To write about food only as food misses the point, or the many points, about the great universal human experience between birth and death.  Food is not just what we eat.  It charts the ebbs and flows of economies, reflects the changing patterns of trade and geopolitical alliances, and defines our values, status and health—for better and worse. Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are, where you live, where you stand on political issues, who your neighbors are, how your economy functions, your country's history and foreign relations, and the state of the environment. By looking at food, the age we live in is better understood.

So.  What to make, then (to pluck one small tense example from the many), of natural-foods über-purist Dan Barber’s paean in Food & Wine to a small organic farmer who, in adjusting his vegetables’ Brix (sugar) levels by refractometry, suddenly seems to morph into some kind of Dr. Frankenstein?  Someday, Barber imagines, farmers will farm so precisely that they can give customers carrots corresponding to whatever pre-ordained Brix level (and analogous flavor) they want.  Even animals, through the use of ultrasound technology, will be programmed to attain certain fat ratios.  Barber even speaks brightly of a plant physiologist called Autar Mattoo who genetically modifies vegetables to regain flavor and nutritional content.  “Mattoo says he might someday be able to identify the gene that expresses apricot flavor and activate it for a better-tasting tomato.  ‘I will be able to switch it on, just like that.’”

On first read, something in this creeps out the side of me that leans towards the Luddite, even if it’s Beyond Organic’s High Green Priest himself giving the go-ahead.  But there I am, being overly simplistic again.  What about the fact that Mattoo isn’t, like other genetic engineers, taking genes from a pig’s heart and inserting them in a tomato plant, opting instead to stick to tomato genes for his manipulation?  Shouldn’t I look favorably upon the fact that his seeds can be re-used for generations, unlike the current “terminator” seeds, which must be purchased year after year?

Yeah, probably.

Even though I’m sometimes guilty of this knee-jerk reaction, it’s unfair to relegate all interaction between technology and food to the Evil Bin.  Remember—as Rachel Laudan has said before and as Lydia Itoi points out here, when hard work gets easier, “only outsiders, the privileged gastronomic victims of modernization, feel a sense of loss.  Keeping traditions alive is much quainter when someone else is doing the heavy lifting.”  Perhaps the way forward is precisely one that isn’t so resolutely black-and-white.