If anyone has been able to prove that there is a "food revolution" going on, I sure don't know anything about it. Without doubt there seem to be more people rebelling against the status quo of mass produced junk and convenience foods. But there is nothing "revolutionary" about rejecting the crappy food that permeates modern post-industrial life in favor of hand made, locally produced food. A revolutionary concept has to involve a more fundamental change in the way we think about things and advocating that sell and buy food at a farm stand rather than a supermarket does not measure up. For an idea to be revolutionary it has to at least have the quality of "newness" or originality. For example
The idea that it should not be assumed that real knowledge about nature is only found in texts (typically written by people who got their information from other texts) or by Divine Inspiration but can only be obtained by directly observing nature while systematically recording what one observes then looking for patterns in the data (i.e. Baconian Science), was truly revolutionary because it represented a new way of thinking about how knowledge ought to be obtained. The notion that people were not born with the right to rule (or born with the burden of being ruled) but instead were born with the right to self-determination, was an idea that was itself born in the period of The Enlightenment and eventually became the keystone of the revolutionary Constitution of the United States.
There is nothing new about the idea that the food we put on the table ought to be locally sourced and grown without pesticides. That's the way most people got their food for centuries. As recently as the 19th century most of the food sold in New York City came from organic farms upstate and on Long Island and New Jersey. Even the bloody fish was local.
When Dante Alighieri had the novel idea of writing in Italian rather than Latin, he helped to set in motion a revolution in literature that not only resulted in the replacement of Latin as the language of the literati, but was a major impetus for the flowering of The Renaissance. Which leads me to a second objection to the use of the term "revolution" to describe what I see happening to the way we think about and procure, prepare and consume their food.
In order for a movement to be a revolution it has to sweep away that which the revolutionaries want changed. In other words, a revolution is mostly a revolution in retrospect when some significant numbers of people realize that the old ways of doing things have been largely discredited and that the changes pursued by the revolutionary have begun to become part of the normal way of thinking. At this moment in time, more than 92 % of all american agriculture products end up as processed food, and the overwhelming majority of that food is grown hundreds of miles from where our largely urban population lives. Walk into any American home and open the pantry if you wonder if there is a food revolution going on and you are not likely to see any evidence of it there. Even my own pantry is loaded with stuff in boxes filled with food that is grown in many cases thousands of miles from where I live and I work on a farm!
This food revolution we keep hearing about is more properly characterized as trend towards adding a small percentage of locally sourced, organic, humanely raised, non-GMO, hand made food to a diet that is, and will continue to be, comprised largely of processed food made in factories by strangers.
I know this is going to sound terribly cynical, but when I see how much fame (and presumably lucre) has accrued to the most vociferous proponents of this idea that there is a food revolution at hand , I cannot help but think that at least part of their motivation for continuing to beat the drum in spite of any evidence that anything like the revolution they describe has occurred I cannot help but think of P.T Barnum and WC Fields and their brilliantly cynical takes on the critical thinking skills of the public.*
Finally, I realize that I oversimplified my argument and that I have not included all of the characteristics that have been attributed to the alleged "food revolution." I also, realize that I have reduced the concept of a revolution to only two qualities (the originality of the idea and its success in affecting change) and I apologize in advanced for my shallow presentation.
*There is a sucker born every minute. -PT Barnum
Never give a sucker an even break.- WC Fields
