3. Why did American food in the the 20th century become so much more processed than...

Why did American food in the the 20th century become so much more processed than food in other countries?

It depends on which countries you compare the US to. Compared to developed counties, there isn't a big difference that I'm aware of. Compared to less developed countries, it's because of the cost of labor, transportation, storage, and so on. Let me hit you with an illustration.

In the US, we have very few domestic helpers, inside or outside the home. Domestic helpers are very expensive. Instead of having a maid to wash dishes, wash clothes, wash the car, fetch raw foodstuffs, convert unprocessed foodstuffs into meals, we have dishwashing machines, laundry machines, car washing machines, freezers, pantries, and an enormous industrial infrastructure to process our food for us. We have machinery to convert wheat into the bread you get in cellophane at the supermarket, supertrawlers that process the fish that's in your freezer, and so on. We have an amazing transportation system that gets wheat from Oregon to the bakery in Florida, and fish from Mexico to your freezer in Delaware. It doesn't make sense to hire a $30,000 maid to wash clothes, grind wheat, and collect fresh fish from the pier everyday because we have machines for all of it.

In India or the Philippines, it doesn't make sense to buy a washing machine or a freezer or an automated car wash when for $50 or $75 per month you can get a domestic servant to wash your clothes by hand, walk to the pier every day for fresh fish, and grow chilis in your garden, dry them, and grind them for you.

So why did this happen in the US and not in India? We were more sophisticated at everything from banking (that transportation system needs capital) to engineering (machines are complicated) to family planning (more disposable income), and zillions of other things. Our unique talents and resources led us to industrialize and we have the inertia of that today. The unique talents and resources of Filipinos led them to use manual labor for the same tasks, and they have the inertia of that today.

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