Choose or constrain, the reasons of The Soft Protest Digest: Difference between revisions

no edit summary
No edit summary
Line 135: Line 135:
:Les néerlandais ont vu l’apparition de viande végétale jusque dans la chaîne dominante Albert Heijn, ainsi que des enseignes comme Vivera ou De Vegetarisch Slager (littéralement «le boucher végétarien»). Dans leurs gammes, ils promeuvent un régime à priori plus durable, sans enterrer implacablement les traditions culinaires néerlandaises : feuilletés à la saucisse, boulettes, saucisses panées (<i>frikandel</i>), <i>rookworst</i>, etc.<br>
:Les néerlandais ont vu l’apparition de viande végétale jusque dans la chaîne dominante Albert Heijn, ainsi que des enseignes comme Vivera ou De Vegetarisch Slager (littéralement «le boucher végétarien»). Dans leurs gammes, ils promeuvent un régime à priori plus durable, sans enterrer implacablement les traditions culinaires néerlandaises : feuilletés à la saucisse, boulettes, saucisses panées (<i>frikandel</i>), <i>rookworst</i>, etc.<br>
:Le pays fait d’ailleurs figure d’exemple en Europe avec plus des 3/4 de la population admettant ne pas manger de viande 1 jour par semaine, et 1/4 des interrogés montant à 3 jours par semaine<ref>Étude de l’Université de Wageningen réalisée en 2013.</ref>. En effet, la raison principale de leur attitude est le prix de la viande, qui explique par ailleurs pourquoi les pays en voie de développement adoptent «par défaut» un régime flexitarien<ref>Le régime flexitarien désigne un régime pauvre en viandes, qui revient à adopter un végétarisme flexible.</ref>. On voit ici comment le refus du compromis lors de bouleversements tels que la baisse du temps disponible pour cuisiner ou la réduction de consommation de viande, peut conduire à une mutation des habitudes culinaires, qui donne plus d’emprise aux industriels dans le choix de ce que nous mangeons.  
:Le pays fait d’ailleurs figure d’exemple en Europe avec plus des 3/4 de la population admettant ne pas manger de viande 1 jour par semaine, et 1/4 des interrogés montant à 3 jours par semaine<ref>Étude de l’Université de Wageningen réalisée en 2013.</ref>. En effet, la raison principale de leur attitude est le prix de la viande, qui explique par ailleurs pourquoi les pays en voie de développement adoptent «par défaut» un régime flexitarien<ref>Le régime flexitarien désigne un régime pauvre en viandes, qui revient à adopter un végétarisme flexible.</ref>. On voit ici comment le refus du compromis lors de bouleversements tels que la baisse du temps disponible pour cuisiner ou la réduction de consommation de viande, peut conduire à une mutation des habitudes culinaires, qui donne plus d’emprise aux industriels dans le choix de ce que nous mangeons.  
== ENGLISH VERSION (translated by Nigel Briggs) 🇬🇧 ==
===Introduction===
[[File:Azimut5.jpg|thumb|Thumbnailed image|A page of the article]]
:Using the prism of the notions of <i>choice</i> and constraint, this article attempts to describe the upheavals which shook the human food-processing system during the previous century.</br>
:Since the birth of agriculture, the technology of choice has allowed farmers, agriculturalists and breeders, to select and interbreed wild species to design (literally “designate”) species with the chosen and desired characteristics: domestic species.</br>
:At the end of the 19th century, the imperatives of the industrial revolution required a hyper-specialisation of species oriented towards saving time and space, something which articial selection cannot address. The food-processing industry then embarked on the technology of constraint, objectifying the living even more: mechanically, chemically and genetically modied species.<br>
:These transformations have not only had effects on the environment but also on the culinary culture of industrialised countries. So, on the modest scale of a trio of designers, how can the design of diets have a lever effect on the present controversial paradigm? This is the issue occupying <i>The Soft Protest Digest</i>.
==I. Artificial selection: choice==
[[File:Icono-chap1.jpeg|thumb|Thumbnailed image|®The Soft Protest Digest for Azimut]]
===a. Domestication of plants===
<u>Vavilov and the primeval  field</u>
:In 1921, the geneticist NikolaÏ I. Vavilov undertook a long journey through 64 countries for the glory of the USSR, a young State with revolutionary ambitions in every science and technology, including agriculture. Vavilov’s quest was the constitution of a new catalogue of domestic plants, with the aim of providing the USSR with the best tools for best adapting its seeds to the soils of its vast territory. On his way, the young geneticist hoped to establish a genealogy of certain species and, thanks to the tools inherited from Charles Darwin, to determine the origin of plants that have long been domesticated such as wheat, potatoes or corn.<br>
:Between 1926 and 1929, in the Fertile Crescent of the Mediterranean region, Vavilov discovered vast wild fields of spelt that had never been sown by the hand of man. So he imagined that this sort of “<i>primeval</i>” field been exploited by our ancestors, however his studies suggested that they must have been constituted of wild emmer. Indeed, by comparing wild and domesticated species, resulting from century upon century of human selection, Vavilov demonstrated that emmer was the first domesticated cereal: before barley, durum wheat or spelt, all originating in Eurasia.<br>
:This is how bread, the first transformed food, supposedly domesticated us and rendered us sedentary 10,000 years ago by making us select and sow the seeds of the most vigorous ears where no field existed. At the end of the 1970’s, all the seeds of the USSR came from Vavilov’s extraordinary collection.
<u>30 000 varieties of wheat</u>
:Of all the cereals originating in the Fertile Crescent, wheat has been articially selected by generations of farmers and botanists for its accumulated qualities thanks to an extraordinary characteristic: its large genome. Modern soft wheat contains the complete genome of three different species, thus accumulating no fewer than 42 chromosomes — twice as many as humans — through successive fusions and selections.<br>
:Among the first representatives of wheat, wild varieties such as durum wheat and emmer were domesticated to give birth to soft wheat 9,000 years ago. The more widely cultivated soft wheat varieties develop a soft grain that is the origin of flour; durum wheat varieties, which are better adapted to dry climates, develop a hard grain adapted to the production of semolina. In a certain way, wheat has used the <i>fork<ref>A fork is new software created from the source code of existing software when the rights granted by the authors permit it.</ref></i> methode conceived by web-developers, to modify and improve its genome to such an extent that each ear contains the genetic potential of the preceding species. Thus, artificial selection enables the desired qualities to be activated with the aim of adapting the species to an environment and in the same process conceive a new cultivar<ref>A cultivar is a variety of plant obtained under cultivation, generally by selection, for its reputedly unique characteristics.</ref>.
===b. Domestication of animals===
<u>The ocean to come</u>
:Just as the counters of French cheese shops demonstrate the diversity of dairy products, so the counters of fish mongers abound in different species: from shell fish and molluscs living on the seabed and reefs (crab, mussel, etc), to fish from the open seas (sardine, tuna, etc.) to fish from the seabed and reefs (sole, dory, etc.) and freshwater fish (trout, pike, etc.). But when we go to the butcher’s, what do we see? Many different cuts including offal, but generally no more than five species: cow (veal, bullock and bull but no other bovines); sheep (lamb and ewe included, but rarely any other ovine such as goat); chicken and turkey, often guinea-fowl and duck; pig (rarely any other suid such as the Corsican pig); and sometimes rabbit. Why such a difference in the number of species consumed? It would appear that the extreme domestication of terrestrial animals, begun more than 8,500 years ago, has led us to such homogeneity: industrialisation and the profitability of certain species favour — thanks to competitive prices — an agriculture which is “unique” in the current global context. Thus, the breeding and slaughtering of beef, chicken, pork and, to a lesser extent, mutton have been optimised,  outing any territoriality and, at the same time, homogenising human food.<ref>At the 2008 World Conference on Biological Diversity, the FAO indicated that “<i>only twelve vegetal and fourteen animal species now ensure the major part of food on the planet</i>”.</ref><br>
:For its part, the evolution of maritime fishing shows that, despite improvements to the technology — introduced in the 1950’s thanks to the Second World War — the amount of fish caught each year stagnates while demand increases. In the same way as over-hunting drove homo-sapiens towards domestication and breeding, over the last 2,000 years, there have been numerous attempts to domesticate aquatic species to be able to do without fishing: aquaculture.<br>
:The domestication of the ocean has hardly begun and new species are being produced, on the horizon of an aquaculture which is as “natural” as intensive agriculture: bigger  fish-farms in the open sea and species adapted to ever-increasing promiscuity<ref>In 2008, more than half of the molluscs and shell fish and 2.6% of saltwater fish consumed were farmed.</ref>. Conjointly, a homogenisation similar to that found at the butcher’s should occur on the fish counter in coming years — for proof: since the end of the 1980’s just two species of prawns already account for 80% of prawn-farming.
===c. Accepting the new===
:Once the division of labour had been well established, the choices of the farmer and breeder conditioned those of the rest of the population. Agriculture has undeniably offered these populations, which had recently become sedentary, a previously unavailable security of food supply: the consumption of wild plants depends on knowledge, geography and seasons; hunting is not always fruitful and the competition of other species is not negligible; seafood and fish can remain inaccessible during long storms.<br>
:Consequently, bread and dairy products could be preserved for several days and the work of just a portion of the population ensured the subsistence of the others, free to go about other business. However, the dependence of large numbers on the producers and lords relativises this food security at people’s disposal: they witnessed the replacement of “environmentally” caused famines by “anthropologically” caused ones.<br>
:For example, after the massive adoption of the potato in Europe, the great Irish potato famines show the limits of the “all potato” solution adopted to feed the populations of poor people in the 19th century. In 1845, in the context of a religious war between Catholics and Protestants, a wave of mildew provoked the fall of potato production in Ireland. Since England was opposed to the emancipation of Catholics in Ireland, it encouraged Irish Protestant merchants to continue exporting potatoes, while the famine increased. Moreover, Queen Victoria discouraged international aid thus deciding the fate of millions of people who died of famine between 1846 and 1851.
==II. Articial mutation: constraint==
[[File:Icono-chap2.jpeg|thumb|Thumbnailed image|®The Soft Protest Digest for Azimut]]
===a. The Green Revolution===
<u>Feeding humanity</u>
:In 1970, the American geneticist and agriculturist, Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize for implementing the Green Revolution. In his speech, he reminded his audience, with humility, that this great change in the agricultural paradigm, initiated in response to hunger in the world, was only a temporary success: <i>the Green Revolution has given humanity a short respite, nothing more</i>. According to the geneticist the menace of the <i>Population Monster</i> must be understood and addressed as quickly as possible to avoid the approaching catastrophe.<br>
:Shortly after the Second World War, the radical transformation of traditional agriculture towards intensive agriculture took its first steps in Mexico, spurred on by the Mexican president and with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation. Thanks to the selection of high-yield varieties, the major use of inputs<ref>Fertilisers or phytosanitary products (pesticides, for example) — sometimes synthetic — added during the production of foodstuff.</ref>, irrigation and mechanisation, Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat in 1951, even producing a surplus.<br>
:Armed with this success, the Rockefeller Foundation diffused the idea of the Green Revolution by multiplying agronomic research centres in southern countries, centres which are the mainstay of this initiative based on the know-how of geneticists such as Borlaug. They all work at developing high-yield, hybrid cultivars of plants (wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, etc), which earned Norman Borlaug his Nobel Prize for avoiding probable famines in South America, India and Asia after the global demographic increase of the 1960’s, the <i>Baby Boom</i>.
<u>Interests and collateral victims</u>
:However, these results should be relativised by the deleterious effects of this complete overhaul of the agricultural model: the pollution of soil by synthetic, oil-based products; the weakening of biodiversity by the generalisation of monoculture restricted to a few varieties in the place of local crops<ref>3/4 of the diversity of agricultures was supposedly lost during the 20th century according to the FAO.</ref>; the erosion of the soil by intensive and mechanised ploughing, and the rural exodus<ref>Farmers and farm-workers made unemployed by mechanisation leave the countryside</ref>. So, if it does not benefit peasant farmers, who does benefit from the altruistic Green Revolution? Without subscribing to conspiracy theories, by obliging the then developing countries to progress, the American agro-pharmaceutical (petrochemical) corporations increased their client portfolio, while preparing them to produce surpluses to be purchased at low cost..<br>
:The notion of constraint does not stop at the application of the intensive model: the American journalist, Mark Dowie<ref>Mark Dowie, American Foundations: <i>An Investigative History</i>, Cambridge, Massachu- setts: MIT Press, 2001, p.109-114.</ref>, advances that the Green Revolution participated in the Cold War against the Red Revolution through the actions of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. At the time, socialism offered to address the food security of developing countries with systems of public redistribution rather than with technological and economic systems coming from private industries. With its private investments and spectacular and rapid results, the Green Revolution was positioned as a demonstration of the superiority of the capitalist system at a time when rumours (confirmed, at present) of terrible famines in the USSR and China were crossing their frontiers.<br> 
:As for the sanitary impact provoked by the Green Revolution, it is incarnated by the agro-pharmaceutical corporation Monsanto. In the 1980’s, the lawsuits brought against Monsanto by numerous victims of Agent Orange<ref>Used during the Vietnam War to destroy the foliage of forests in which Viet Cong soldiers took refuge.</ref> and the herbicide Roundup pushed it to turn its activity towards vegetal bio-technologies. The corporation has created plants which have been genetically modified to resist pesticides<ref>Roundup-ready soya and plants resistant to glyphosate.</ref> or to synthesise pesticides themselves<ref>“Bt” cultivars MOM810 corn and MOM531 cotton.</ref>.<br>
:Besides, the Green Revolution has created a clearly laid out path for the commercialisation of genetically modified seeds in developing countries with regulatory contexts as poor as that of the United States in which the legal status of these seeds has been liberalised. Being, a priori undifferentiated from any other plant, by its nature as an organism comprising a DNA composed of the same amino acids, no regulation and no obligation to inform consumers is required by American law. Moreover, since these seeds are sterile to prevent their development in  ecosystems, farmers cannot use their fruit as seed<ref>It is even illegal for non-genetically modified “proprietary” seeds, the fruit of which is fertile. It should, however, be noted that their yield will degrade at each new generation., and, with these prod- ucts, enter into a cul-de-sac of dependence with regards to the corporations which sell them seeds and inputs.
===b. The meat industry===
<u>Globalisation and sanitary crises</u>
:The meat industry, one of the most profitable in the food processing sector, boomed in 1870 thanks to progress in transport such as <i>corned-beef</i><ref>Compacted meat without bone and cartilage, canned by J.A. Wilson.<:/ref> and refrigerated freight-cars — signifying the death of what we now call <i>short supply chains</i>. Enormous herds, kept far away from the public, became accessible to the tables of the United States and the entire world.</br>
:The lucrative cultivation of corn nibbled away at the lands of the Great Plains where the mythical herds had grazed, so the herds joined the ranks of off-soil factory farming after the Second World War. Confined in sanitised spaces, often isolated from daylight, the animals grow in a promiscuity which decreases their cost while increasing the risk of contagion in case of illness. So, to guarantee production, the pesticides which are essential to intensive cultivation of plants are sprayed over fish, chicken, pigs and cattle; reinforced by the administration of antibiotics produced by the same agro-pharmaceutical corporations.<br>
:In Quebec, in 1945, the <i>Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations</i> (FAO) is created, and the right to food added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In reaction to the shortages of the Second World War, food security is based on production, hygienism, and guaranteed in the 20th century by: <i>the rules of production</i> (law); the policing of markets (money); and health norms (information).<br>
:In parallel, the interests of the consumer becomes part of the food security equation, though late in the day: money having constrained law to the detriment of information. As early as 1986, with the <i>mad-cow disease</i> crisis, the public discovers that cows have been fed with feed made out from the carcasses of sick cattle, triggering an epidemic which resulted in the killing of 223 consumers. The awareness of the public in European countries thefore contributed — via numerous non governmental organisations — to new measures destined to control and regulate foodstuffs in the name of a “precautionary principle”.<br>
:As the 2013 horsemeat fraud has shown, there is still a long path to be trodden in an ultra-globalised context in which products are difficult to trace. The production of dishes with beef replaced by horsemeat was French (Comigel, Moselle), the meat supplier had labelled Romanian horsemeat as beef from the European Union, which had been bought by a Cypriot trader based in Belgium, and stocked in the Netherlands before ending up on European plates. The States remain split by various interests and are unable to generate efficient supranational institutions. 
<u>Water and meat</u>
:Though producing food of variable quality, the meat industry is also accused of calling on the use of too large quantities of water for a number of calories equivalent to the cereal industry. As an example, it takes 7-8 vegetal calories to produce 1 calorie of beef and thus 700- 800 litres of water to produce a kilogram of the same meat<ref>Study by the French national agronomic research body, INRA (Institut National de Recherche Agronomique).</ref>. If the meat consumption of the emerging countries were to match that of the developed countries, agricultural production would have to be increased by 70% by 2050 to meet the needs of about 10 billion human beings<ref>Study by the FAO</ref>: this is why western dietary habits are destined to change.<br>
:Taking into consideration the dynamics of climate warming, it is estimated that, by 2050, North and Sub-Saharan Africa will experience water deficit while the West (OECD) and Latin America will be in surplus. This coming situation poses the question of the worsening of food security problems if no diplomatic, ethical solution is reached in time. Consequently, the idea of investing water and energy in animals — with an energy content which is clearly inferior to the sum of food consumed to raise them — appears to be an unacceptable waste of water.<br>
:Breeding livestock can only be justified by recovering waste from the cultivation of plants<ref>Cattle-cakes made from oleaginous plants, straw and other waste which constitute fodder.</ref> as fodder. Only under these circumstances can breeding be essential to the renewing of soils through the supply of natural fertilisers.
===c. Transformed food===
<u>Low cost thickening</u>
:In 1968, an awareness of malnutrition in Mississippi led to the creation of a committee dealing with problems of nutrition. In 1977, it was incorporated into the <i>United States Department of Agriculture</i> (USDA), charged with promoting and subsidising American agriculture. The Department of Agriculture thus finds itself with an astounding conflict of interests, since it is charged with financing campaigns against obesity while also promoting industrial products saturated in sugars coming from the transformation of corn<ref>Corn constitutes 20% of the country’s cultivated surface with more than 250 million tonnes produced per year, with 90% being GMO.</ref> In fact, the vast majority of American industrial food contains diverse forms of corn: sugars (syrups and dextrose), thickening and jellifying agents (maltodextrin, gluten and starch)or fats (oil and margarine). The financial interests of the USDA are thus clearly on the side of the profits engendered by the subsidised cultivation of corn.<br>
:Throughout the twentieth century, the international food industry will have had dedicated its science to replacing most foodstuffs by subsidized low-cost products, without in the least disturbing the eating habits of the most conservative of consumers: corn in the United States, soybeans in Asia, and wheat in Europe.
<u>Ephemeral traditions</u>
:Whether associated with religious precepts or cultural norms, food prohibitions are to be found in every human culture and generally resist both the passing of time and economic imperatives (alcohol, pork and rabbit meat, raw meat, insects, unpasteurised cheese, etc.). Certain food processing corporations would tend rather to defend food obligations, in the name of a so-called “tradition”, associating themselves with conservative political movements which defend culinary traditions as a manifestation of their ideology: the consumption of <i>foie gras</i>, sodas or genetically modified products<ref>Not to be generalised: the most common strategy of most brands to promote their products is to engage the services of nutritionists.</ref>.<br>
:Which of these culinary traditions are to be defended? According to the <i>European Institute for the History and Cultures of Food</i> (IEHCA), any traditional product implies the transmission of a craftsmanship over a period of at least sixty years. To select traditional products of a given region, the IEHCA insists on the dating of the product, which allows a distinction to be drawn between marketing (branding the ingredient or technic as “old-fashioned”) and the actual historical product. A culinary tradition is a narrative which is difficult to trace to its source — historical documents may be lacking because the traditions often belong to micro-history. The attachment to culinary traditions verified or not, by a given population, is therefore related to the story she makes of herself; where national history, myths, family heritage and commercial stories are mixed together.<br>
:In 1996, the FAO supplements the mentions of the Declaration of Human Rights with the idea that food must be accessible to people in sufficient quality and quantity to satisfy "their nutritional needs and their food preferences". <ref>FAO World Food Summit 1996.</ref>. The cultural aspect (preferences) is therefore theoretically taken into account in food security.<br>
===d. Accepting violence===
:Following the Great Wars, consumers were in ignorance of the transformations described above, conditioned as they were by idealised images of agriculture dating from the 19th century and diffused by complacent advertising. Bottle-fed on “cows in the meadow”, “chicken in the farmyard“ and “sheep in pastures” proudly displayed on packaging, Europeans became disenchanted when contemporary conventional livestock breeding came into the spotlight with the mad-cow crisis.
:The ingenuity of modern men was not only employed in the service of the necessary salubrity, but also of a productivity which sometimes threatened the integrity of data, when the treatment itself did not become toxic.<ref>Meat washed in bleach or lactic acid, and products embellished with preservatives such as nitrites.</ref> Synthetic chemical solutions destined to eradicate plagues, which were feared before the 20th century, assumed the form of a new, more insidious threat<ref>Tested for presenting as little as notable effects on health; they provoke intense controversies, between consumers, (non) go-vernmental organisations and lobbyists, who fight over their accumulated long term impacts.</ref> which obliged the parasites to evolve towards more resistant forms.<br> 
:However, it would be out of place to put the mechanisms, which transformed our food over the last century, on trial, when one observes that they are intimately linked to progressive social policies. For example, the evolution of the condition of women has contributed to these transformations. Freed from domestic tasks and led to embrace professional careers, women have asked for the development of more rapidly cooked dishes. They have progressively replaced traditional dishes requiring preparations which  filled the days of women assigned to the home by a pastoral society. Nevertheless, the decrease in the time spent cooking has probably had a deleterious effect on the appreciation of shared meals and more generally on commensality<ref>Commensality designates the human act of sharing the meal with one or several people.</ref>. Indeed, when a meal requires the investment of time and energy, the person implicated expects guests to “honour” the work by taking time to share it at table. Failing this, the cook would feel insulted by the indifference of the guests, and would no longer bother to cook. Moreover, for children to participate in the preparation of dishes can be a formidable introduction to the adult world and the workings of the community. In the 19th century, the Utopian, Charles Fournier, went as far as putting the greediness of children at the heart of his Utopian community, the phalanx<ref>“In the kitchens of a phalanx[...],the child acquires dexterity and intelligence in [doing] tiny tasks on the products of two reigns in which he took an interest in: the gastronomic debates at table, and the agronomic debates in the garden and stables: the kitchen is the link between these functions”. “These [gastronomic] debates will only become established in so far as the child will be exercised from the youngest age in the renewnements of greediness, the dominant propensity of children [...] once [they become] passionate on this point, they will take part in the kitchen work” Charles Fourier, <i>Le Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire ou invention du procédé d’industrie attrayante et naturelle, distribuée en séries passionnées</i> [online], Paris and London, 1829, 3rd edition, p.222 and 224.</ref><br>
:Besides, decades of food industrialisation have inevitably impregnated the latest as well as the coming generations with “a deconstruction of the act of eating”, manifested as much in the reduction in the amount of time spent on eating at table<ref>Study by Paul Fieldhouse for the Institut Vanier de la Famille, in Canada. France does not share this tendency for decline, as a study of the French national statistics body, INSEE, shows.</ref>, as in the ignorance of children concerning their food<ref>In France, a study conducted on 8-12 year-olds (910 children) shows that 87% of them do not recognise a beetroot, 72% have no idea of the composition of pasta, and 40% do not know where crisps and chicken nuggets come from (study conducted by the Association Santé Environnement (ASEF) for the PACA region).</ref>. In the United Kingdom, a study conducted on 16-23 year-olds (2,000 people) shows that less than 50% know that butter comes from cow milk and 33% do not know the origin of hens’ eggs (study conducted by One Poll for the association, Leaf).<br>
:The devaluing of the act of eating induced by certain industrial modes of consumption opens the way for poor quality food consumed with indifference to one-self and others. Obviously, it is not enough to sermon the victims of this “junk food”, who do not cook since their jobs often forces them to spend several hours a day in commute while also nibbling away in the short time span of lunch. So how to reconstruct without stigmatising or infantilising?
==III. The Soft Protest Digest==
===a. Soft protests===
:As designers, we are faced with three crises which we wish to address at our level, without urgency or “solutionism”.
:— The first has been explained in the chapter dealing with the risks taken in the name of food security by the meat industry<ref>See:II.a and b.</ref> and, more generally, conventional agriculture; and which require an effort on the part of western countries: it is an ecological and environmental crisis.<br>
:- The second, approached in the chapter describing how the violence of the intensive system is inflicted upon the consumer<ref>See: II.b and d.</ref>, is a crisis of information on every food-related matter. It deprives consumers of the critical tools needed to make the political choice of what to put in their bodies.<br>
:- Next comes the cultural crisis: a devaluation of the act of eating, in which quantity and rapidity are advocated to the detriment of quality and the time spent in the kitchen and commensality<ref>See: II.c and d.</ref>: in the name of “convenience” beneficial traditions are degraded in favour of homogenised diets built around a few ingredients.
<br><br>
:It is within this logic that we founded a research group called <i>The Soft Protest Digest</i>. Until now, under the name, “Adel Cersaque”, we have applied ourselves to exploring certain modes of the existence of politics through debate at the table in two fictional institutions: L.A.S.T. and Giant’s Yard. The broad range of political controversies these devices would cover overwhelmed us. Thanks to our encounter with danish farmer and artist Nickie Sigurdsson, we realised the controversies which surround food were actually the most meaningful and that they could be found before our eyes. As the name indicates, the Soft Protest Digest intends to organise “soft protests” in various culinary forms in favour of durable diets. Whether this is a village, a city or a State, we will use storytelling to direct culinary traditions towards a durable diet, respecting the cultural legacy and emotions which link people to their gastronomy. The commitment of the local community, through meals, workshops and conferences, will be essential to our understanding of the socio-culinary stakes, in order to best address the “made to measure” transition towards a resilient diet appreciated by all.
===b. First context: the Netherlands===
[[File:Icono-chap3.jpeg|thumb|Thumbnailed image|®The Soft Protest Digest for Azimut]]
<u>A post-nature people</u>
:Relocating to the Netherlands, Jérémie Rentien Lando (member of Adel Cersaque) offered a pretext for the “Dutch edition” of <i>The Soft Protest Digest</i> to exist. The relationship of the Dutch to their food is of interest to us in so far as their culinary traditions and their singular conception of nature have paved the way for a complex-free industrialisation of their food.<br>
:Indeed, 25% of Dutch territory is situated below the level of the North Sea, and 17% is constituted of “polders”, these artificial lands resulting from the draining of marshes and lagoons of their water since the 17th century. The very existence of this part of the country thus depends upon the ingeniousness of massive dykes illustrated by the popular saying: “God created the World and the Dutch created the Netherlands”. In spite of the constraints linked to the poverty of these salt soils, livestock breeding and fertilisers gradually rendered them cultivable, particularly thanks to the production of adaptable crops.<ref>Potatoes grown in salty soils are under development in Texel.</ref><br>
:In parallel to articially increasing the amount of land, the Netherlands is also reputed for innovations in intensive and out-of-soil cultivation with its <i>Food Valley</i> — the agro-technological analogue of Silicon Valley — gravitating around Wageningen University & Research. The country is also the second global exporter of agricultural products (just after the United States) totalling 94BN Euros in 2016. Its secret lies in a vast complex of glasshouses allowing the production of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers all year round. This agriculture is destined to be consolidated with digitally managed vertical out-of-soil farms in which plants grow hydroponically in a sanitised environment (The New Farm at The Hague).<br>
:Thus, it is not surprising that the inhabitants of the country of Unilever do not romanticise the nature they have radically shaped to survive and prosper<ref>“A romantic yearning for untouched nature won’t help us to deal with pressing issues like cli-mate change, deforestation and declining biodiversity.” Website: Next Nature, “Philosophy”, “Our Vision”, Netherlands, 2019 (consulted in January 2019) In this, the Dutch constitute a <i>post-nature</i> people (Koert Van Mensvoort rightly prefers <i>next-nature</i> to this term).</ref>.
.
<u>A modest cuisine</u>
:To understand Dutch culinary culture, it is necessary to return to the end of the Dutch Golden Age (17th century), following which a succession of political crises, floods and famines radically transformed the cuisine of the rich merchants. Stews and soups of chicory, cabbage and potatoes became the daily fare of the Dutch including the bourgeoisie, who adopted the sober diet of the countryside, generalised in the 19th century by the <i>Huischoudscholen</i>. These public “domestic” schools, which became free in 1906, were first attended by women from the popular classes, then later by the bourgeoisie, between primary school and marriage. In these schools, women learned to become good, educated, reasonable and thrifty housewives — according to a typically protestant austere moral code.<br>
:This teaching contributed to providing the Dutch with a range of dishes which has not since evolved, including the frugal stamppot<ref>“<i>Stamp</i>” means “pestle” and implies that the ingredients are crushed: it is a mash of potatoes and other vegetables which vary according to preparation.</ref>. History thus explains how an industrialised country with a flourishing economy is left with an austere peasant cuisine, which calls upon the use of processed meats and pre-cut vegetables.
<u>A singular transition to vegetarianism</u>
:In 2013, the first human to eat a piece of meat cultivated in-vitro was a Dutch researcher named Mark Post. The costly production of the Post-Burger financed by Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, is symptomatic of the dutch's radical pragmatism, always ready to deliberatly consider potentialy controversial matters in relation to our future. Over the last ten years, an emblematic figure of Dutch public life, the designer Koert van Mensvoort, has set about to follow this idea with his collaborators of the Next Nature Network think-tank. Thanks to the tools of design fiction<ref>A term used by Bruce Sterling, dating from 2005, also designating critical design.</ref>, Koert has, amongst other things, questioned our relationship to genetically modified animals in industry (<i>Rayfish Footwear</i>), the processes of technological acceptance (<i>Pyramid of Technology</i>), and the future use of in-vitro meat (<i>Meat the Future</i>).<br> 
:This iconoclastic posture, as well as a liberal moral code with little care for traditions, should allow us to explain the position of the Netherlands as the leader in the growing plant-based meat industry. All efforts are today concentrated in finding solutions to the problem of the over-consumption of meat, as well as making it acceptable and appealing to the public. We can find plant-based meat on sale in the same aisle as animal meat; adversting campaigns display vegetarian meat dishes; and even legislation is pushed to be tolerant in regards to the use of the word “meat”.<ref> In France for example, a law forbids the use of this word to designate substitutes for meat.</ref><br>
:The Dutch have witnessed the appearance of plant-based meat even in the dominant Albert Heijn supermarket chain, thanks to brands such as Vivera or De Vegetarisch Slager (literally “the vegetarian butcher”). These brands offer and promote a seemingly more climate-friendly diet, without implacably burying Dutch culinary traditions: sausage buns, frikandel, roockworst or krokets can today be found in both versions: classic or meat-free<br>
:Moreover the country is generally thought of as an example with more than 3/4 of the population saying that to not be eating meat one day per week, and 1/4 only three days per week. The main reason for this diet is the price of meat, which, moreover, explains why developing countries adopt “by default” a “flexitarian” diet”.<ref>The fexitarian diet designates a diet which is poor in meat; this comes down to adopting flexible vegetarianism.</ref> Here we see how “making no compromise” during major upheavals such as the reduction of the time available for cooking or the drop in consumption of meat, can lead to a mutation of culinary habits, which gives the industry more power in choosing what we eat, for us.


==Sources :==
==Sources :==
Line 208: Line 330:
<li>Nathan Gray,  <i>The trend for flexitarianism: Consumers are reducing meat intakes, say Dutch researchers</i> [en ligne], Foodnavigator.com, Pays-Bas, 2013 [consulté en décembre 2018]. Disponible sur : https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2013/01/24/The-trend-for-flexitarianism-Are-consumers-reducing-meat-inta</li>
<li>Nathan Gray,  <i>The trend for flexitarianism: Consumers are reducing meat intakes, say Dutch researchers</i> [en ligne], Foodnavigator.com, Pays-Bas, 2013 [consulté en décembre 2018]. Disponible sur : https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2013/01/24/The-trend-for-flexitarianism-Are-consumers-reducing-meat-inta</li>
</ul>
</ul>


==Notes==
==Notes==