The Impossible Cheeseburger

By Richard L. Wottrich, richard.wottrich@gmail.com

Scientific American recently opined about the “impracticality” of a cheeseburger, referring to the “industrialized” global food industry making something that is seemingly natural into a factory-produced commodity.

I remember a time when you could visit your small neighborhood butcher and buy ground beef from a single animal. A local dairy provided cheese made from milk bought from a local dairy farm. The farmers market would have onions, lettuce and vine ripened tomatoes in season. The local bakery would have some hamburger buns hot from the oven. At just the right time of the summer these local ingredients came together and you could grill a cheeseburger. It was a special treat.

Today fast food outlets and globalized commodities have turned the cheeseburger into an advertising platform for empty calories. Ground beef comes from massive factory farms that floor plan over 70% of the meat in supermarkets nationally.  One burger can contain meat from over 50 animals. Cheese is overproduced and held in storage for years by the Dairy Industry, the most heavily subsidized food product in America. The onion, lettuce and tomatoes are produced out of season and shipped thousands of miles to be turned into toppings.

The price tags for the industrialized cheeseburger include:

Genetically modified crops that can stand shipping

Incredible overuse of water sources

Concentrated farming techniques that strain local environments

Fertilizer run off and resulting ocean “dead zones”

Carbon footprint of global overnight shipping of commodities

Deforestation

Nitrogen loading of water sources

This might be an acceptable price if it were improving the health and welfare of humanity. It is true that the explosion in food production has helped mitigate starvation worldwide, but malnutrition remains rampant. In wealthy countries obesity is at epidemic levels due to these “cheap” subsidized food stuffs. So we are left with an America that has over 45 million people receiving food stamps, while 100 million more are obese. Is this what we want?

Some estimates suggest that global food demand will double by 2050. The pressure to bring food to market will accelerate the industrialization of food commodities, subsidized for political reasons by various governments. Profit margins will be ever thinner and incentives to produce nutritionally valuable foods will lesson. This system will not be able to meet demand.

Local food sources supported by local buyers are part of the answer. Educating consumers about the nutritional value of foods will help them eat smarter and avoid empty calories. Removing tax subsidies for factory farms and commodities and replacing them with incentives for nutritionally valuable food sources would realign priorities and produce choices at market.

In short, think about what you are buying and feeding to your child or grandchild – act accordingly.