When R&D works to create your favourite meal.

I don’t know if you have ever had the opportunity to visit a food factory. You’d be amazed by the automated processes that leave only a few roles to workers, just because they’re still irreplaceable. R&D takes months of study to develop a new product and industrialise it, then the production begins, and the marketers promote the new product, until it becomes a well-known product. Fleets of trucks deliver tons of products that are placed on supermarket shelves, which will then be chosen for their packaging, taste, smell…. but almost never for the ingredients they’re made with.

But what do we know about the real cost of food?

I discovered years ago that “healthy” and “cheap” don’t get on well together. Only a few people really know how to read labels. Some of these are chemists with experience in the food industry. That’s why I asked an acquaintance, a chemist, a few questions… and what from I understood, he voluntarily avoids buying many products because of the ingredients they contain. He explained that many foods are the result of market compromises: for example, if a product costs £10, the finished factory value is £3 and the remaining 7 is the price (and part of the profit) for the distribution (wholesale and retail).

If we pay for something, then it is only right that we find out what the products we eat are made of. To reduce costs and accept the conditions required by the mass market, large manufacturers try to save money buying ingredients at the lowest price possible, and this continues along the whole supply chain. That’s why sometimes we read about pumped-up meat, animals full of antibiotics, pesticides in crops, etc., that often leave traces in our food.

Today we know that these substances are not eliminated entirely, but are assimilated throughout the food chain to which we belong. I’m not against the big retailers … I have understood that, although there are some of them also choose to sell middle range products (a compromise between quality and price), the industry’s aim is to increase profits.

end of part 1

Read Part 2

Brian G.B. Tonelli

Good habits & Quality foods

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