Contemporary Food Technology

Contemporary food technology has directly affected both how and what America eats. The progression of technology in both the production and storage of our foods has allowed technology to take the driver’s seat of our cuisine. The production of fruit and vegetables has grown with the creation of better seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and the introduction of genetic modification. Food storage has changed vastly with the introduction of refrigeration as well as the production of foods geared towards the ease of both storage and preparation. Other storage methods have also come to use that change the way we eat, including canning and pasteurization. With the demand for large amounts of high quality foods year round, technology has kept pace by providing new foods and storage techniques that have changed the way we look at food.

The production of food from commercial farms has changed with the introduction of genetically modified products which has slowly led to the change of what is put on our tables. The first genetically modified crop to be granted a license to sell to the public was a tomato known as FlavrSavr. Produced by a company named Calgene, now owned by agricultural giant Monsanto, this tomato was modified to ripen without softening. The tomato was also more resistant to rotting by adding a gene that interfered with the production of an enzyme that caused the rotting. Instead of ripening the tomatoes on the vine, these tomatoes were picked and artificially ripened with ethylene gas (Bruening, G., and J.M. Lyons). When the modified tomato was finally ripe, it had the best color and a feel of quality due to its firmness. Along with its modifications to add resistance to rotting, these modifications helped not only boost yields but also sales. In Kitchen Literacy, Vileisis discusses how contemporary food shopping is “denaturing our senses”. She shows us studies have been done that show that the urban shopper today “eats with the eyes”, using indicators such...