Processed food isn’t just a modern invention, created in factories from artificial ingredients. It is as old as humanity itself and may have helped create our species, writes Nicola Temple, author of Processed Food: A History of Food and the Future of Food.
Processed food
Today, processed food has a negative connotation
- Innovations in food processing have also helped improve nutrition, reduce food waste, and provide us with more leisure time
- It is far more complex than to claim all processed food is bad
- Long before processed food, food shaped our relationship with food
What drove our early ancestors to process food – preservation – remains the main driver behind food processing today
Advancements in technology mean we can now flash-freeze produce in the height of the season mere moments after it has been plucked from the earth, locking those essential nutrients up until they are released again months later on some stove top thousands of miles from where the produce was grown.
- Food waste even drove one Californian farmer to revolutionize the healthy snack.
Beyond Natural will look at processed food from diverse perspectives
From the hidden additives in healthy food through to the processes seen in nature itself, the series will take readers behind the scenes into a day in the life of a food scientist, as well as offer practical advice on how to read food labels.
