This excellent article by Rachel Laudan is an argument in favour of culinary modernism, and against Luddism. It is, in effect, a defence of processed foods. Laudan is an historian, by the way, as well as a foodie. The article is a terrific read.

“A Plea for Culinary Modernism”

The Luddites’ fable of disaster, of a fall from grace, smacks more of wishful thinking than of digging through archives. It gains credence not from scholarship but from evocative dichotomies: fresh and natural versus processed and preserved; local versus global; slow versus fast: artisanal and traditional versus urban and industrial; healthful versus contaminated and fatty. History shows, I believe, that the Luddites have things back to front.