Scientific Food #2

    Excerpt from:  Advice to a Young Scientist, P.B. Medawar h&r c.1979
    author preface includes; young equals old, him equals her.

CH.6  ~Aspects~of~Scientific~Life~and~Manners

~When~Science~Is~to~Be~Defended

      "..it is no longer taken for granted that science and civilization
       stand shoulder to shoulder in a common endeavor to work for the
       betterment of (hu)mankind.
                                .. Through science, you may hear, art has
       been replaced by artifice: portraiture by photography, live music
       by musak, good food by processed substitutes, and the old fashioned
       crusty loaf by a chemically bleached or otherwise "improved,"
       devitaminized, revitaminized, steam-baked, presliced parrellelepiped
       in a polyethylene shroud.

         This is an old story..

       It is not really an adequate defense of modern "food science" to
       say that the reason why the stuff is made is that people want to
       buy it; such a defense disregards the well-known economic principle
       that supply creates demand, particularly if the supply is
       accompanied by meretricious advertisements <*> creating the
       impression that a presliced bread substitute is in reality more
       natural and more deeply suffused by sunshine of a cornfield than
       that which we used to buy at the little corner bakery before it was
       pulled down to make way for the supermarket.
                                                     But to be fair to
       science; it was scientists themselves who demonstrated that bread
       made from whole natural grains and unpolished rice is much better
       for us than polished white rice or that bleached, devitaminized,
       revitaminized...and so on.

       But it is no use in expecting people to applaud a remedy for a
       disease they need never had."  32