Natoora’s website says it exists to fix the food system.
I would if I could afford to.
But prices are eye-watering.
I hate all this artisan crap. Yes it’s nice, and pure. But it’s what people did hundreds of years ago. It’s what we should be doing now. Yet they turn it into afad and you need a moustache to eat it. – said one guy I know.
We exist to fix the food system!? What does that mean? Natoora do have a .com web address – I’m imagining that means that they exist to make a profit too.
They post some interesting stuff about consumerist trends – and how much energy, effort and costs (and pollution) are involved in servicing our habits.
Thing is, you can’t fix the food system by selling stuff to rich people – and writing a few educational articles. I wonder what else they do? What is their plan for fixing the food system? Is it realistic?
There’s more here. And podcasts. I will dive in and find out more.
says a friend…
I bought a sourdough loaf for Christmas. It was lovely and so were the people. But it cost me £4.20. I understand why; the blokes wife was getting up at 4am to bake. She’s not Hovis so she’s only going to be able to make a few and they probably have a child and house and shop rent.
I think some things are meant to be done at home. Take kefir, it’s about £3 a bottle. You can get about 5 or 6 bottles at home for that price. says I… so the food revolution needs to start at home – with home cooking skills – education – know how – skills – and a wanting to do it – a love of cooking – a love of eating together -a love of social health…
The Importance of Soil
Weston A. Price, a Canadian, did a study of the diets and diseases of traditional societies across the world, in the 1930s. He found that people who ate a traditional diet consisting of fresh foos from animals and plants grown on soils rich in nutrients, supported good health (p98). He found that the butter of cows grazing on spring grasses were richer vitamins A and D, compared to the butter of cows grazed on winter forages. He thought that quality of the soil was key to health.
Sir Albert Howard argued that the industrialisation of agriculture, and in particular the introduction of ‘synthetic nitrogen fertilizer’ simplified the chemistry of the soil and be detrimental to our health. Soil health was inextricably linked to the health of plants, animals and men.
The idea then is that we ought to be consuming local products from local fields, to get the biggest health benefits, and that in return we ought to be returning the nutrients to the soil. But we’re doing neither. Food is being grown in soil, the nutritional components of which have been worsened, and hindered by the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. And then we are transporting it over great distances as part of the globalised logistical network, during which time its nutritional value is reduced.
Liebig identified that nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium were needed for plants to grow, Fritz Haber invented a method for synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer from fossil fuels. Fertilizers are then used to enhance the soil nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, but destroued the complex undrground ecyosystem of soil microbes, worms and fungi, which reduces nutritional quality of the soil. ‘Since the widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has declined substantially’. (p115) Halweil cites a considerable body of research demonstrating that plants grown with industrial fertilizers are often nutritionally inferior to the same varieties grown in organic soils (p119). Crops grown with chemical fertilizers grow more quickly, giving them less time and opportunity to accumulate nutrients other than the big three (p120).
Western Processed Foods have created Western Diseases
A variety of researchers began to notice that native populations did not experience chronic diseases that were present in the West (p90).
Western diseases include heart diesease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertension, stoke, appendicitis, diverticulitis, malformed dental arches, tooth decay, varicose veins, ulcers and hemorrhoids.
Pollan points out that cancer and heart disease are not inevitable, but instead they are ‘western’ diseases, caused by ‘western diet’ he reckons.