Tim Lang: 'Do you really want to eat these ingredients?'
Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at London s City University. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
I am troubled by the rise of nanotechnology in the food industry. It's being developed far in advance of public awareness. We've been here before: additives, irradiation, and genetic modification were all fixes promoted by industry which came unstuck on public opinion.
Advocates tout nanotechnology as a way to improve food, with technology in control. A different path is what I call "food democracy", where people are engaged in advance. The future is about realigning food with planetary sustainability.
While evidence of current unsustainability has grown, global corporations have been getting more control over food supplies. They say that they are accountable to us at the checkout, but consumers are barely aware of who these companies are, how they work or the scale of their market share. It's some of these companies who will be adding nanoparticles to your food and defining progress in your name.
This tension between food control and food democracy is not new. In the late 18th century, British economist and demographer Thomas Malthus painted a pessimistic picture of the future, where agriculture could not feed a growing population. In doing so, he posed an important question: what is the relationship between people, the planet, and our food supply?
That question is back. Today's European consumer feeds as if we had two or three planets at our disposal; an American eats as if there were four or five. Food is now a major factor in our footprint on the planet.
We waste and consume too much food in developed countries for multiple reasons, including massive oversupply, apparently "cheap" food and a runaway "choice culture". The result is a mismatch between people, food and planet. Politicians are nervous about it, but for decades they've ceded control to the private sector.
We must see nanotechnology for what it is: a technical cul-de-sac. It's another way to ratchet up hidden control in the food system. It's the nanny corporation controlling our mouths – the technology tail wagging the food dog.
