The Secret to a Long Life
My third book, Ending Hunger, is about many things, but as its heart is the story of agriculture, a series of ingenious technologies that transformed humanity. In just 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, farming turned a few million middle-tier hunter gatherers, scrapping for survival and frequently dying of hunger, into the most dominant species on the planet. Although humans could almost certainly live reasonable lives without most of our industries, technologies and inventions, if it wasn’t for agriculture, we would all be dead within a few short, violent weeks.
But there is another series of less-heralded technologies that happened in parallel to the development of farming, without which those breakthroughs would have had a far smaller impact. Alongside growing crops and raising livestock, humans discovered several ingenious methods of keeping food nutritious, safe and edible, long after it had been harvested. If all food had to be eaten fresh, diets would have been extremely limited for much of the year, and large areas of the planet uninhabitable.
The preservation and storage of food is one of humankind’s most significant technological breakthroughs. It was only when we developed the ability to make our food last beyond the growing season, that we could rise above the constant threat of seasonal starvation that held our species back. Drying, salting, fermenting, or baking food stuffs made it possible to ride out times of hardship. When seasonal bounties could be stored and traded, thriving agricultural communities became viable. Food preservation led to the development of permanent dwellings, creating communities that could plan for the future. It made large scale trade in food possible, leading to cities, ports, economies, wealth, and empires.
Things did not always run smoothly. Attempting to store produce for months can be dangerous, even deadly. The methods of food preservation used today grew out of a wild, unregulated system, where poisoning, adulteration and fraud was rife. But a series of pioneers found ways of making food last in a way that was safe, reliable and tasted good, building their fortunes by gaining the trust of consumers. In the Victorian era, many achieved extraordinary success, creating the first ever consumer brands and transforming the way the world eats. Although the debate continues to rage about how positive these changes were, there is no doubting their significance. Preserved food enabled us to conquer the oceans, survive the arctic’s endless nights, and harness productive land hundreds of miles from home.
Today, processed foods are frequently reviled and demonised, the preserve of Michael Pollen’s infamous middle aisle, and we are frequently told we should avoid them to be healthy. But dried, tinned, salted, jarred, frozen, chilled, pickled and baked foods have allowed the world to experience a huge range of different ingredients, dramatically improving diets, and helping to conquer global hunger. It is perhaps true that some of the technical limitations of food preservation have shaped the food system in a particular way, sometimes favouring easily preserved commodities to the exclusion of healthier, more perishable options. But it is also true that without these techniques, starvation, hardship and malnutrition would be far more common.
Rather than demonising long life foods, as so many modern food commenters are inclined to do, we should probably be trying to embrace and understand them, welcoming the ways in which they can improve our diets. The fact that biscuits, milk, tomatoes, fish fingers and soup can be eaten months after they have been produced is testament to humankind’s remarkable ingenuity. Prolonging the life of food is one of our least appreciated and most important miracles, up there with agriculture, fire and language. It is only with the privilege of our wealth and modernity that accessing this miracle has become a source of shame.