How humanity has changed the food it eats

Preservation was the main reason for the processing of food by our early ancestors, and it served us well. However, ultra-processed foods in the modern age have pushed this concept beyond its natural limits, and have unique evolutionary problems.

Apart from the effects of excessive chemicals in the body, ultra-processed foods are to be blamed for misaligned teeth, small face, a large body, and crooked teeth.

• At the start of the 20th century, canned foods became popular in middle-class households.
• The ongoing wars and limited availability of fresh food opened up the market for frozen food.
• TV dinners became popular in the 1950s, not due to their taste(which was awful) but due to their convenience.
• On the farmers' front, innovative efforts like cutting out-of-shape carrots into convenient sizes drove up consumption of food that would have been otherwise thrown away.

Humans had to process milk to drink it as raw milk wasn’t easily digestible. They made it into curdled milk (curd), or cheese that could be stored for long.

Later cheese was processed further by adding natural yellow colour. Enzymes were added to milk to help it ripen quickly.

As manufacturers fine-tune the processing of foods and push it further, we need to be informed about what is acceptable and where the line has to be drawn.

Food processing innovations help the environment by reducing wastage and decreasing food insecurity, but the way food is ultra-processed nowadays begs the question of when innovation becomes deceitful to the average consumer.