In Defense of Processed Food

Taking in turn a scientific, feminist, economic, and public-health perspective, this book gleefully demolishes much of the received wisdom surrounding processed food. Anastacia Marx de Salcedo argues that most of these foods are fairly healthy, and their consumption is an undisputed boon to women’s equality, since women still bear disproportionate responsibility for home and children. Alternate food systems are doomed to be small-scale and unproductive, and can even harm economies as a whole. Can we blame processed food for the worldwide increase in obesity when the role of sedentary lifestyles has not been fully investigated? The author concludes by embracing packaged and preserved edibles in her larder, and encourages the reader to do the same.