From flavors to giving birth, of course, is always better? Of course not!
In the secular western world, nature is increasingly taking the place of God. And that goes far beyond the new world elite of oat milk drinking and almond butter eating yoga hippies ( the words of NRC ).
Levinovitz wrote his book just before covid-19 struck, otherwise it would certainly have been a central example: corona as punishment of mother nature. Because you hear it everywhere: how we deal with nature today is not natural, and that is expensive for us.
A banana feels natural, Haribo bananas do not. Yet both originated entirely from living organisms. It is known that our contemporary handling of livestock and wildlife is at the root of many diseases. But is nature an entity that punishes when things go wrong? Do we do it right as long as nature doesn't punish? And what is “natural” actually?
Is animal husbandry natural, since man has about ten thousand years of experience with it? Or is it not natural for a cow to be 'kept' anyway? And planting apple trees, is that natural?
In short: if you dive into the sense and nonsense of the nature argument, you immediately encounter a problem. There is no satisfactory definition, the meaning is purely intuitive. A banana feels natural, Haribo bananas do not. Yet both originated entirely from living organisms,en zijn beide het resultaat van menselijke bewerking. Bananas like the ones in the supermarket in the Netherlands are much larger than wild bananas, and grown in such a way that they do not have 'seeds': seeds that are indispensable for a plant in nature. Alan Levinovitz is a philosopher and theologian at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
You don't die of E-numbers, or preservatives;
Why e-numbers, ready-made meals and preservatives make our lives better. We don't die of preservatives, we don't die of E-numbers and we don't die of dyes! We live in a technological world and there is no “natural”. The 'natural' is a hype, a lie! Rosanne Hertzberger studied Life Science & Technology at TU Delft and Leiden University. She is a microbiologist, writer and columnist and wrote Ode to the e-numbers.
