What about food products where the manufacturer hides the health risks or deliberately introduces unnecessary additional health costs in the name of profit?
Despite the Democrat led war on rugged individualism, it has its place in society. If you depend upon corporations to take care of you, you're rolling the dice.
True. But it would be nice to have some honesty. An interesting consequence of Brexit here could be American corporations attracting British consumer to buy even less healthy product...
Even with fresh fruits and vegetables people don't know all the dangerous crap that goes into the farming of these products. The ONLY way to fully know the quality of one's food is to grow our own food. Short of this consumers will always be rolling the dice...
Society is rapidly moving to two forms of consumers-the lazy and the industrious. Capitalism is superb at delivering uniform results of products which are bland and made for mediocrity. Lazy people don't really give a **** what they're buying as long as it's convenient, fits their budget, and sitting on a shelf, while the industrious know that with work a whole world of possibilities opens up. Such as blue and red corn, ancient wheat, millet, beans and squash, all of heirloom varieties, that I hope will make up about 20% of my diet this year, along with mustard greens, onions, spinach, carrots, and a wide array of culinary herbs. They take a little work, but ultimately they're free and vastly superior to anything corporate producers could ever offer. And government never needs to get involved.
Yes, it's too bad organic growers here in the US allowed the big green orgs. to seduce them in supporting the USDA confiscation of the Organic label. Organic growers worked for over fifty years developing a a brand of locally grown organic food, now, organic foods come from big corporate producers. Some of it as far away as Mexico.
I doubt it amateurs can make big mistakes and poison themselves very easily. Corporations can monitor parts per billion, maintain better quality control, and have huge incentives to do so .
Amateurs also consume what they produce, corporate leaders can afford to eat something better. Corporate food production is less safe, surely, you are aware of the numerous food recalls each year.
yes and as non professionals who have no idea what they are doing I'm sure poison themselves all the time
I haven't been to Europe, so I'm unfamilsr with what you are trying to describe. I do think that American Restaurants offer more variety of choices then 30, 40 years ago. "Souless" Chains have their place within the realm of choices. They are consistent in quality and service and people like going in to a place knowing what to expect. I often eat a cheap and fast McDonald's lunch-hamburger, fries and a large soda. $3 meal. Not the best but I expect what I get. Just what I'm looking for when I'm buzzing around trying to get to my appointments. Outback is my choice for a sit down relaxing experience. Sorry..I know you aussies roll eyes at our Outback Hole in the wall family owned Mexican restaurants are king....and we eat Mex a lot. Ron's Diner has the best burgers and homemade fries. Pei Wei is good...and consistent for a quick meal on the fly. I good mix of chain and independent ly owned eateries are good.
It's always going to be a fight, because there's too much vested business interest, but we're gradually making progress. Hell, within 2 1/2 years of moving to Dallas I've transformed the dinner nights at my veterans club from your typical Sam's Club hamburgers and hot dogs to damn near fine dinning on a budget, with everything from traditional French to my hybrid German American meals(because apparently some people don't enjoy raw beef). Food is entirely the responsibility of the individual, and we've got to take it back. You're very right, as my hometown was notorious for dumping hazardous waste, from the corner of the yard for used motor oil to hundreds of millions of industrial waste water down the drain. Pretty sure we've still got the highest levels of Chromium 6 in our drinking water. But outside of unknown soil/water contamination, how does one poison themselves by gardening? Oh that's right, because there's a couple trillion dollars worth of economic activity that told you so. Hopefully by the end of this year my garden will be fully up and running, as the last few legal hurdles have been successfully repealed, and with the remodel done will have plenty of time to get back to zero waste. I'll supplement my garden by shopping at the local farmers market, getting meat and produce direct from producers at a fraction of the price, and all the food scraps from those home made meals will be fed to my chickens, who will then rapidly speed up the composting process. I'll compost the leftovers, and be left with a steady supply of compost to feed my garden of heirloom varieties naturally resistant to disease and pests. I'll no longer be supporting traditional grocery chains that throw out 60% of the produce they purchase, will produce no organic waste in my home, and probably have a sizable surplus to give to my elderly neighbors on fixed incomes, and it'll all be done with rainwater. All while showing the kids in my neighborhood that vegetables come in a very wide array of colors. Not to mention that in 3-5 years the shitty black clay I live on will be an easily worked, well drained, nutrient dense growing medium.
"Worth" is entirely subjective and if you pay $15 for this, it means that you think it is worth more than $15 or else you would not have bought it, right? This is a question that cannot be answered objectively, but what we can say is that if customers considered it to be worth less than $15, the producer woulld be forced to lower their price until they met the customers' demand.
In a competitive market place, the consumers make that decision and if you can come up with a way to attract enough consumers to pay $30 for a hamburger, so be it.
