I’m enjoying the process of reflecting on what I’ve learned in my life up to this point, what I continue to learn everyday, and the different learning environments I find myself emerged in pulling me in different directions about what I want to write about. This week I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time with my extended family in Ontario. Sometimes when an event in life brings a family close together you find yourself reminiscing about the past through shared stories and pictures. When my cousins and I were looking at old family pictures we found ourselves comparing the old floor model TV’s to our sleek flat screens, the polaroid cameras with our digital cameras and smartphones, Atari vs. Wii and Xbox, and the list goes on. While everyone else was laughing I was thinking to myself I just found my next blog topic! All of these cultural artifacts and tools have been modified by individuals and groups from one generation to the next resulting in more elaborate and complex cultural artifacts and tools. Tomasello refers to this process as cumulative cultural evolution through the “ratchet effect”.
Tomasello (1999) explains this “ratchet effect” in more detail in the first chapter of his book:
Some individual or group of individuals first invented a primitive version of the artifact or practice, and then some later user or users made a modification, an “improvement”, that others then adopted perhaps without change for many generations, at which point some other individual or group of individuals made another modification, which was then learned and used by others, and so on over historical time. (p. 5)
The modern advances in technology, medicine, communication, food production, etc. are all examples of the ratchet effect. In the definition, I don’t necessarily agree with Tomasello’s use of the word “improvement”. Some of the advances in our human culture might have improved cultural practices or artifacts in terms of things like efficiency, communication, reduced-cost, accessibility, etc. but there have also been some detrimental consequences to our physical and social environments and in some cases, to our health. For example, let’s take a look at how our food has changed over the last 100 years.
Our food is continually evolving to meet the needs of consumer demands in an ever-changing, fast-paced society. As our lives become more hectic, the underlying theme is that there is less time available for preparing and cooking meals. This has resulted in a multi-billion dollar industry of convenience foods, such as fast food and ready-to-eat pre-packaged foods. This might be considered an “improvement” as the food industry is coming up with innovative technologies to produce these foods meeting consumer demands but the overconsumption of these foods is negatively impacting our environment and contributing to the growing rates of diseases in our country. It is now culturally acceptable and justifiable for many people to rely heavily on these convenience foods because there is no time in our busy schedules to prepare nutritious meals and the cost of healthy food is expensive. The problem is that these foods that are supposed to make our lives easier can shorten our lifespan as they are often higher in fat, sodium, and calories, thus increasing our risk of many chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for people to rely exclusively on convenience foods to feed their families. If children grow up eating these foods and don’t learn from their parents about healthy eating and how to prepare meals, as adults they will lack a necessary life skill to prepare nutritious food for themselves and their families. More importantly, over the last few years it is becoming common knowledge that as a result of childhood obesity this is the first time in history parents will outlive their children.
Some of my best childhood memories were pulling up a chair to help my grandmother and mother in the kitchen. What kind of learning opportunities and memories are children in today’s society missing out on? With respect to the “ratchet effect” on food, I worry what the future holds as I see young children with Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. It’s not just about the choices we make, it’s about the evolution of food production and how it affects the food we put into our bodies. With the steady rise in diseases, the ratchet effect is seen in advances in modern medicine to help us fight these diseases. It seems like a vicious cycle. When does it end? Will food production practices continue to reduce the quality of our food to meet consumer demands? As a society, we will continue to move away from our traditional cultural practices of preparing our own meals and rely more on convenience foods? And, will obesity continue to affect the lifespan of future generations?
Some food for thought………..
Jaime Oliver's Processed Food Reality Check 