It's About Time We Saw...

...exactly how the food we eat gets made.

Yes, as a human being and consumer, I demand that anybody who sells me food, provide me with a video as to how it is made.  I would like a law to be passed that ensures this.  I would like this done now.

Here is what I suggest: anybody who sells food in a supermarket or restaurant has to maintain a web page that shows a video as to how that food was processed and prepared.  Period. 

I want to know how a breast of chicken gets made, I want to know how a Powerbar gets made, and I sure as heck want to know how Hormel makes that awful stuff that I don't eat (but a lot of people do).

If you could go to a web site, click on the product you bought and saw a two minute video showing how it was made, I claim it would do wonders to educate people about what they eat.  It would be far far better than a nutrition information chart, and could perhaps solve the obesity problem in this country.

Why now?  Two words:  The Internet.

15 years ago, if you demanded to know how food is processed, you could call and ask and, at best, somebody would invite you down to god knows where to see it.  It would be a short phone call. There was neither a cheap way for the food company to make the video nor an even cheaper way to distribute it.

The Internet has made it easy to create, publish, find and view such content.  If a guy with a camera can instantly become a TV channel and a newspaper, well, it is about time video brought transparency to how our food gets made.

One $1000 camera would give all the quality you need in creating the content.  Thanks to all the tools we have, it is trivial to upload, format, and publish the video.  It is even easier to search and find it.  It can be done cheaply, in can be done easily, and it would be a gigantic value add to the people. 

Think of the effect of this kind of transparency.  People could discuss the videos, comment on them.  Experts can help people understand what's going on. 

We live in the digital media era where consumers are empowered to express their point of view.  We comment on news articles, we review restaurants, we publish newspapers, and we carry on conversations with thousands of people.  How can we accept not to know how our food is prepared?

It is about time we find a way to discuss the very system that provides us with the most important service of them all; nutrition.

I want the content out there, I want to see exactly what I am feeding my children and where it is coming from.

I don't want to watch an old Sesame Street video as to how a bottle is filled.  I want to see exactly how the chicken I eat is packaged, I want people to see how their string cheese is made, I want mothers to see how the Lunchables they stuff in their children's lunch boxes are made.

The point of this post is that there is no longer any excuse for us NOT to ask for this. The infrastructure is there to provide it and do it cost effectively.

If you want to be able to view how and where your food comes from, then put a comment on this post.  Let's get so many comments on this post that eventually, the lawmakers have to listen.  We have the power.

Comments

[yalin]

fully agree that it would be very informational and that as a consumer we ought to be able to learn more about the packaged food we eat

having walked through a number of food product manufacturers, though, i suspect consumers would react very negatively after watching some of the videos, which won't be in the interest of the manufacturers

and unfortunately it's not as regulated an industry as tobacco or alcohol, so it would probably take decades for the industry to be reshaped and for us to be able to watch chicken beheadings on tysonfoods.com

[ayse]

I was just reading a book about food ("Sound bites" by Alex Kapranos), he claims that a friend of his who worked at a Twinkie factory was told never ever to eat stuff that fell to the ground. When this friend was drunk one day, he did eat one of the fallen twinkies and totally got sick. He claims that the stuff they put in the twinkies to make them have such long shelflife is toxic until it's in the wrapper.

He could be full of BS, but I thought it was fitting with your post.

[Baris]

Ayse,
This is all the more reason to make sure everybody you know puts a comment here.

[Babak Azad]

Here here!

[Hakan Ener]

If this idea turned into regulation, it would be THE MOST EFFECTIVE ANTI-OBESITY MOVE EVER!