I was really surprised to learn recently that organic isn’t actually a new concept — and neither is the idea of healthy eating.  Some of the terminology may be new, but the ideas themselves aren’t.

My mom told me that when her mom — my grandmother – was just married, around World War II time, the military would put the wives through nutrition and cooking courses to teach them how to prepare healthy meals.  She told my mom that even then they talked a lot about natural ingredients and nutritional content, just like they do in culinary arts institutes today, and just like they were doing in the 1980s when my sister and I were little.

What surprises me is that decades of organic and similar movements have produced so little change in the food industry.  For instance, despite the outcry against things like trans fat, there is still an astonishing number of highly processed products on the shelves of our supermarkets.  And despite the awareness of high fructose corn syrup, the vast majority of “kid foods” and sodas still have it in them.

Change seems to be coming about, though, albeit slowly.  Perhaps even if organic isn’t really a new concept, the modern organic movement will finally put enough pressure on the industry to make them change their practices.

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