LogFAQs > #961942720

LinkPizza posted...

Probably wouldn't stop people from trying, though. Like when they made alcohol. It might not be the best, but they would probably still try...

Alcohol is incredibly easy to make, though. Chuck some juice and some yeast in a bottle, and in a few weeks, you've got booze. Distillation is more complicated, but you could build yourself a still with a saucepan and some aluminum foil, in a pinch. Hydrogenating fats, on the other hand, involves metal catalysts and very high temperatures/pressures (an Instant Pot isn't going to cut it). Most artificial colours are petroleum byproducts, and backyard refineries aren't really a thing. HFCS involves a series of enzymatic digestions, followed by separating the different fractions by liquid chromatography and blending them to get the desired composition, and that requires expensive specialized equipment.

These are industrial processes. They're really not feasible to do in a home kitchen. Hypothetically, you could get black market production happening, as happened during prohibition, but that's going to be very high risk and therefore probably too expensive to really be viable.

That last point brings us to the biggest issue, though: These products are not things that are put into food because people like them. These are things that are put into food because they make food cheaper to produce, store, and sell. Those cost savings, however, are only realized because these products can be made and consumed on an industrial scale. If they can't be, then they stop being cheaper than alternatives, meaning demand for them completely evaporates.

People will continue to want fast food, yes, but that demand is going to result in people emulating it without whatever products are banned, not illicitly creating those products to reproduce it exactly. These products are just too expensive to make on small scales and don't have enough of an impact on the consumer's experience to be worthwhile.