Of all the circumstances that govern a families' food consumption, the most important is choice. If the fast food is cheaper and tastes better, kids will eat it even to their own detriment. Six gallons of Coca-Cola a week??? Dumbasses. Only education can, over the long term, stop this slide. When consumers worldwide demand better and less processed food, companies will provide it.

Going backward is no solution. There are plenty of people who romanticize what the article describes as "laboring dawn to dusk at the edges of hunger," which is what humans did for most of our history. These people have it all wrong. No one wants to live that way. For some time to come, there will be a middle ground, between peasantry and wealth, where the most affordable foods will unfortunately be those which are mass-produced. Branding and packaging are a necessary part of that.

There is no way to provide a fast or easy transition between subsistence farming and a wealthy society. Ultimately, the solution to getting healthy food will be to push your $150 grocery cart down the aisle of Whole Foods.

This article bothers me for some reason. On the one hand, I do feel saddened that unique, valuable cultural practices are subsummed by the pervasive and powerful force of industrialized Western culture. In this particular case, the methods of food preparation (e.g. toiling for half a day to bake a loaf of bread), which are certainly tied to traditions and unique geography, are lost to new generations. That is a cultural loss.

On the other hand, how many contemporary Americans bemoan the loss of the horse-drawn carriage or the equine-dependent skills that we have obviously forgotten as the result of the development of the internal-combustion engine-driven automobile? My point is- for many of the families referenced in the article, if you don't have to spend half a day baking bread or pounding millet, that time can be better devoted to gaining an education or working to better the future of your children. I think it is arrogant of us as Westerners who have clearly benefitted from the advancements of industrialized production to question whether developing cultures should be allowed the same benefits. That doesn't imply that obesity is not a problem or that overconsumption is not a dire issue for the future sustainability of our energy-hungry culture, but we do need to understand that the rest of the world's cultures are as entitled to a middle class as we are to ours.

Indeed, one does become overweight by consuming an excess of calories, but foods are not homogenous blocks of energy. Coca-cola, as opposed to milk, is carbonated, loaded with sodium, and 'enhanced' with caffeine. Likewise, a McDonald's hamburger, as opposed to, say, homemade meatloaf, is friend, slathered in grease, and probably dripping with ultra-processed cheese. These additional factors have a tremendous impact on one's health. Up until about three years ago, I was slightly overweight from having eaten 'like an American' my entire life, but being slightly overweight was one thing, what these specific kinds of foods were doing to my body was another:

chronic stomach aches

trouble sleeping

headaches

heartburn

lethargic, overloaded metabolism

Needless to say, I'm a vegetarian now, and after I shed my excess weight, I am back to eating roughly the same amount of calories that I had before (lots of ice cream, if you're wondering) but have none of the above ailments and this, too, helped me get in the physical condition I needed to be in to get more active. The effects of a carbonated, ultra-friend diet are more than just extra calories. These foods burn holes in people's bodies, and it's part of the reason why a grotesquely large proportion of Americans are wrecking our health care system with their leaky and gassy ass problems. I'm not saying we need to regulate foods in the developing world, but it's false to think obesity and poor health is just a matter of excessive calories.

Anyhow, for parents, there is one thing you can do to deal with kids' McCravings that is unique to our post-industrial economy, in which food and its sources are kept at an abstract distance from the consumer: field trip to the slaughterhouse. Or worse yet, field trip to the kitchen of a fast food restaurant.

My wife did not work until the children were grown. This meant that we could not afford to eat out very often, and when we did it meant going to a local Chinese restaurant where the main ingredient was vegetables. Now they are in their 30's and do not eat fast food at all, nor do their children. My wife and I still look at eating in any restaurant as eating enjoyable poison, OK occasionally but deadly if indulged in often. We both enjoy cooking, so we aren't giving up anything. Both our daughters eat like horses, and are very slender and strong. I believe that their life when growing up, when weekend recreation amounted to long distance hiking or XC skiing, modified their metabolisms to immunize them against desires for poor food. They both were able to hike or ski 5-10 miles by the time they were three. When you do that the food you eat becomes critical to survival, especially when you have to carry it on your back. I expect that our grandchildren will be the same. Of course many of the people we know eat junk and take glucophage to stave off Type 2 diabetes. Very sad.

The industrial food system currently depends on enormous amounts of cheap fuel in order to run itself and make a profit. For example, I recently read that the average box of cereal in the US represents the use of half a gallon of gas when you add up the growing, processing, packaging, and distribution costs under the industrial model. It may be awhile, but eventually the cost of that half-gallon will price everyone out of the boxed-cereal market, and it will be cheaper to buy oats in a burlap sack from the farmer down the street (who will exist because he'll actually be able to make a living farming again).

Of course, all kinds of things may happen in the meantime, some to the benefit of the industrial system and some not. Technology will evolve, industrial processes will become more efficient, some folks believe that we'll be clever enough to find a new clean and plentiful source of energy comparable to oil. I doubt it, but it could happen. On the other hand, we may just as easily experience catastrophic shocks to the system such as major climate change or economic/political upheavals. Either way, in the very long run, the energy represented by the foods we eat will have to return to a rough parity with the energy we get from eating the food, not because of enlightened shopping but because there won't be any other option.

Being a bit of a luddite myself, I suspect that in the end this will be for the better in terms of human health and culture. Too bad it won't be in my lifetime.