Dr. Hüseyin Kâmi BÜYÜKÖZER
What kind of transformation are we experiencing with the emergence of the Integrated Food Industry?
When we look back at our past, before the last century—a time when the world was not yet globalized—we find ourselves speaking of an era where everything was more natural and flavorful. It was a time when food did not contain ambiguous substances added for preservation, coloring, flavoring, or extending shelf life. The fast-food culture imposed by Western modernity had not yet fully infiltrated Islamic societies, leaving our eating manners, dietary habits, shopping traditions, and health relatively untouched. Naturally, this was a more peaceful and healthier period.
With the changes brought by industrial production, traditional homemade foods like bread, yoghurt, tarhana (dried soup mix), manti (dumplings), and pickles have now shifted to supermarket shelves, often at twice the price, labeled as “homemade-style” or “village-style” but manufactured in factories. A century ago, our diets were not yet subjected to modernity’s grip; they contained no additives and were preserved under natural conditions. Today, they have been replaced by synthetic, artificial, and chemically enhanced products.
Over the past 50-100 years, the prevalence of unnatural, processed foods with additives has increased significantly. Products like chemically solidified margarine and hot-pressed oils such as sunflower and corn oil have become excessively common. At the same time, the consumption of fresh vegetables, fruits, and traditional home-cooked meals has noticeably decreased. As a result, our bodies, shaped by a natural genetic structure, are now struggling to cope with entirely unnatural foods.
This incompatibility between our genetics and modern foods has led to a dramatic rise in chronic illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, ulcers, asthma, rheumatism, chronic fatigue, cancer, and osteoporosis.
To protect ourselves from these diseases, we should strive to follow a diet that closely resembles the halal and tayyib (pure) eating habits of the past. We nostalgically remember the delightful smell of freshly baked bread from our neighborhood bakeries and the joy of tearing off pieces to eat on our way home. Don’t we?
Thanks to GİMDES, it is now entirely possible to relive those experiences.
