Processed Food: Its Creation and Endurance in the American Diet
Liana Ochoa
Food serves as an essential source of energy for human beings, the substance by which we find nourishment to support the basic means of life. However, food no longer serves as just a source of energy, but also in contemporary society a source of palatable satisfaction capable of delivering instant gratification to the sense of taste. Along with this capability to instantly gratify taste, food can also appeal to people because of it is convenience to a fast-paced lifestyle in regard to time, cost and availability. Processed food, a relatively new but now common type of food, has both an attribute for taste and convenience, making it a standard, daily fare in many American homes. The growth in the consumption of processed food is a result of lifestyle changes that occurred in the twentieth century, catalyzed by historical events and technological innovations over time that food companies have responded to by adapting their marketing and food production methods to society's needs. Americans began to eat processed food because of these changes, but their having come to eat so much of it is a result of food companies marketing processed food in such a way as to convince consumers that it is the best choice of food to eat through enticing advertisement techniques, corporate distribution of processed food products, economic stratagem, and environmental distractions in food settings.
Changes in lifestyle that prompted the consumption of processed foods were generated by late nineteenth-century changes attributed to industrialization and the twentieth-century World Wars. Industrialization was the first catalyst of change, transitioning the mode of work so that mass production was possible using assembly line techniques. The significance of the era is that it introduced the first factories and methods of creating products that could be made outside of the home, thereby providing the means for new ways in which goods could be created. In the twentieth-century, the United States' participation and contributions in World War I and World War II expanded the food processing that had already begun in the late nineteenth century with industrialization, due to the need to feed Europe's citizens and American troops with dense caloric and nutritional foods that contained pork, beef, butter and sugar that could last the overseas journey (Veit, 2013, p. 12).
Although industrialization was initially fueled by war, it opened a new domestic market that was advantageous for processed food companies. The processed and prepackaged food that was made for soldiers began to be produced for the general public, even more so than before the wars because women were joining the workforce and could no longer devote a large amount of time for domestic duties, such as preparing food (Schlosser, 2001, p.4). Thus, the transition of women from the home to the labor force developed the necessity for a way in which cooking could be facilitated, and food companies figured that processed food provided the means for women to make meals that required less preparation time. The growth of the domestic market meant that the food industry needed to expand their sales and the way in which the food was processed and packaged enabled it to remain fresh for a longer period of time, so that companies could expand their sales by selling products in places far from the processing site (Smith, 2013, p.450) to reach more stores, supermarkets and homes than ever before.
In addition to the historical events of industrialization and World Wars, domestic technology created during these time periods contributed significantly to the adoption of processed food in American culture, thereby increasing its consumption. The number of kitchen appliances that were created enabled food to be prepared differently within the home. Processed food was already modified at the manufacturing site, but domestic technology allowed for the home to be its own sort of production facility. Take for example inventions such as the refrigerator and freezer. Both allowed for food to be preserved even longer than the packaging, which gave meal makers the ability to store food up to or past its expiration date. In addition, after the first World War electric stove tops became popular because electricity became more affordable (Sobey, 2010, p.156) and helped cook food faster than say, warming it over a fire. In 1945, microwaves (the invention from magnetron tubes that were used during the war to detect planes) were discovered to be able to instantly heat and reheat foods in a matter of minutes (Higgins, 2014, p.20). Such innovations labeled the era after the Second World War as "the Golden Age of Food Processing" (Schlosser, 2001, p.113). Food preparation inside of the home changed, as did food that was accessible outside of the home. After the Second World War, the establishment of highways, thanks to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, and the widespread ownership of cars "gave rise to early drive-in chain restaurants" (Finkelstein & Zuckerman, 2008, p.17), the precursors to modern day fast food chains. A remarkable technological achievement, the automobile became a popularly owned commodity and made Americans "so lazy they don’t want to get out of them to eat" (Schlosser, 2001, p. 17). The advent of the car facilitated both American consumers and companies alike. For the consumers, the car made traveling easier and faster, thereby increasing the pace of lifestyle. At the same time, companies recognized this faster pace and adjusted, creating restaurants now known as fast food restaurants in order to accommodate. Further, automobiles also allowed processed food companies to transport their products over greater distances, increasing their distribution of sales to places that before highways and automobiles would have been unreachable (Smith, 2013, p. 450).
The historical events of industrialization and World Wars engendered lifestyle changes, creating new needs and demands from society that food companies responded to by molding their marketing techniques. Processed food was born as a result of the nineteenth and twentieth-century historical events, and appealed to consumers by fitting their new lifestyle changes. At this point, processed food was making its way as a conventional type of food due not only to its attributes of being modified and packaged so that it lasted longer than normal, fresh food, but because of food companies' promotion of processed food. When food companies realized the potential of processed food because of its long package life and easy preparation for consumers, they molded their marketing so that processed food would become not only one of many choices of food available, but the most enticing food choice available so that processed food would be a lasting food phenomenon and not merely a short lived trend.
Strategic advertising enabled and still enables processed food companies and restaurants to increase consumer purchasing by portraying processed food as the best type of food to buy. Advertisements for processed food as early as the beginning of the twentieth-century first began as simple enticements to market the "efficacy of its packaging" (Carroll, 2013, Ch.7, para. 34) and by the 1950s made "processed foods [look] better than fresh ones, more space-age and up to date" (Schlosser, 2001, p.114). Beginning in the 1950s, advertising nearly became more important than the product. It didn't matter that a company had a product if it didn't have the means to sell it, so more modern techniques of advertising utilizing psychology were applied. Advertising and marketing have striven to furnish a product with aesthetic appeal, namely a "design" that is "simple, memorable and archetypal (Schlosser, 2001, p. 20) to psychologically induce a consumer to buy that product. A study conducted to examine the impact of product labeling found that "product labels are an important point-of-purchase information source capable of influencing consumer decision making" (Trudel, Murray, Kim, & Chen, 2015, p. 255). This study highlights the significance of how food products are portrayed, and demonstrates the amount of cognitive influence the appearance of a product has on consumers.
Food companies capitalize on the positive emotional and societal elements associated with eating, meaning that processed foods are marketed to convey feelings of contentment. While advertising techniques have historically associated products with positive emotions and social belonging, recent studies have shown the extent to which these techniques influence consumer choice. One such study reveals the technique of "product labeling" (Trudel et al., 2015, p. 255) called branding. Companies and restaurants create brands that offer familiarity and reassurance to consumers by offering food products that are "always and everywhere the same" (Schlosser, 2001, p. 5). The special purpose of branding, or rather its unique marketing effect, is that it encourages consumers to repeatedly purchase the brand's products based on of these feelings of familiarity and reassurance. Thus, a consumer can potentially be attracted to a product before even realizing whether it is because of the appearance of the package or brand recognition. Another approach tactically used by advertising is social conformity. In an additional psychological study, researchers sought to understand the magnitude of social conventions in regard to food choices, noting that individuals move towards social norm because of a preference for social conformity (Aldrovandi, Brown, & Wood, 2015, p. 244). By making processed food an item of popular commodity, like advertising that it is favored by celebrities or athletes, companies and restaurants can therefore pressure consumers to purchase food based on the idea that they are following societal conventions. With psychological knowledge of how to manipulate consumer decision making, companies and restaurants successfully limit consumer choices to purchase and consume processed food.
Consumer preference of processed food is further assisted by its widespread distribution and availability. The highway system, large automobiles such as trucks, and shipping containers made it possible for food to be transported over greater distances (Smith, 2008, p. 450) to stores in places that were hard to reach by train. Fast food restaurants, multiplied with the growth of highways and some of the first fast food chains opened near free way off ramps (Schlosser, 2001, p. 22). Since then, fast food chains have "infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society and spread to every corner of the nation" (Schlosser, 2001, p.3). The wide availability of fast food restaurants, a type of processed food service, facilitates the ease with which consumers can access quickly prepared, economically cheap food that "makes life easier, not just for those preparing a meal, but also for those eating it" (Scholliers, 2015, p. 4). In order to reach the greatest number of customers, many companies and restaurants locate themselves in as many places as possible. Take for example, McDonald's, one of the biggest fast food companies in America. In his 2001 book, Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser recorded that at the time McDonald's owned 28,000 restaurants worldwide and 2,000 new ones were opening each year (p. 4). Taken more than a decade ago, Schlosser's findings are now considered outdated, but offer insightful information as to just how extensive one fast food company is in reference to its global reach. Moreover, just to provide an idea of how gargantuan the processed food industry is "three-fourths of world food sales involve processed foods, for which the largest manufacturers hold over a third of the global market" (Stuckler & Nestle, 2012, p. 1). The widespread availability of processed food so that people can find it nearly anywhere makes it convenient in regards to locality and the minimal time or energy needed to find processed food.
Another appeal of processed food is that it is economical in regard to both price and time. Affordability is a major factor when purchasing goods, especially when more than one product is being bought at a time as is common at the supermarket. When faced with the choice between fresh food and processed food, comparison of the prices over the years shows that "the prices of healthier foods have become relatively more expensive and the prices of unhealthy foods, those with lots of added sugars and added fats, have become cheaper" (Finkelstein & Zuckerman, 2008, p. 24) providing leverage for processed food because people reason that they are saving money by purchasing the cheaper option. Reasons for the decline in price of processed food are the result of federal subsidies. Two of the most highly used processed food ingredients include corn and soybeans. After the Great Depression the government established subsidies given to farmers who grow these crops, encouraging the growth of corn and soybeans rather than other fruits or vegetables, which in turn harvests an abundance and makes it extremely cheap for food companies to buy and use in their products (Finkelstein & Zuckerman, 2008, p. 24-25). Because there is less supply of fruit and vegetables due to the lack of subsidies, the price remains relatively high in comparison to processed food that uses subsidized crop ingredients. Even without the monetary value in mind, processed food offers what fresh food hardly does: "time saving, portability, handiness" (Scholliers, 2015, p. 4). Fast food restaurants in particular adopted the "principles of a factory assembly line" (Schlosser, 2001, p. 20), which helped make food more time efficient for consumers. The means by which companies can provide processed foods at low prices while fresh food prices may fluctuate perpetuates the purchase of processed food by consumers.
Fast food restaurants manipulate the environment in which food is eaten to promote unhealthy food choices. A study was administered to apprehend the significance of the environment in which food is eaten to understand how it contributes to food choices. Taking a number of families and placing them in either quite, undisturbed accommodations or loud and diverting venues, the study discovered among other things that "stressful situations…relate to increased consumption of unhealthy foods such as energy dense sweets and salty snacks" (Fiese, Jones, & Jarick, 2015, p.10). The stressful situations were those characterized by the loud and diverting venues, where the families were unable to eat normally due to noises or other hindrances. Proposing that the environment is the greatest factor for food consumption, the study limits the environment to that of a family meal. The study researches the family environmental effect on eating choices, which I propose extends to the greater environment that surrounds people in everyday life. Instead of a mere family environment, the greater environment in which people live that includes food advertisements and multiple processed food stores and restaurants affects the consumption of processed foods by inundating consumers constantly with busy noises and images, thereby creating a somewhat mentally "stressful situation" (Fiese, Jones, & Jarick, 2015, p.10) that distracts from the focus of eating food.
The processed food industry has utilized many methods of marketing including advertising, availability, convenience, and environmental exploitation to increase the consumption of processed foods. Indeed, the extent to which processed food companies have exercised these strategies has succeeded in implementing processed food in many Americans' diets. However, despite all of this evidence some people propose that there is actually an increase in fresh food consumption.
Some people argue that the consumption of processed food has decreased since the late twentieth century because of an increase in fresh foods. The proposition finds this justification in the numerical growth of initiatives such as farmers markets, noting that "between 1994 and 2014 the number of farmers markets in the United States jumped nearly fivefold, from 1, 755 to 8, 268" (Kiener, 2014, para. 18). While the escalation in numbers is quite impressive, it is important to recognize that this happened over a period of twenty years just to add 6, 513 farmers markets that were only open an average of eighteen weeks out of the year and served only around 2, 760,000 customers a week according to a USDA survey taken in 2000 (Payne, 2002, p. 4, 29). Compared to the growth of processed food as mentioned earlier using McDonald's as an example, Eric Schlosser wrote in his book Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal that "[McDonald's] opens almost two thousand new ones each year" (p.4). In terms of proportional comparisons, this means that it takes McDonald's a little over three years to accumulate more than six thousand restaurants compared to the twenty years needed for farmers markets. Therefore, this position is partially validated because it is true that farmers markets are increasing, suggesting that people are concerned about their intake of processed foods. However, the numbers aforementioned supporting this indicate that it is only a small proportion of the population and not a great number of people to truly suggest a paramount shift in the overall amount of consumption of processed foods.
After examining the factors contributing to processed food consumption, it can be hard to distinguish if whether or not the American lifestyle induces processed food intake or whether the production of processed food prolongs the American way of life. The relationship between the two is extremely significant because it affects the consumption of processed food, which is the main focus of the paper. Looking closely, historical events created both a market for processed food and processed food itself, and companies reacted to these changes by ensuring processed food would endure in the market, utilizing advertising, distribution methods and economic appeal. In this way, the consumption of processed food largely depends upon the continuance of the American lifestyle, where people lead a relatively fast paced life that is contingent on the convenience of products to make life easier overall. The American lifestyle and processed food consumption therefore share an entwined and co-dependent relationship that is enhanced and promoted by processed food companies. Unless radical or substantial changes in lifestyle take place, then the consumption of processed food is likely to last long past its expiration date.
References
Aldrovandi, S., Brown, G.A., & Wood, A.M. (2015). Social norms and ranked-based nudging: Changing willingness to pay for healthy food. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21, 242-254. doi: 10.1037/xap0000048
Carroll, A. (2013). Three squares: The invention of the American meal. New York: Basic Books. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00825a&AN=slu.b3871112&site=eds-live
Fiese, B.H., Jones, B.L., & Jarick, J.M., (2015). Family mealtime dynamics and food consumption: An experimental approach to understanding distractions. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 4, 199-211. doi: 10.1037/cfp0000047
Finkelstein, E., & Zuckerman, L. (2008). The fattening of America: How the economy makes us fat, if it matters, and what to do about it. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00825a&AN=slu.b3556257&site=eds-live
Higgins, N. (2014). Fun food inventions. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&db=cat00825a&AN=slu.b3892250&site=eds-live
Kiener, R. (2014). Food policy debates: The issues. CQ Researcher, 24, 819. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&db=f5h&AN=98690406&site=eds-live
Payne, T. (2000). U.S. farmers markets: A study of emerging trends. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Agricultural Marketing Service, Transportation and Marketing Programs, Marketing Services Branch. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00825a&AN=slu.b2138176&site=eds-live
Schlosser, E. (2001). Fast food nation: The dark side of the all-American meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=66202&site=ehost-live
Scholliers, P. (2015). Research report: Convenience foods. What, why, and when. Appetite, 94, 2-6. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.02.017
Smith, A. F. (2013). Food and drink in American history: A "full course" encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Retrieved from: https://books.google.es/books?id=o7gxBgAAQBAJ&pg=PR36&dq=american+food+history,+a+full+course+encyclopedie&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=american%20food%20history%2C%20a%20full%20course%20encyclopedie&f=false
Sobey, E. C. (2010). The way kitchens work: The science behind the microwave, teflon pan, garbage disposal, and more. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=329044&site=ehost-live
Stuckler, D., & Nestle, M. (2012). Big food, food systems, and global health. Plos Medicine, 9, 1-4. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001242
Trudel, R., Murray, K.B., Kim, S., & Chen, S. (2015). The impact of traffic light color-coding on food health perceptions and choice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21, 255-275. doi: 10.1037/xap0000049
Veit, H. Z. (2013). Modern food, moral food: Self-control, science, and the rise of modern American eating in the early twentieth century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=582984&site=ehost-live
Changes in lifestyle that prompted the consumption of processed foods were generated by late nineteenth-century changes attributed to industrialization and the twentieth-century World Wars. Industrialization was the first catalyst of change, transitioning the mode of work so that mass production was possible using assembly line techniques. The significance of the era is that it introduced the first factories and methods of creating products that could be made outside of the home, thereby providing the means for new ways in which goods could be created. In the twentieth-century, the United States' participation and contributions in World War I and World War II expanded the food processing that had already begun in the late nineteenth century with industrialization, due to the need to feed Europe's citizens and American troops with dense caloric and nutritional foods that contained pork, beef, butter and sugar that could last the overseas journey (Veit, 2013, p. 12).
Although industrialization was initially fueled by war, it opened a new domestic market that was advantageous for processed food companies. The processed and prepackaged food that was made for soldiers began to be produced for the general public, even more so than before the wars because women were joining the workforce and could no longer devote a large amount of time for domestic duties, such as preparing food (Schlosser, 2001, p.4). Thus, the transition of women from the home to the labor force developed the necessity for a way in which cooking could be facilitated, and food companies figured that processed food provided the means for women to make meals that required less preparation time. The growth of the domestic market meant that the food industry needed to expand their sales and the way in which the food was processed and packaged enabled it to remain fresh for a longer period of time, so that companies could expand their sales by selling products in places far from the processing site (Smith, 2013, p.450) to reach more stores, supermarkets and homes than ever before.
In addition to the historical events of industrialization and World Wars, domestic technology created during these time periods contributed significantly to the adoption of processed food in American culture, thereby increasing its consumption. The number of kitchen appliances that were created enabled food to be prepared differently within the home. Processed food was already modified at the manufacturing site, but domestic technology allowed for the home to be its own sort of production facility. Take for example inventions such as the refrigerator and freezer. Both allowed for food to be preserved even longer than the packaging, which gave meal makers the ability to store food up to or past its expiration date. In addition, after the first World War electric stove tops became popular because electricity became more affordable (Sobey, 2010, p.156) and helped cook food faster than say, warming it over a fire. In 1945, microwaves (the invention from magnetron tubes that were used during the war to detect planes) were discovered to be able to instantly heat and reheat foods in a matter of minutes (Higgins, 2014, p.20). Such innovations labeled the era after the Second World War as "the Golden Age of Food Processing" (Schlosser, 2001, p.113). Food preparation inside of the home changed, as did food that was accessible outside of the home. After the Second World War, the establishment of highways, thanks to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, and the widespread ownership of cars "gave rise to early drive-in chain restaurants" (Finkelstein & Zuckerman, 2008, p.17), the precursors to modern day fast food chains. A remarkable technological achievement, the automobile became a popularly owned commodity and made Americans "so lazy they don’t want to get out of them to eat" (Schlosser, 2001, p. 17). The advent of the car facilitated both American consumers and companies alike. For the consumers, the car made traveling easier and faster, thereby increasing the pace of lifestyle. At the same time, companies recognized this faster pace and adjusted, creating restaurants now known as fast food restaurants in order to accommodate. Further, automobiles also allowed processed food companies to transport their products over greater distances, increasing their distribution of sales to places that before highways and automobiles would have been unreachable (Smith, 2013, p. 450).
The historical events of industrialization and World Wars engendered lifestyle changes, creating new needs and demands from society that food companies responded to by molding their marketing techniques. Processed food was born as a result of the nineteenth and twentieth-century historical events, and appealed to consumers by fitting their new lifestyle changes. At this point, processed food was making its way as a conventional type of food due not only to its attributes of being modified and packaged so that it lasted longer than normal, fresh food, but because of food companies' promotion of processed food. When food companies realized the potential of processed food because of its long package life and easy preparation for consumers, they molded their marketing so that processed food would become not only one of many choices of food available, but the most enticing food choice available so that processed food would be a lasting food phenomenon and not merely a short lived trend.
Strategic advertising enabled and still enables processed food companies and restaurants to increase consumer purchasing by portraying processed food as the best type of food to buy. Advertisements for processed food as early as the beginning of the twentieth-century first began as simple enticements to market the "efficacy of its packaging" (Carroll, 2013, Ch.7, para. 34) and by the 1950s made "processed foods [look] better than fresh ones, more space-age and up to date" (Schlosser, 2001, p.114). Beginning in the 1950s, advertising nearly became more important than the product. It didn't matter that a company had a product if it didn't have the means to sell it, so more modern techniques of advertising utilizing psychology were applied. Advertising and marketing have striven to furnish a product with aesthetic appeal, namely a "design" that is "simple, memorable and archetypal (Schlosser, 2001, p. 20) to psychologically induce a consumer to buy that product. A study conducted to examine the impact of product labeling found that "product labels are an important point-of-purchase information source capable of influencing consumer decision making" (Trudel, Murray, Kim, & Chen, 2015, p. 255). This study highlights the significance of how food products are portrayed, and demonstrates the amount of cognitive influence the appearance of a product has on consumers.
Food companies capitalize on the positive emotional and societal elements associated with eating, meaning that processed foods are marketed to convey feelings of contentment. While advertising techniques have historically associated products with positive emotions and social belonging, recent studies have shown the extent to which these techniques influence consumer choice. One such study reveals the technique of "product labeling" (Trudel et al., 2015, p. 255) called branding. Companies and restaurants create brands that offer familiarity and reassurance to consumers by offering food products that are "always and everywhere the same" (Schlosser, 2001, p. 5). The special purpose of branding, or rather its unique marketing effect, is that it encourages consumers to repeatedly purchase the brand's products based on of these feelings of familiarity and reassurance. Thus, a consumer can potentially be attracted to a product before even realizing whether it is because of the appearance of the package or brand recognition. Another approach tactically used by advertising is social conformity. In an additional psychological study, researchers sought to understand the magnitude of social conventions in regard to food choices, noting that individuals move towards social norm because of a preference for social conformity (Aldrovandi, Brown, & Wood, 2015, p. 244). By making processed food an item of popular commodity, like advertising that it is favored by celebrities or athletes, companies and restaurants can therefore pressure consumers to purchase food based on the idea that they are following societal conventions. With psychological knowledge of how to manipulate consumer decision making, companies and restaurants successfully limit consumer choices to purchase and consume processed food.
Consumer preference of processed food is further assisted by its widespread distribution and availability. The highway system, large automobiles such as trucks, and shipping containers made it possible for food to be transported over greater distances (Smith, 2008, p. 450) to stores in places that were hard to reach by train. Fast food restaurants, multiplied with the growth of highways and some of the first fast food chains opened near free way off ramps (Schlosser, 2001, p. 22). Since then, fast food chains have "infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society and spread to every corner of the nation" (Schlosser, 2001, p.3). The wide availability of fast food restaurants, a type of processed food service, facilitates the ease with which consumers can access quickly prepared, economically cheap food that "makes life easier, not just for those preparing a meal, but also for those eating it" (Scholliers, 2015, p. 4). In order to reach the greatest number of customers, many companies and restaurants locate themselves in as many places as possible. Take for example, McDonald's, one of the biggest fast food companies in America. In his 2001 book, Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser recorded that at the time McDonald's owned 28,000 restaurants worldwide and 2,000 new ones were opening each year (p. 4). Taken more than a decade ago, Schlosser's findings are now considered outdated, but offer insightful information as to just how extensive one fast food company is in reference to its global reach. Moreover, just to provide an idea of how gargantuan the processed food industry is "three-fourths of world food sales involve processed foods, for which the largest manufacturers hold over a third of the global market" (Stuckler & Nestle, 2012, p. 1). The widespread availability of processed food so that people can find it nearly anywhere makes it convenient in regards to locality and the minimal time or energy needed to find processed food.
Another appeal of processed food is that it is economical in regard to both price and time. Affordability is a major factor when purchasing goods, especially when more than one product is being bought at a time as is common at the supermarket. When faced with the choice between fresh food and processed food, comparison of the prices over the years shows that "the prices of healthier foods have become relatively more expensive and the prices of unhealthy foods, those with lots of added sugars and added fats, have become cheaper" (Finkelstein & Zuckerman, 2008, p. 24) providing leverage for processed food because people reason that they are saving money by purchasing the cheaper option. Reasons for the decline in price of processed food are the result of federal subsidies. Two of the most highly used processed food ingredients include corn and soybeans. After the Great Depression the government established subsidies given to farmers who grow these crops, encouraging the growth of corn and soybeans rather than other fruits or vegetables, which in turn harvests an abundance and makes it extremely cheap for food companies to buy and use in their products (Finkelstein & Zuckerman, 2008, p. 24-25). Because there is less supply of fruit and vegetables due to the lack of subsidies, the price remains relatively high in comparison to processed food that uses subsidized crop ingredients. Even without the monetary value in mind, processed food offers what fresh food hardly does: "time saving, portability, handiness" (Scholliers, 2015, p. 4). Fast food restaurants in particular adopted the "principles of a factory assembly line" (Schlosser, 2001, p. 20), which helped make food more time efficient for consumers. The means by which companies can provide processed foods at low prices while fresh food prices may fluctuate perpetuates the purchase of processed food by consumers.
Fast food restaurants manipulate the environment in which food is eaten to promote unhealthy food choices. A study was administered to apprehend the significance of the environment in which food is eaten to understand how it contributes to food choices. Taking a number of families and placing them in either quite, undisturbed accommodations or loud and diverting venues, the study discovered among other things that "stressful situations…relate to increased consumption of unhealthy foods such as energy dense sweets and salty snacks" (Fiese, Jones, & Jarick, 2015, p.10). The stressful situations were those characterized by the loud and diverting venues, where the families were unable to eat normally due to noises or other hindrances. Proposing that the environment is the greatest factor for food consumption, the study limits the environment to that of a family meal. The study researches the family environmental effect on eating choices, which I propose extends to the greater environment that surrounds people in everyday life. Instead of a mere family environment, the greater environment in which people live that includes food advertisements and multiple processed food stores and restaurants affects the consumption of processed foods by inundating consumers constantly with busy noises and images, thereby creating a somewhat mentally "stressful situation" (Fiese, Jones, & Jarick, 2015, p.10) that distracts from the focus of eating food.
The processed food industry has utilized many methods of marketing including advertising, availability, convenience, and environmental exploitation to increase the consumption of processed foods. Indeed, the extent to which processed food companies have exercised these strategies has succeeded in implementing processed food in many Americans' diets. However, despite all of this evidence some people propose that there is actually an increase in fresh food consumption.
Some people argue that the consumption of processed food has decreased since the late twentieth century because of an increase in fresh foods. The proposition finds this justification in the numerical growth of initiatives such as farmers markets, noting that "between 1994 and 2014 the number of farmers markets in the United States jumped nearly fivefold, from 1, 755 to 8, 268" (Kiener, 2014, para. 18). While the escalation in numbers is quite impressive, it is important to recognize that this happened over a period of twenty years just to add 6, 513 farmers markets that were only open an average of eighteen weeks out of the year and served only around 2, 760,000 customers a week according to a USDA survey taken in 2000 (Payne, 2002, p. 4, 29). Compared to the growth of processed food as mentioned earlier using McDonald's as an example, Eric Schlosser wrote in his book Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal that "[McDonald's] opens almost two thousand new ones each year" (p.4). In terms of proportional comparisons, this means that it takes McDonald's a little over three years to accumulate more than six thousand restaurants compared to the twenty years needed for farmers markets. Therefore, this position is partially validated because it is true that farmers markets are increasing, suggesting that people are concerned about their intake of processed foods. However, the numbers aforementioned supporting this indicate that it is only a small proportion of the population and not a great number of people to truly suggest a paramount shift in the overall amount of consumption of processed foods.
After examining the factors contributing to processed food consumption, it can be hard to distinguish if whether or not the American lifestyle induces processed food intake or whether the production of processed food prolongs the American way of life. The relationship between the two is extremely significant because it affects the consumption of processed food, which is the main focus of the paper. Looking closely, historical events created both a market for processed food and processed food itself, and companies reacted to these changes by ensuring processed food would endure in the market, utilizing advertising, distribution methods and economic appeal. In this way, the consumption of processed food largely depends upon the continuance of the American lifestyle, where people lead a relatively fast paced life that is contingent on the convenience of products to make life easier overall. The American lifestyle and processed food consumption therefore share an entwined and co-dependent relationship that is enhanced and promoted by processed food companies. Unless radical or substantial changes in lifestyle take place, then the consumption of processed food is likely to last long past its expiration date.
References
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