The Facts

Do you know what’s in your food? Most of us think we have a fair idea. But today I’d like to tell you what I know – because I’ve been researching the facts.

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 An apple – looks nice enough. Fresh. Natural. And our ancestors have been eating the fruits of the trees for 200,000 years – it must be good. But what do we really know about how this apple is produced? We know it grew on a tree – but how did the tree grow? It grew in the soil. In the dirt. Fertilised by faecal matter and the remains of dead animals. That’s disgusting.  Out in the open air, exposed to the elements, crawled over by insects and pooed on by birds, absorbing all the pollutants that wind and rain can bring. And it doesn’t stop there – how many pairs of hands has this apple been through before I chose it in the shop? From the fruitpicker, to the sorter, the packer, the truck driver, through all the shop staff to the check-out operator. All those pairs of hands – all those sneezing, coughing, hoiking hands. It really is disgusting.

By contrast, a packet of Twisties. 

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Produced in a sterile environment, from highly processed ingredients – some of them completely synthetic. Untouched by human hands, completely controlled and regulated, and hermetically sealed in the bag. It doesn’t matter what happens to these in transit – they’re protected. And they’ll stay fresh in here til the use by date. That apple – give it a week and it will be looking pretty sad. Who knows how long it’s been since it was picked? 

Would you really want your children to eat that? 

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But it’s not just about our own health and wellbeing, is it.

It’s about the health of the planet. Because we’ve just about pushed things as far as they can go. The ecological footprint of our wasteful food production methods is enormous. In fact, it’s been estimated that at the current rates of consumption we'll soon need ten planets to sustain our habits. Ten planets. That’s ten planets worth of apple orchards. Ten planets worth of sheep and beef farms. Ten planets of apartment blocks, leafy suburbs and shanty towns. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Imagine yourself living in a 50-storey tower block, in a nice little flat…knowing that just downstairs on the ground floor was your means of food production. A clean, regulated, efficient food factory, supplying your building. We would cut down on our use of resources, we would cut down our use of fossil fuels. Solar powered plant and no need for freight. The food’s not going anywhere, just straight upstairs to you. No more grocery shopping! And what’s more, the waste energy from the plant – the heat – would light and heat your home.  We could preserve our wilderness areas like this. By making our urban areas more dense, we would use our available land more efficiently. We could decommission all the farmland, and put it to a much more practical use, building more and more of these tower blocks – like vertical villages. It would be a Utopia.

Obviously not everyone would be content with the vegetarianism that this change of lifestyle implies. And research into synthesising meat from stem cells is still in its infancy – it’s early days. If you feel you need to have animal protein in your diet, I ask you to consider this. In March last year there were 10,260 people in prison in this country. 10,260 prisoners. They all need feeding. They all need housing – the real estate for our prisons is considerable. This is land that could be put to much better use. 58% of those prisoners were convicted of a violent crime: assault, rape, murder. That’s nearly 6,000 people. Do they have human rights? Some say human rights are a privilege that they forfeited, when they chose to behave in such an antisocial way. Such an inhuman way. 

I say we eat them. 

More protein for you – more resources for society at large. Will there be a drop in violent crime? Possibly. Will there be an increase in vegetarianism? It wouldn’t be at all surprising. Are either of these bad things? 

It’s a win-win situation. 

A no-brainer.

It’s the future.

To conclude, let me ask you a question. What kind of future do you want, for your children, for your children’s children? For (environmental conditions permitting) your children’s children’s children? Do you want a bright, clean, modernised future, regulated and consistent? Or a world mired in the past: shambolic and unpredictable, with its roots in dirt and decay? 

 You choose.