Most responses concerned children, typically 6 years or younger, who didn't
connect meat with the farm animals they know, or vegetables with plants.
(Reminds me of Ogden Nash's encomium to the anonymous hero who first
revealed the artichoke as food.) This isn't too surprising -- children that
young probably have equally quaint ideas about where the plate came from
that they were eating off, or the chair they were sitting on, or the paper
the food had been wrapped in. Maybe the main difference is that makers of
plates, chairs and paper don't get so exercised over what kids don't know.
The responses about adults mostly were about their not knowing what kind of
plant, or what part of the plant, they ate as vegetables. Two people
who are allergic to wheat mentioned that some of their friends didn't
realize that this rules out pasta and white bread. However, since cooking
and processing deactivates some allergies, I'm not sure that this mean their
friends didn't realize that pasta and white bread are made from wheat --
"allergic to wheat" might well be interpreted as something less than
"allergic to ANYTHING made from wheat." Also, white bread is a special
case, because of the unfortunate designation "wheat bread" that sandwich
shops sometimes use for whole wheat bread.
My query concerned people's serious lack of understanding of where food comes
from, e.g., not knowing that (most of) it starts out as plants or animals
on farms. In summary, I would call the results underwhelming.
Which leads me to another possible area of ignorance: misinformation on the
part of people who, like us, have more than average interest in agriculture.
I have a small amount of evidence -- I won't say from where, because it
strikes a little too close to home! -- that some people have a seriously
exaggerated view of what they consider undesirable features of modern U.S.
agriculture, not realizing, for example, that the number of corporate farms
is tiny compared with the number of family farms, or that only a small
fraction of cropland (roughly 1/5) is treated with insecticides. Perhaps
it's
because more publicity always seems to be given to problems than to the
predominant situation (for example, when do you hear about the great number
of households consisting of a married couple and their children?) or because
people who are critical of something may unconsciously attach greater weight
to things that reinforce that criticism. Whatever the reason, if my
(admittedly poorly substantiated) impression is correct, then instead of
wringing our hands too much about how little the public knows about food,
maybe we should be more concerned with setting our own house in order.
William Lockeretz
School of Nutrition Science and Policy
Tufts University