The agro-industrial complex in general convinced Americans to buy trademark branded products instead of real food
I'm not convinced that there's a coherent concept of real food. Most real food advocates I've seen are happy to eat, say, tofu. They'll admit that technically it's processed, in the sense that it's industrially manufactured by pulverizing soybeans beyond recognition then adding chemicals to the big holding vats. But people say it's not highly processed, or it hasn't lost the natural essence of soy, or whatever. I jus…
The /actual/ ancient past was way more concerned about quantity and physiological performance in a 'can you get big on it' as a positive and 'how likely is it to kill you' as opposed to any high minded ideals.
Despite trying to sound like it 'real food' isn't a real goal or metric in the same way that dog breeds which don't have a purpose other than aesthetics defined by vapid breed standards rapidly become the canine counterpart to the Hapsburgs. Compare to a working dog breed's actual defacto requirements. "Smart enough to keep up with and herd livestock, mean enough to chase away predators but not so vicious it kills the livestock itself." is a real set of goals that constrains it into a functional space to optimize for and can even tolerate some wasteful vanity in appearance selection. Hell even something overspecialized like "Try to be the fastest on the race track without being so badly behaved that they are disqualified." is better.
I am convinced that the underlying issues be they dog breeds or food aren't the real problems but ways of thinking.