Viewpoint: ‘Industrial food’ primer—Challenging the dangerous delusions of the alternative food movement Alex Smith | June 17, 2026

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/06/17/viewpoint-industrial-food-primer-challenging-the-dangerous-delusions-of-the-alternative-food-movement/ Eat real food. It’s the closest thing American alternative food politics has to a creed, and for the better part of two decades it belonged to the left. To eat real food was to opt out of industrial agriculture, to refuse the long ingredient list and the seed oils and the corn-fed beef, and in doing so, to register a quiet protest against the system that produced them. It was, we were told, a progressive politics—an alliance of small farmers, conscientious eaters, and environmentalists against the depredations of Big Ag.