Food, Technology and Class the Digestive Divide:

Food, Technology and Class

The digestive divide:

Food, technology, and class and the changing eating habits of Americans and people around the globe

Much has been written about the 'digital divide,' or the fact that poorer people tend to have less access to cutting-edge technology and are thus disenfranchised from many educational, vocational, and personal opportunities for self-improvement. However, this digital divide is also seen in the different eating habits of the social classes, only in reverse. Today, wealthier people have access to simpler, healthier food that requires less technology to produce. Once upon a time, bitter greens like arugula and fish like salmon were the foods of the poor while the rich dined on heavily spiced meats and alcohol. Today, the equation has been reversed. Wealthy people can afford to eat organic produce and wild-caught fish. But walk into any disadvantaged neighborhood and you will find a bodega that is filled with highly sugared beverages and snacks -- most of which are marvels of food technology with unpronounceable ingredients (Winne 2008: 176). There is likely a liquor store just around the corner.

This reversal of fortune suggests that technology matters less in terms of dictating what people eat than their incomes. Sometimes, cutting edge food is fashionable while on other occasions being slim and fashionable and healthy is of interest to the elites. This determines access to food, food prices, and quality and has a substantial impact upon people's health. In the case of the poor in America, eating habits and the availability and affordability of good food is causing poorer people to become sicker, fatter, and die younger than their wealthier counterparts.

As chronicled by Blatt (2008), farming is becoming an increasingly expensive endeavor and few family farms exist today. Most are major agricultural conglomerates that are still highly dependent upon government subsidies. Fresh fruits and vegetables are, in general, on a calorie-by-calorie basis, far more expensive than sugar, with the exception of products derived from soy and corn. This technological innovation does not enable Americans to eat better as a whole, but ensures that there is a cheap, steady supply of food which is high in calories and low in nutritive value. Even commercially-grown produce is expensive relative to its cheaper, sugary counterparts -- a Twinkie costs less than an apple and has three or four times as many calories. And organic produce is far more expensive. Both are also less accessible to people living in low-income neighborhoods. The 'lowest tech' method of obtaining healthy vegetables with the least amount of pesticides at Whole Foods is ironically the least available method of sustenance for the poor.

Sugar became a mainstay of the diet of the poor relatively quickly. By 1900, this food, although once very rare and the choice of the elites to dine upon, became the source of one-fifth of the calories of the English diet (Mintz 1986: 6). Today, the American diet is dominated by sugar to an unprecedented degree amongst all social classes, but it is amongst the poor where sugar is particularly noteworthy in its presence. Fast food, soft drinks, and cheap and convenient sources of calories all contain sugar. Sugar and highly processed forms of corn have replaced more traditional ways of eating. The traditional diets of most nations, according to Stanley Mintz, have usually been framed as a starch complemented with spices, meats, and other supplementary (usually more expensive foods). While the surface appearance of the diet of America's poor may appear more varied than that of an Irish peasant surviving on potatoes, it is even higher in sugar and starch and arguably less healthy even though it is technologically derived rather than dug from the ground.

It is true that there is a biologically-oriented preference for sweetness, and people of all classes can have a 'sweet tooth' (as well as a preference for salty and fatty things to some degree) (Mintz 1986: 16). Also, there are many technologically sophisticated methods of producing 'high-end' food. And during the middle ages and other eras of history, the rich tended to eat sweeter, richer foods. Gout was once called the rich man's disease, and there is a popular image from the 19th century of orphans and the poor eating very little, while the rich gorged themselves on artfully-prepared meats and sweets. But today, it is more likely that someone who is poor can afford a very technologically-engineered sweet cereal and a Happy Meal at McDonald's for their child, versus getting a much plainer, more expensive, but ultimately healthier salad.