| Sadly, agreed. I love the idea of being self-sufficient and permaculture, but even myself as someone who grows vegetables on an allotment and batch-cooks nearly all my meals at home, I can't ignore the idea that, just as with agriculture, it's way more efficient to prepare food at scale than it is at the individual level -- unless we all shifted to just eating the food as raw as possible. If we look at the full chains of: - Equipment distribution (production and delivery of large domestic kitchen appliances) - Energy distribution (residential delivery of electricity/gas needed to power kitchen appliances, and water) - Space required in each home for a reasonably kitted out kitchen (more space to heat in winter, more materials used in building) - Ingredients and materials distribution (including the production and packaging of intermediate food products made from raw products, since everyone's cooking with canned things, packaged things, cured meats, pastes, pasteurized things, grains, ...) The restaurants, fast-food chains and ready-meal prep companies are able to operate on economies of scale that are vastly more efficient than the individualistic, nuclear-family domestic "you must cook home-made meals for your family, friends and guests" culture. We've made eating out seem either: - Decadent (cost) - Unhealthy (take-out and fast-food) But neither of those things need to be true. The problem with scale is the storage aspect - preservatives we use to reduce spoilage etc., which arguably affect the healthiness of the food. "Just-in-time" distribution works well until it doesn't (see: COVID). But I'd argue that the individual household probably spoils more ingredients than industrial production does - that just isn't evident; everyone has their little compost heaps or things go to landfill. Old ingredients go mouldy at the backs of cupboards, just as things run out their shelf life in supermarkets. Maybe the raw-food vegans and paleo bros are on to something... |