Losing our senses over food?

Are the very mechanisms which have been developed over years to protect us and keep our food safe, making us lose our ability to use three powerful ways to decide if food is fit to eat: sight, smell and taste? Is our perception of risk and reliance on technology eliminating our ability to make common sense decisions in ever more areas of our every days lives? Possibly.

Food additives were developed for very good reasons: to ensure that the food we eat is safe and fit to eat, and lasts longer. One of the latest ones approved by the FDA is a bacteriophage, or virus mix, for killing Listeria in meat products . Likewise BBE - Best Before End / use by dates - was developed to let us know when the food is freshest and best to eat. Then convenience made us rush to consume more processed food, ready made meals and the like - needing more additives. Along the way, we became ever more reliant on a few numbers on the pack, rather than trusting what our eyes, noses and taste buds could tell us in seconds.

Our reliance on food labelling rather than what our senses tell us can be seen as part of a wider trend to over protect ourselves and rely on experts rather than personal judgement. Just as technology can deskill jobs, so it can deskill us in social intelligence too - perhaps with even more debilitating consequences.

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