>As to how we survived, we ate our foods raw and our bodies were used to it.<
Really? Hmmmmmmmm, let's see.
Government control of what we eat, how it is grown, what additives can or cannot be used, how it's packaged, etc. etc. is, essentially, about 75years old. But let's extend that to the beginning of the 20th century.
So you're saying that nobody cooked their food before that? Or canned it? Or otherwise modified it? Comes the year 1901 and suddenly everybody, who has until now been eating everything raw, has jumped on this new-fangled bandwagon called "cooking." Gimme a break. We have always cooked our food, or processed it.
Fermentation, to pick just one example, is either the second or third oldest form of food preservation, depending on which authority you accept. We could, until USDA and FDA (you know, those Johnny-come-latelies) told us otherwise, take raw whole milk and preserve it by fementing it. The result was called cheese. Now we can't do that, because whole milk has suddenly become unsafe.
In the 17-19th centuries, when cuisine as we think of it was being developed (you know, by cooking), there were no expiration dates; no "best if used by" dates; no "do not eat this after Tuesday" rules. But somehow we cooked food, and ate it, and survived.
For most of man's history he has cooked his food, or processesed it one way or another. And most of the world continues to produce its food, and prepare it, using rules that are incredibly less stringent than those propulgated by our regulatory agencies. Many, perhaps most, of those rules are based on nothing more than our ability to dream them up and impose them.
Here's an example, one I've used before. When I started as editor of Package Engineering, parts per million were the common small measurement used for government standards. When I left, parts per billion were coming on strong. Now we casually talk about parts per trillion.
All this reflects is that our technological ability to measure nothing gets better every day. But are the standards established by FDA and USDA meaningful? Does a standard that started as ppm but is now espressed in a fraction of ppb reflect clinical evidence? I submit, knowing how those agencies work, that it does not. That the standards are established primarily because we can measure that small, not because there is any more or less danger.
Regulatory agencies exist to promulgate regulations. Doesn't matter to them how much their rules fly in the face of common sense. Look at the history of canning tomatoes for the best example of how this works. Or examine the reasons why the United States, for all practical purposes, has no merchant fleet.
