Read more in: PANDORA'S LUNCHBOX: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal amzn.to/163ixhX A number of years ago, not long after I had begun covering the food industry, I started thinking about the expiration dates stamped on all those packages of food at the supermarket. What would happen when the appointed day came and went? I bought all kinds of processed foods and socked them away for years. The results: Nothing happened, or almost nothing. You can leave many products out on a table for months, as I did for these videos, and they won't mold or otherwise decompose. Sometimes this is because of the presence of powerful chemical preservatives or additives that lower acidity levels. Other times it's thanks to high levels of sugar or salt, or the fact that water has been completely evaporated from the product. It makes you wonder -- what is all this eternal food doing to our bodies when we eat it? If the living organisms that usually feast on aging food want nothing to do with it, should we? Does this food help sustain the cycle of life or end up silencing it? These aren't easy questions to answer. In reality, there are probably many different answers depending on the product. For me, the uneven effects of time on these highly processed modern products is just one of the ways they remain fundamentally distinct from foods prepared more simply and traditionally. Read more at melanierwarner.com (Music credit: "Still the Same" by Rod Stewart)

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