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Among scientists, there is a remarkable consensus that the current [food] policy direction cannot continue. These contradictions are unbearable – literally so, because if the world continues the trend to eat like the West, the burdens on ecosystems, healthcare systems and finance will be unsupportable. That, at least, is the uncomfortable conclusion one must draw, when one looks at the evidence.
But since when has the politics of consumption been about evidence? The few studies conducted into consumers' response to this big picture about unsustainable diets show that consumers become a little indignant when they find out. A careful study by Which? found consumers asking: why weren't we told about this? They want to know more. Rightly so, but how, and from whom?
Hard-pressed teachers turn to commerce for fact sheets. Parents are too often in the dark, if truth be told. Nor could any food label convey the depth and scale of what consumers really need to know. Giant food companies have replaced schools and parents as sources of public "education". They are the Nanny Corporations, replacing the fictitious Nanny State. They filter what people are to know. Coca-Cola's annual marketing budget is US$4billion (£3.18 billion), twice the entire World Health Organisation annual budget in 2014-15, and much more than its budget for non-communicable diseases ($0.32 billion) or for promoting health through the life-course ($0.39 billion).
How can this by unlocked? Consumers buying food too often without knowing the consequences. Politicians distancing themselves from this unfolding disaster. Workers and companies vying with each other to produce more for less. This is crazy ecological economics – self-defeating food culture. It piles up burdens on public health.
It's obvious really – a new politics of food has to unfold in which academics treat consumers with dignity and tell them the truth. Politics follows the public, not the other way round. So it's the public which must be helped. The neoliberal rhetoric is of consumer sovereignty, yet everywhere they are kept in the dark.
That must be why authorities are encouraging entomophagy: "Let them eat bugs!"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:30AM
Moving on, in the same paragraph, the public is portrayed as ignorant ("in the dark") and thus, something to be fixed by the academics widget. Just mash one into the other until it's all fixed.