For many civilizations prior, people have lived purely off of the land. They have reaped what they have sowed. Farming of crops produced food for the dinner table. Milking of cows produced dairy products for consumption.
But now a new concept of food has emerged, one that is foreign to all civilizations known to man, one that has little to no nutritional value and only thrives by the capitalist’s dollar.
This concept of food is not food at all.
It arises from unnatural conditions, characterized by atrocities like raising chickens without feathers, feeding livestock steroids—lab medicines—to appear extra plump, breeding animals unnaturally and in tight corners, and forcing animals to reside in the midst of their own feces.
This concept of tortured food is not at all African. It is western.
It is hard to come by real food in the west. Western companies are hell bent on using products that are “genetically modified,” in other words, not real food, but made in science laboratories to look like real food.
This fake food emerges from fake seeds that are also made to resemble real food. Monsanto is the most popular label that dominates such charlatan food.
Not all residents in the west are advocates of poor health from false nutrition. Some are determined to fight those who have no decency and no care for the well-being of human life.
These food warriors must go to great lengths to find real food, that which is grown in the ground and not in the science labs. With all their talk of riches and development, western residents have trouble finding real food that has any resemblance to the foods that we grow everyday or purchase from market women in Africa.
Food warriors in the west, who are determined to live with access to real food, regularly engage in healthy activities like exercising, walking instead of driving, and drinking water. These food conscious westerners would like to know if their government in the west is manufacturing foods in natural or unnatural conditions.
They have attempted to have foods labeled, so as not to confuse their food-conscious comrades who are concerned about what they might be ingesting.
They advocate for labels like “genetically modified” to distinguish food that is not real food but only concocted from artificial seeds. The “organic” label accounts for food that is made with limited pesticides. The “free-range” label marks chicken and other animals that are allowed to roam and grow naturally like animals should if they are treated like living beings. Food that is not labeled “free-range” is kept in horrid conditions. These animals have not had good lives on earth and should be eaten with caution, if at all.
It might be surprising for Africans to know that, in the west, the struggle to find real food that has not been scientifically manufactured in a lab or grown from fake seeds is remarkably difficult. Some residents are so frustrated that they resort to creating their own vegetable and fruit gardens in their backyards and their communities. Others raise chickens and livestock in the same way.
Unfortunately, in this dire situation of supporting best health and well-being practices, western governments too often side with big corporations that are only invested in profit, churning out man-made food and not relying on nature to provide human fuel.
The problem with the west’s attachment to false foods, and where it interacts with African interests, is globalization.
Fake food products from western nations stealthily filter into African countries. When African citizens are presented with foreign items like chips and soda and cookies, they are often fooled by aggressive marketing campaigns that suggest these products are actually food. They are not food, but something else, in fact, so un-food-like that is unwise to consume them in large doses.
Western companies easily exploit Africans who are beguiled by new “food-like” options. The suspicion that these shiny products are actually not food never crosses the minds of good-hearted people who assume even the fox has pure intentions.
Africans should be cautious of developing the “food” habits of Westerners.
That would mean avoiding microwaves that emit harmful cancerous waves and any product that is consumed in seconds without any knowledge of the process that was undergone to bring the food-like to the shelves.
There is a reason why food comes from plants in the ground, fish in the sea, and animals roaming the land. There are no shortcuts to real food that can be imitated in even the most prestigious of labs.
The search for real food in the west has been rendered impossible with thousands of companies purporting to offer sham nourishment under the guise of real food. Let us not fall for the same trick when that fool’s good is haggled upon our doorstep.
Yes, and they want to bring their plastic foods into Africa. They should keep them there in the west since everything they do is only to make money, money, money, money! What people!
Let us protect our waters, lands, and seas from American capitalists, they only want to destroy all of mankind.
I do not put anything past them. I do not put destroying all mankind past America’s capitalists – spreading Ebola, war, conflict and death. Now they spread bad food so they can make money off of our sickness. Look at America and their health issues and how much money the capitalist health system makes out of it. We do not want that in Africa.
When people start playing with food, you know they didn’t come from here. They are aliens. Money, no matter how much you give, would still not make me eat chemicals for food. The extent to which the West uses violence and war to get their way in the world needs to be put in its proper perspective and watched. Monsanto is the evil daughter of the megalomaniac capitalists who want to turn the world into their own property.
Let the capitalists try. Let them. For many have tried to turn the world into thier property and all, all have failed. So le them try. Try they can try.
“There is a reason why food comes from plants in the ground, fish in the
sea, and animals roaming the land. There are no shortcuts to real food
that can be imitated in even the most prestigious of labs.” That sums up the law of nature. To hell with the capitalists from the west who think they can use their dollars to buy us. To hell with them.
The uprising of a revolution to stop the influx of GMOs and Monsanto’s plastics and chemicals into Africa must begin. Let us start by calling GMOs and GMFs Plastic Diets. They are not food. They worse part is that they are trying to even own our seeds. Can you imagine. They are trying to won our seeds. That is a security issue.
Food can never be grown in a lab. That is the truth. Let no one tell you a lie.
Charlie stop. This be obroni you talking about? Anything that makes money they will do it. Anything. That includes killing everyone and destroying the world.
Manka a, na mebua! Obroni will kill us all with their gluttony! Ebei! As we speak right now, they are trying hard to convince the Potato who is the President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama and the Ancient Papa in Akuffo-Addo to make a deal with them so that they can introduce GMOs and their seeds into Ghana. Waaa look! How can Mahama and Akuffo-Addo comprehend the Science behind these things let alone understand the implications of their actions? We are living in very dangerous times in the world and I hope courageous people would stand up to this bullying and terrorizing.
You tell the sad reality of our world today Ms. Nefetiti. I can only agree. But how do we fight that disease of the West from spreading into Africa. How do we stop it?
The only way to stop it is to fight it. Let us stop taking their bribes! Let us refuse their dollars, alas, we can grow our own food and feed our own children. Now they want to make human beings from three parents. Why? There are not enough people in the world? They go on claiming that there are too many human beings on earth that is why they have to make all these plastic foods but then they want to make more humans in the lab? Who are these people fooling? Or are they so stupid that they can’t tell they are not fooling anyone? What is there to say about these idiots. What is there to say about these animals? We just have to fight them. Africa doesn’t need them. African never needed them!
Grow your own food brother!
As for Obroni, today it this, tomorrow it is another thing, yesterday it was something else! Aba! Why can’t they just stay their corner. Who asked them for help? Who asked them to keep going around the world to ‘help’. Now they have become so full of themselves they feel they have to save the world when they are the ones destroying it – selling weapons to people to fight, and then want to bring you democracy while they have guns to sell you. They want to bring peace to you but then they are building nuclear weapons are missile defense systems. I don’t exactly know why they have attacked food now. Making these plastics to feed humans is the bottom of immoral behavior. So long as it is money they stop at nothing. That is the very definition of gluttony!
Thanks Nefetiti for highlighting this. Organic food in the US is so expensive that you must as well just start killing yourself with GMOs. That is what they are, KILL ME QUICK (KMQs).
Africa designated Rivers as sacred, muzungu came and said it was nonsense. Africa said the Seas were holy, muzungu came and said that too was nonsense. Africa said the Forests were Gods to be respected, muzungu came and said that one is ridiculous. Africa said Food is to be respected, muzungu said ‘fuck’ you. So here we are. Muzungu will destroy everything before we knew it.
So when muzungu was telling you all thes things, why didnt you tell him to fuck off? That would have saved the qorld for another 5000 years.
Well, I hope we can reach out to our farmers and fishermen. Let us educate them about the shortcomings of Mzungu behaviour – it is all destructive, they solve nothing! I have started a campaign to educate people about Monsanto, GMOs, and the western foods we import. Hopefully, the more people know, the better we can resists this nonsense!
While some of the points raised are true, they are applied too sweepingly. What is the West, the US or all of Europe or both. We take umbrage (or at least I do) when people refer to Africa and Africans. There are many countries in the West (France, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Portugal) where people know the value of real food. The kind of chickens that the article describes are mostly sold for export or in low-cost supermarkets. A lot of people have backyard gardens, not because they can’t find food, but because they take pride in producing their own food on a small scale and knowing where it comes from. It is of course much fresher and cheaper. We in Africa could do the same instead of covering all our homes with concrete and buying food that is exported from all over the world and complaining after. We have the sun and the soil. In France for example, today a lot of people are preferring the short-circuit system, where they buy their produce directly from small-time, local farmers that they know. Why do we need to import chicken from the EU at the cost of killing our own poultry industries. We are our own enemies.
Too sweepingly is an understatement. True, some countries in the West have a cause for food production that some African countries can emulate. But World Bank loans and IMF loans and the way they come have pretty much crippled African agro economies. Why do loans come with such prescriptions for failure? Why are these banks, which are instruments of the West advocating for GMOs for example in Ghana? Why is the US and the EU intent on giving their farmers and products markets in Africa but not vice versa? I think our problem is partly the failure of our leadership in Africa bar a couple like Mr. Kagame of Rwanda. But largely our problems in African are interruptions by the West. There is one thing they can do. Leave us alone. We don’t need their help. We never needed it. Their presence in Africa has only given the most stupid on our continent wings to fly to the top of African society. Mr. Mahama of Ghana is a case in point. Terrible IQ, really. So when we call out the West, it sure is not every Western nation. But their unilateral destructive posturing towards Africa and people of African discent either directly or nonchallantly without provocation is intolerable. Like I said, we have problems in Africa. But the West and its material influence in Africa remain our biggest problem yet. McDonalds, KFC, Walmart etc. are a few examples of such monstrous over-reach That is the reality.