Rachel Laudan’s “In Praise of Fast Food” is an evaluation of culture. She eloquently puts forth the way modern day society wishes to be like our ancestors, consuming fresh and natural foods. Unfortunately, the healthier old days are just a made up illusions. “For our ancestors, natural was something quite nasty,” she states. (Laudan 332). The article contains numerous reasons why our ancestors found ways to make their food more edible with additives and preservatives in the same way we do today. Unlike our ancestors, who died early in life because of their diet or from eating inedible food, modern day society has found ways to make food safer through industrialized additives and preservatives, which has abled us to live longer lives. Moreover, today’s society no longer has to spend all day in the fields or in the kitchen just to prepare meals. “If we do not understand that most people had no choice but to devote their lives to growing and cooking food, we are incapable of comprehending that modern food allows us unparalleled choices not just about diet, but of what to do with our lives.” (Laudan 336). Industrialized food allows today’s society to take …show more content…
Being an historian, she is able to provide knowledgeable arguments proving today we have a false sense of the way things really were. “If we romanticize the past, we may miss the fact that it is the modern, global, industrial economy … that allows us to savor traditional, fresh, and natural foods.” (Laudan 337). What was available in the old days was dependent on the area you lived, and what could be grown during certain times of the year, limiting different food choices. With modern foods, there are no limits of what is available at any time of the year. Today’s choices of when to use fresh over processed foods, or visa-versa, is what enables us to create meals in a productive manner with what time we have available, not what food is