expiredmilkn lies blogs

Throughout history, control of food has meant control of people. Empires, armies, and governments have all used hunger as a weapon. Starvation weakens resistance faster than any army. We imagine those tactics as relics of ancient battlefields. Nonetheless, the reality is that food is still used today as a silent tool of power. It is just dressed up in packaging and sold at the supermarket.

Starvation as Strategy

In medieval times, besieging armies would surround castles and cut off supply lines, starving the defenders until surrender was inevitable. The same logic applied to modern wars. This ranged from the British naval blockades in World War I to Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine. Control food, and you control willpower itself.

From Fields to Factories

Fast skip to today. The fields are still battlegrounds, but the weapons are different. Chemical pesticides, genetically modified seeds locked behind patents, and monopolized distribution networks give corporations unprecedented leverage. When a handful of companies decide what’s grown, food stops being a basic right. It becomes a lever of control. Companies also influence how it’s processed and where it’s shipped.

The Illusion of Abundance

Walk into a modern grocery store and it looks like abundance. Shelves packed with choices, brands competing for your attention. But peel back the labels and you’ll often find the same conglomerates behind both “rival” products. And behind the illusion of choice lies dependency. If the network shuts down, most households couldn’t last a week without resupply. Convenience has replaced self-sufficiency.

Hunger in a Different Form

Weapons don’t always kill directly. Additives, preservatives, and highly processed substitutes chip away at health over decades. Rising obesity, diabetes, and malnutrition exist side-by-side with overflowing supermarkets. It’s not starvation at gunpoint. It’s a slow erosion of health. This leaves people too weak, too dependent, and too distracted to resist.

Dependency is the Goal

Governments know it. Corporations know it. “Food security” is never just about calories, it’s about leverage. When a population depends entirely on outside systems for survival, compliance is easy. That’s why the oldest strategy in the book still works: control the food, control the people.

Breaking the Cycle

The antidote isn’t paranoia — it’s awareness. Gardens, local farms, food co-ops, even learning how to cook from scratch, all chip away at dependency. Every bite grown or made outside society is an act of rebellion. It stands against a weapon that’s been aimed at humanity for centuries.

Control of food has always been control of people. The packaging has changed, but the playbook hasn’t.

Tags: food, control, history, dependency, manipulation