> Sadly, buying unprocessed food and/or cooking is often more expensive and not scalable to cover every single individual or family on this planet.
I've heard this line a few times, and people say it as if there will be billions more people starving in Africa if processed foods didn't exist. This simply isn't true though, processed foods are only an issue in highly developed countries.
In developing countries poorer people eat very few processed foods. Why? Because it's cheaper to buy raw foods. People eat what is in season and often what they can grow themselves or some neighbour has grown. Yes they probably eat something similar every day, but so what, it works for them.
I live in a small, not terribly well off, European country where meals are typically prepared from scratch. In the supermarket the most processed food you will find is a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps. We don't have 'ready meals', if you want to eat say a fish pie, you need to buy the raw ingredients and make it yourself from scratch.
I've heard this line a few times, and people say it as if there will be billions more people starving in Africa if processed foods didn't exist. This simply isn't true though, processed foods are only an issue in highly developed countries.
In developing countries poorer people eat very few processed foods. Why? Because it's cheaper to buy raw foods. People eat what is in season and often what they can grow themselves or some neighbour has grown. Yes they probably eat something similar every day, but so what, it works for them.
I live in a small, not terribly well off, European country where meals are typically prepared from scratch. In the supermarket the most processed food you will find is a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps. We don't have 'ready meals', if you want to eat say a fish pie, you need to buy the raw ingredients and make it yourself from scratch.