Food and the Counterculture: A Story of Bread and Politics
Author(s)
Belasco, Warren
Abstract
As the author’s “hippy” mentors wrote, it is not the product, it is the process. If people think only about the end product rather than the process by which it was made, then the food industry will always be able to come up with products that at least superficially cater to our worries about health, skill, tradition, and community. But if people start asking questions about the process by which grain was transformed into the bread that sustains and entertains them, then they are not likely to be so easily appeased. What actually is in this stuff anyway? Is it really so wholesome? Who baked it and under what conditions? Thinking about process means asking why a peasant bread costs $5.00, while real peasants abroad cannot buy plain wheat and poor people here can barely afford store-bought white bread. And it means asking about environment and agriculture: Where did the plastic bag come from and where will it go after I discard it? How will the greenhouse effect affect grain production? Is our global seed stock genetically diverse enough to withstand the inevitable attack of the next pesticide-resistant fungus or fly? Did the farmer get a fair share of the profits? And down the road will that farmer’s land be in good enough condition to feed our grandchildren’s grandchildren? These are the questions that really matter. And no amount of postmodern marketing wizardry will answer them or make them go away.
