food for thought.
Modern middle-class kitchen staples (So healthy! So now!) are implicated in crimes against the planet. Food crazes in the West lead to rocketing demand and spiralling prices. There’s then a rush to cash in and produce more in the developing countries where many of these crops are grown. Before you can say “soya latte”, large areas of land are turned into monocultures. That devotion to growing a single crop can leave the plants – and the land’s inhabitants – vulnerable to the vagaries of crop failure.
And if that weren’t bad enough, many of these trendy products should carry extra environmental health warnings. It’s time to take off our Instagram-tinted glasses and look at the bigger picture.