In Defense of Processed Food
Anastacia Marx de SalcedoA gleeful demolition of the received wisdom surrounding processed food.
Taking in turn a scientific, feminist, economic, and public-health perspective, this book gleefully demolishes much of the received wisdom surrounding processed food. Anastacia Marx de Salcedo argues that most of these foods are fairly healthy, and their consumption is an undisputed boon to women’s equality, since women still bear disproportionate responsibility for home and children. Alternate food systems are doomed to be small-scale and unproductive, and can even harm economies as a whole. Can we blame processed food for the worldwide increase in obesity when the role of sedentary lifestyles has not been fully investigated? The author concludes by embracing packaged and preserved edibles in her larder, and encourages the reader to do the same.
A gleeful demolition of the received wisdom surrounding processed food.
Taking in turn a scientific, feminist, economic, and public-health perspective, this book gleefully demolishes much of the received wisdom surrounding processed food. Anastacia Marx de Salcedo argues that most of these foods are fairly healthy, and their consumption is an undisputed boon to women’s equality, since women still bear disproportionate responsibility for home and children. Alternate food systems are doomed to be small-scale and unproductive, and can even harm economies as a whole. Can we blame processed food for the worldwide increase in obesity when the role of sedentary lifestyles has not been fully investigated? The author concludes by embracing packaged and preserved edibles in her larder, and encourages the reader to do the same.
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Anastacia Marx de Salcedo offers a spirited defence of processed food from a feminist, economic, and public-health perspective.
'BBC Radio 4 'Thinking Allowed'
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Described as a 'gleeful demolition' of our current views on processed foods.
'The Bookseller Food & Drink Preview
Introduction
Chapter 1: What Is Processed Food?
Chapter 2: History of Processed Food and Twenty-First-Century Innovations
Chapter 3: An Age-Old Time Suck: Women and Cooking
Chapter 4: Subsistence Agriculture Chic
Chapter 5: The Elephant in the Room
Conclusion
Appendix
Sources
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
Anastacia Marx de Salcedo is a public health consultant and writer, whose features and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Salon, Slate and Vice, and on PBS and NPR blogs. Her books include Combat-Ready Kitchen (2015) and Eat Like a Pig, Run Like a Horse (2022). She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.