It seems odd that so many people look upon food as something connected with moral values rather than as fuel, preferably pleasant fuel, that the human frame needs to keep alive. Take, for instance, the so-called health foods. It was the young radical Left which gave the world the message of the moral superiority of soy beans, sea salt and carob flour—the use of which put you automatically on the side of the elect. On the other side, just as many people felt that anything advocated by the long-haired, sandaled or barefoot must be automatically bad.
As the sound and fury die down, the realization remains that there are more reasonable ways of eating than the ones most of us practice. These ways are no different (apart from the use of some products) from those practiced at the turn of the century, before large mechanized farming and modern food production and preservation methods. People cooked and ate what was available seasonally, not only in the countryside but everywhere. Today, the idea that fresh foods freshly cooked taste better and are more nutritious than precooked, prepacked and even preserved ones is coming back into vogue. Such foods are much cheaper, and you don’t have to stop at obscure health food stores to get them. You do not need the strange, expensive specialties sold there with the all-redeeming label “organic,” no more than you need frozen “gourmet” specialties like sauced vegetables or “foreign-cuisine” type dinners.
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