The problem with food is that once you harvest it or cull it, it begins to detriorate quite rapidly. So traditionally, mankind has had to devise ways of preserving it so it can last longer and we can survive winter without starving.
So we have curing, smoking, glazing, pickling, marinading, salting to name a few. The problem with these trad methods is that they are labour intensive, slow and tedious, low throughput processes. This made the resulting products expensive so that only the well off could access them. In the search for more egalitarian solutions, manufacturers and scientists worked to improve and automate these processes so all could have a chance to benefit.
First came the amphora, then the ceramic pot, then the glass bottle/kilner jar, then the tin can, now the vacuum pack. In time we got refrigeration and chilling. But people still want the old fashioned products like sausages, ham, kippers etc.
So scientists went back to the drawing board and refined the processes so that mass production is possible. Spray on this, inject that etc. All in the name of providing things that 'taste good' and can be displayed on the shelf for a reasonable time. Our supermarkets would look very different without this move to preserve food.
But as pointed out there is a price to pay for this convenience. So we need to choose - do we want food that lasts more than a day but has a small chance of giving us cancer, or will we accept high wastage and increased risk of botulism/salmonella/listeria/campylobacter/ clostridium and many more sources of food poisoning.
Considering we tend to live longer than our forebears, and thus live to an age where cancer is more likely anyway, then surely we are better off?
