Formerly Known as Food

by Kristin Lawless

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: I was raised in a household where I learnt to be conscious about food since I was a child. My parents rarely allowed my sister and me to eat any candy until we were in fifth grade at least. We were raised on brown rice, wholemeal grains, organic produce and home cooked food as much as was feasible. Moving to Singapore made it a little tougher though, as we no longer were able to grow fruits and vegetables in our own garden. Most of the food here is imported, which makes it even harder to "shop local" and you need to know the various legislations of the countries of origin if you care about chemical treatments, additives, whether your food is GMO or not, etc.

Given that food, food containers, food preparation and such have always been in my consciousness, a fair bit of information in Formerly Known as Food wasn't new to me. I was fully aware that food has changed a lot over the past centuries and at an accelerated pace over the past few decades. However, the outlook on nutritious and healthy consumption is a great deal bleaker than I had imagined and I already thought it was bleak.

While the book's premise was more on analysing the changes in food, I wish Lawless had also focused on practical steps the average consumer can take. She did online some solutions but they were rather idealistic and short of moving to a remote plot of land and growing your own food, there's not much more a reader can take away than that they're doomed. Well, unless they're influential politicians who are able to reverse some of the problems with common policies.