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Convenience food helps companies by creating growth; but what is its effect on people? For people who think cooking was the foundation of civilization, the microwave is the last enemy. The communion (共享) of eating together is easily broken by a device that liberates household citizens from waiting for mealtimes. The first great revolution in the history of food is in danger of being undone. The companionship of the campfire, cooking pot and common table, which have helped to bond humans in collaborative living for at least 150,000 years, could be destroyed.
Meals have certainly suffered from the rise of convenience food. The only meals regularly taken together in Britain these days are at the weekend, among rich families struggling to retain something of the old symbol of togetherness. Indeed, the day’s first meal has all but disappeared. In the 20th century the leisure British breakfast was undermined by the cornflake; in the 21st breakfast is vanishing altogether, a victim of the quick cup of coffee in Starbucks and the cereal bar.
Convenience food has also made people forget how to cook. One of the apparent paradoxes of modern food is that, while the amount of time spent cooking meals has fallen from 60 minutes a day in 1980 to 13 minutes a day in 2002, the number of books and television programmes on cooking has multiplied. But perhaps this isn’t a paradox. Maybe it is because people can’t cook any more, so they need to be told how to do it. Or maybe it is because people buy books about hobbies—golf, yachting—not about chores. Cooking has ceased to be a chore and has become a hobby.
Although everybody lives in the kitchen, its facilities are increasingly for display rather than for use. Mr. Silverstein’s new book, “Trading Up”, looks at mid-range consumers’ willingness to splash out. He says that industrial-style Viking cooktops, with nearly twice the heat output of other ranges, have helped to push the “kitchen as theatre” trend in home goods. They cost from $1,000 to $9,000. Some 75% of them are never used.
Convenience also has an impact on the healthiness, or otherwise, of food. Of course, there is nothing bad about ready-to-eat food itself. You don’t get much healthier than an apple, and all supermarkets sell a better-for-you range of ready-meals. But there is a limit to the number of apples people want to eat; and these days it is easier for people to eat the kind of food that makes them fat.
The three Harvard economists in their paper “Why have Americans become more obese?” point out that, in the past, if people wanted to eat fatty hot food, they had to cook it. That took time and energy—a good chip needs frying twice, once to cook the potato and once to get it crispy (脆) —which discouraged of consumption of that sort of food. Mass preparation of food took away that constraint. Nobody has to cut and double-cook their own fries these days. Who has the time?
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