out the content of the food, while preservatives are added to enable global shipping and a longer shelf-life. The average piece of food makes about 11 different stops on its journey from farm to table.
With trade agreements, governments in developing nations create policies that transform local agriculture into land used by large-scale agri-business to produce cash crops.
These will then be sold to consumers in the global North, or to companies who add them as fillers in heavily-processed food stuffs.
The added labour involved in the processing of food is offset largely by the exploitation and low wages paid to workers in the global South. On top of that, the industrial farming techniques are harmful to local ecosystems and cultures.
Cooking from scratch means reducing the steps our food goes through, reducing the distance it travels, and reducing the chemicals, fillers, and preservatives that would otherwise be added.
The modern food system relies on consumer ignorance, but in learning the true cost of cheap food we may start to question the nature of modern food production.
By taking the time to cook at home, we can reclaim control over the food we eat and begin to make a change in the global production of food.
