In Praise of Fast Food
August 15, 2010 9:19 AM Subscribe
In Praise of Fast Food: A historian takes on the "Culinary Luddism" the fresh/local/natural food movement. Originally published in the journal Gastronomica and featured as part of a series on food culture from the Utne Reader.
"Culinary Luddism has come to involve more than just taste, however; it has also presented itself as a moral and political crusade—and it is here that I begin to back off. The reason is not far to seek: because I am a historian.
As a historian I cannot accept the account of the past implied by this movement: the sunny, rural days of yore contrasted with the gray industrial present. It gains credence not from scholarship but from evocative dichotomies: fresh and natural versus processed and preserved; local versus global; slow versus fast; artisanal and traditional versus urban and industrial; healthful versus contaminated. History shows, I believe, that the Luddites have things back to front."
"Culinary Luddism has come to involve more than just taste, however; it has also presented itself as a moral and political crusade—and it is here that I begin to back off. The reason is not far to seek: because I am a historian.
As a historian I cannot accept the account of the past implied by this movement: the sunny, rural days of yore contrasted with the gray industrial present. It gains credence not from scholarship but from evocative dichotomies: fresh and natural versus processed and preserved; local versus global; slow versus fast; artisanal and traditional versus urban and industrial; healthful versus contaminated. History shows, I believe, that the Luddites have things back to front."
Allow me to summarize:
- Don't you hate those people who look down their noses at fast food?
- They're actually falling prey to a nostalgic historical inaccuracy
- They think the past was great, and the present sucks.
- Actually, the past sucks and the present is great!
- Furthermore, the parts of the past that were great are the parts that modern (fast?) food now emulates.
- Ergo, fast food is great (?), so there, you organic-fresh-food-eating elitists.
*strawman falls down in the dust, utterly defeated*
The reason fast food is bad isn't because it's unlike our ancestor's food. It's because *IT IS INCREDIBLY BAD FOR YOU*. This is not a historical argument. It's a medical statistic.
This person seems to have forgotten to include any arguments that are actually "in praise of fast food", and also is somehow under the delusion that we must choose to either become serfs and toil in the fields all day or eat plastic-wrapped food. Or something - it's not entirely clear what he thinks we *should* eat, if not fresh vegetables. This gap in imagination is exactly why the giant evil agriculture corporations got so...well, giant and evil.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:35 AM on August 15, 2010 [46 favorites]
- Don't you hate those people who look down their noses at fast food?
- They're actually falling prey to a nostalgic historical inaccuracy
- They think the past was great, and the present sucks.
- Actually, the past sucks and the present is great!
- Furthermore, the parts of the past that were great are the parts that modern (fast?) food now emulates.
- Ergo, fast food is great (?), so there, you organic-fresh-food-eating elitists.
*strawman falls down in the dust, utterly defeated*
The reason fast food is bad isn't because it's unlike our ancestor's food. It's because *IT IS INCREDIBLY BAD FOR YOU*. This is not a historical argument. It's a medical statistic.
This person seems to have forgotten to include any arguments that are actually "in praise of fast food", and also is somehow under the delusion that we must choose to either become serfs and toil in the fields all day or eat plastic-wrapped food. Or something - it's not entirely clear what he thinks we *should* eat, if not fresh vegetables. This gap in imagination is exactly why the giant evil agriculture corporations got so...well, giant and evil.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:35 AM on August 15, 2010 [46 favorites]
Rachel Laudan begs the question, so the whole article is based on an assumption that I--and most people I know who eat fresh, local, organic food--do not hold.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:38 AM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:38 AM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
Not everyone who says "eat more fresh food" is saying "smash the industrial food plants", but she writes as if they are. She also conflates preserved foods of good quality with nutritionally and biologically questionable manufactured food products, acting as if only the former exist. I haven't heard anyone saying that it's bad to eat bread from a store and put jam from a jar on it. But if a Hot Pocket is a typical lunch for you and Pizza Hut provides dinner that's quite another thing.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:45 AM on August 15, 2010
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:45 AM on August 15, 2010
Hmm. I guess that I share some of her annoyance: it often seems like people in the food movement are nostalgic for a past that isn't worth being nostalgic for and are completely unwilling to engage with questions about how not to replicate the forms of oppression on which past systems were predicated. But I think she's replacing a narrative of decline with a narrative of progress, and as a historian I'm kind of skeptical of those, too. And I agree that she's arguing against a bit of a strawman.
I'm also not convinced her facts are right. If you compare the rural poor and the urban middle-class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then urban people ate better and were healthier. But if you compare the rural poor to the urban poor? I think in most places the rural poor were actually better off. Plus, many urban people would have had gardens and kept small animals like chickens. Local =/= rural. Urban=/= Lower Manhattan.
posted by craichead at 9:45 AM on August 15, 2010 [15 favorites]
I'm also not convinced her facts are right. If you compare the rural poor and the urban middle-class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then urban people ate better and were healthier. But if you compare the rural poor to the urban poor? I think in most places the rural poor were actually better off. Plus, many urban people would have had gardens and kept small animals like chickens. Local =/= rural. Urban=/= Lower Manhattan.
posted by craichead at 9:45 AM on August 15, 2010 [15 favorites]
Yeah, I guess part of the problem with the article is that she is utterly unspecific about what she is condemning, and what she is promoting, so it sounds like she's saying all fresh food is bad and silly, and all packaged or processed food is good. Which of course makes no sense, but you wouldn't know it from reading that.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:47 AM on August 15, 2010
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:47 AM on August 15, 2010
This was an interesting article with a solid, totally valid point – and a terrible title.
Her point is true. There is a whole cottage industry popping up of people talking about "rural," "fresh," "natural," "artisanal" foods, and it is based on precisely the idyllic mythology that she describes. The idea that something is better just because it was handmade isn't necessarily true, and people embraced precisely the foods she described - canned tomatoes and dried pasta - with good cause. This mythology is totally bogus.
But it has relatively little to do with fast food - greasy, salty, over-sweetened stuff that really is awful for you.
posted by graymouser at 9:47 AM on August 15, 2010 [7 favorites]
Her point is true. There is a whole cottage industry popping up of people talking about "rural," "fresh," "natural," "artisanal" foods, and it is based on precisely the idyllic mythology that she describes. The idea that something is better just because it was handmade isn't necessarily true, and people embraced precisely the foods she described - canned tomatoes and dried pasta - with good cause. This mythology is totally bogus.
But it has relatively little to do with fast food - greasy, salty, over-sweetened stuff that really is awful for you.
posted by graymouser at 9:47 AM on August 15, 2010 [7 favorites]
Unfortunate title, I agree -- but the author may not have had any input in that.
posted by hermitosis at 9:50 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by hermitosis at 9:50 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
As someone who chafes at the "It was better in the past" crap-flinging, I was very glad to read this and see her approach. More of the same, I say, in other fields.
posted by fake at 9:51 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by fake at 9:51 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
From the 4th page of the article;
In the first half of the 20th century, Italians embraced factory-made pasta and canned tomatoes. In the second half, Japanese women welcomed factory-made bread because they could sleep a little longer instead of getting up to make rice. As supermarkets appeared in Eastern Europe, people rejoiced at the convenience of ready-made goods. For all, culinary modernism had proved what was wanted: food that was processed, preservable, industrial, novel, and fast, the food of the elite at a price everyone could afford. Where modern food became available, people grew taller and stronger and lived longer. Men had choices other than hard agricultural labor; women had choices other than kneeling at the metate five hours a day.
Oh for christ's sake. If the damn author can't or is unwilling or unable to tell the different between a Big Mac and industrial made pasta from the grocery store in terms of fast food, there's not much point in finishing this piece.
posted by nomadicink at 9:52 AM on August 15, 2010 [4 favorites]
In the first half of the 20th century, Italians embraced factory-made pasta and canned tomatoes. In the second half, Japanese women welcomed factory-made bread because they could sleep a little longer instead of getting up to make rice. As supermarkets appeared in Eastern Europe, people rejoiced at the convenience of ready-made goods. For all, culinary modernism had proved what was wanted: food that was processed, preservable, industrial, novel, and fast, the food of the elite at a price everyone could afford. Where modern food became available, people grew taller and stronger and lived longer. Men had choices other than hard agricultural labor; women had choices other than kneeling at the metate five hours a day.
Oh for christ's sake. If the damn author can't or is unwilling or unable to tell the different between a Big Mac and industrial made pasta from the grocery store in terms of fast food, there's not much point in finishing this piece.
posted by nomadicink at 9:52 AM on August 15, 2010 [4 favorites]
I don't think she's talking about Big Macs, nomadicink. She's talking about people who say that you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you and who yearn for the days when everyone knew the people who produced all their food. I think I'd be hard-pressed to find dried pasta or canned tomatoes in the grocery store that came from within a 100-mile radius of me.
posted by craichead at 9:55 AM on August 15, 2010 [9 favorites]
posted by craichead at 9:55 AM on August 15, 2010 [9 favorites]
For those people with jerking knees, the last few lines of the article:
Nostalgia is not what we need. What we need is an ethos that comes to terms with contemporary, industrialized food, not one that dismisses it; an ethos that opens choices for everyone, not one that closes them for many so that a few may enjoy their labor; and an ethos that does not prejudge, but decides case by case when natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial. Such an ethos, and not a timorous Luddism, is what will impel us to create the matchless modern cuisines appropriate to our time.
That hardly says "Fast food is fucking great!".
posted by fake at 9:56 AM on August 15, 2010 [10 favorites]
Nostalgia is not what we need. What we need is an ethos that comes to terms with contemporary, industrialized food, not one that dismisses it; an ethos that opens choices for everyone, not one that closes them for many so that a few may enjoy their labor; and an ethos that does not prejudge, but decides case by case when natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial. Such an ethos, and not a timorous Luddism, is what will impel us to create the matchless modern cuisines appropriate to our time.
That hardly says "Fast food is fucking great!".
posted by fake at 9:56 AM on August 15, 2010 [10 favorites]
Right. I just think that ethos is more common within the food movement than she seems to think. Even the people who invoke annoying nostalgia will generally, when you sit down and talk about actual policy prescriptions, sound more like that than like "let's all return to being happy peasants!" strawpeople.
posted by craichead at 9:59 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by craichead at 9:59 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
That hardly says "Fast food is fucking great!".
No, but the title does. One of the biggest food problems today is deceptive labeling (and a lot of so-called organic/artisanal/local/slow food is SO guilty of that) and a deceptively labeled article doesn't help anything.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:03 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
No, but the title does. One of the biggest food problems today is deceptive labeling (and a lot of so-called organic/artisanal/local/slow food is SO guilty of that) and a deceptively labeled article doesn't help anything.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:03 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
She seems to be conflating people who buy food from farmers markets because it's better and cheaper and supports the local economy with those who enjoy belittling people because they make different choices... In other words, assholes.
And I don't know anyone who wants to eat like a peasant.
posted by Huck500 at 10:04 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
And I don't know anyone who wants to eat like a peasant.
posted by Huck500 at 10:04 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
She's talking about people who say that you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you and who yearn for the days when everyone knew the people who produced all their food
Then the author, a historian, is failing to look at why that movement started up. Industrial food processing, combined with capitalism has turned the food people eat into a cost, so of course whatever corners they can cut to make that cost smaller are implemented. So mad cow and spinach recalls become a factor, while the companies fight tooth and nail over every FDA regulation that is designed to ensure food safety. They view it as cutting into profits.
The complete lack of mention of that in her article, while painting those who just want healthy food as idiots further destroys the creditability of the article.
posted by nomadicink at 10:07 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
Then the author, a historian, is failing to look at why that movement started up. Industrial food processing, combined with capitalism has turned the food people eat into a cost, so of course whatever corners they can cut to make that cost smaller are implemented. So mad cow and spinach recalls become a factor, while the companies fight tooth and nail over every FDA regulation that is designed to ensure food safety. They view it as cutting into profits.
The complete lack of mention of that in her article, while painting those who just want healthy food as idiots further destroys the creditability of the article.
posted by nomadicink at 10:07 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
She's talking about people who say that you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you and who yearn for the days when everyone knew the people who produced all their food.
The food miles issue is a different one, and I didn't see her address it. Also, the leap from "seek out local foods" to "you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you" is a dishonest bit of rhetoric. If someone says "I want to drive less", you're not contributing to the discussion by claiming they said "all cars should go to the crusher."
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:10 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
The food miles issue is a different one, and I didn't see her address it. Also, the leap from "seek out local foods" to "you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you" is a dishonest bit of rhetoric. If someone says "I want to drive less", you're not contributing to the discussion by claiming they said "all cars should go to the crusher."
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:10 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
painting those who just want healthy food as idiots
Now who's painting?
posted by hermitosis at 10:14 AM on August 15, 2010
Now who's painting?
posted by hermitosis at 10:14 AM on August 15, 2010
Industrial food processing, combined with capitalism has turned the food people eat into a cost, so of course whatever corners they can cut to make that cost smaller are implemented.Ok, but I think that's exactly the kind of nostalgia that she's railing against. What came before industrial food production and capitalism wasn't better. At least, it wasn't better for people in what are now wealthy, industrialized nations. (I think maybe you could argue that it was better for people in some of the poorest parts of the world, although I know less about that.) Pre-industrial, pre-capitalist people went hungry a lot. To suggest that industrial food processing and capitalism have "turned" food bad is to ignore a lot of history.
(And I'm fairly sure a lot fewer people die of food-borne illnesses now than they did pre-capitalism and pre-industrial food processing, although that may have partly to do with the availability of antibiotics.)
posted by craichead at 10:15 AM on August 15, 2010 [4 favorites]
In my opinion, the main three questions, with regard to food, are: is it healthier or less healthy? Is it tastier or less tasty? Is it going to cause massive ecological disaster or extinctions?
Big Macs are un-healthy, not tasty, and depend on a whole range of completely destructive practices including clearing the Brazilian rain forest. So it goes on my Don't list.
Branson's Pickle is un-healthy, delicious and pretty much made from scraps, so it can't be too damaging. So it goes on my Ok list.
Wild blueberries that my wife picks in the yard are so-called miracle food, the tastiest berries, and with acres of the plants, we can't pick enough berries to put a dent in the supply. So it goes on my Ideal list.
posted by paisley henosis at 10:18 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Big Macs are un-healthy, not tasty, and depend on a whole range of completely destructive practices including clearing the Brazilian rain forest. So it goes on my Don't list.
Branson's Pickle is un-healthy, delicious and pretty much made from scraps, so it can't be too damaging. So it goes on my Ok list.
Wild blueberries that my wife picks in the yard are so-called miracle food, the tastiest berries, and with acres of the plants, we can't pick enough berries to put a dent in the supply. So it goes on my Ideal list.
posted by paisley henosis at 10:18 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
In related food writing, here's why a tortilla factory is a social revolution. Because otherwise, mamacita would be spending half her day doing nothing but preparing enough tortillas for her family.
The problem with "fast food" isn't that it's processed, or industrially made, or "non-natural". The problem is it's made as inexpensively as possible out of ingredients that encourage people to overeat. The real complaint here is with cheap food.
posted by Nelson at 10:22 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
The problem with "fast food" isn't that it's processed, or industrially made, or "non-natural". The problem is it's made as inexpensively as possible out of ingredients that encourage people to overeat. The real complaint here is with cheap food.
posted by Nelson at 10:22 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Nostalgia is not what we need. What we need is an ethos that comes to terms with contemporary, industrialized food, not one that dismisses it; an ethos that opens choices for everyone, not one that closes them for many so that a few may enjoy their labor; and an ethos that does not prejudge, but decides case by case when natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial. Such an ethos, and not a timorous Luddism, is what will impel us to create the matchless modern cuisines appropriate to our time.
I own the Gastronomica reader and read this article for the first time there. I thought it was mostly well-balanced, despite some flaws. I don't know why everything posted to mefi has to be a call for war.
In my parents little Mexican hometown, nobody makes tortillas by hand. But neither are they store-bought. There's little shops around town with tortilla machines. Fresh dough goes in one end. Soft, fresh tortillas came out the other. I love those tortilla machines. It is mechanized, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I got the sense these are the kinds of compromises she was talking about, but I may be wrong. Anyway, this is still a fairly weak Gastronomica article.
posted by vacapinta at 10:29 AM on August 15, 2010
I own the Gastronomica reader and read this article for the first time there. I thought it was mostly well-balanced, despite some flaws. I don't know why everything posted to mefi has to be a call for war.
In my parents little Mexican hometown, nobody makes tortillas by hand. But neither are they store-bought. There's little shops around town with tortilla machines. Fresh dough goes in one end. Soft, fresh tortillas came out the other. I love those tortilla machines. It is mechanized, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I got the sense these are the kinds of compromises she was talking about, but I may be wrong. Anyway, this is still a fairly weak Gastronomica article.
posted by vacapinta at 10:29 AM on August 15, 2010
What an idiot (but no doubt a useful one).
Let her go to a factory farm and spend a warm day standing next to a lagoon of liquid pig shit covering several acres and then come back and tell me about "Luddism"-- as long as she stands downwind (not that she could stink much worse than she does already).
posted by jamjam at 10:31 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Let her go to a factory farm and spend a warm day standing next to a lagoon of liquid pig shit covering several acres and then come back and tell me about "Luddism"-- as long as she stands downwind (not that she could stink much worse than she does already).
posted by jamjam at 10:31 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Right, but is there anyone but a really fringe character who would protest a tortilla machine, vacapinta? I don't think that would be a mainstream position at all. So if that's what she's arguing against, then her article is really "LOL, nutty people are nutty!"
posted by craichead at 10:32 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by craichead at 10:32 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Were we able to turn back the clock, as they urge, most of us would be toiling all day in the fields or the kitchen; many of us would be starving
Well that's just because nobody is urging this. Most people are not culinary Luddites as the author describes them, so I'm not sure who the intended audience is. I agree with the author's conclusion that we want to get our culinary history correct, for very good reasons, but the way the article tries to motivate this case is just really weird and illogical and unscientific and innumerate ("traditional dish" means 2000 years? Give me a break).
When foodies encourage the owner of the best cheese shop in France and in the world to keep his business open, they're not saying so for some romanticized view of tradition; they're saying it because his cheese is fucking good.
posted by polymodus at 10:33 AM on August 15, 2010
Well that's just because nobody is urging this. Most people are not culinary Luddites as the author describes them, so I'm not sure who the intended audience is. I agree with the author's conclusion that we want to get our culinary history correct, for very good reasons, but the way the article tries to motivate this case is just really weird and illogical and unscientific and innumerate ("traditional dish" means 2000 years? Give me a break).
When foodies encourage the owner of the best cheese shop in France and in the world to keep his business open, they're not saying so for some romanticized view of tradition; they're saying it because his cheese is fucking good.
posted by polymodus at 10:33 AM on August 15, 2010
Giving the author the benefit of the doubt by assuming the editor wrote the headline (and acknowledging that an article called "Presenting Some Nuanced Points of Consideration Regarding Fast Food" would get a lot less clicks), the point is a really interesting one, particularly as regards food heritage. It seems that our notion of what constitutes "home cooking" for a variety of different cultures is far more complex than what was eaten in those cultures day to day. A strong familiarity with a variety of cuisines is definitely a luxury, but not much more than that.
The bottom line seems to be this: eat stuff that's good for you and that you like to eat, and don't worry if it doesn't take an hour to make.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 10:34 AM on August 15, 2010
The bottom line seems to be this: eat stuff that's good for you and that you like to eat, and don't worry if it doesn't take an hour to make.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 10:34 AM on August 15, 2010
She seems to be presenting a stark binary-- either you're industrialized or you're slaving for hours, milling flour by hand.
One of the nice things about the modern world is the shades of grey. That's the perspective most of the foodies I hang around with embrace. Take what's good about local and handmade food, and abandon what doesn't work.
The 100 mile diet was an experiment, which doesn't seem to be addressed in this article.
posted by miss tea at 10:39 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
One of the nice things about the modern world is the shades of grey. That's the perspective most of the foodies I hang around with embrace. Take what's good about local and handmade food, and abandon what doesn't work.
The 100 mile diet was an experiment, which doesn't seem to be addressed in this article.
posted by miss tea at 10:39 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
She's talking about people who say that you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you and who yearn for the days when everyone knew the people who produced all their food. I think I'd be hard-pressed to find dried pasta or canned tomatoes in the grocery store that came from within a 100-mile radius of me.
Well, that's the chief problem with this article's argument. Many of the Italians who "embraced factory-made pasta and canned tomatoes" in the "first half of the 20th century" were eating dried pasta or canned tomatoes which came from a 100-mile radius of them. And they were supplementing their preserved food with fresh local food... food that would have been available, if sparse, even if the supply of dried pasta and canned tomatoes dwindled, as it did during both world wars.
This is not a picture of the way we live today. Today, the vast majority of our food comes from far away, often overseas, and its delivery depends on the interaction of a number of complex systems. Many Americans and Europeans don't have local food (industrial or not) to fall back on in case the supermarkets are suddenly empty. That's not a positive, and it's not something that the article's ethos can address. Maybe "you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you" is overkill, but the idea that food should be chosen on a case-by-case basis solely according to whether "natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial" is overkill, too. The latter assumes an ever-functioning system of transportation, even though a historian like the author should know that isn't a given.
In short: it's one thing to celebrate industrialized food; it's quite another to celebrate globalized food. No amount of "choices" can overshadow the danger of having huge swathes of the population who cannot feed themselves if the merry-go-round ever stops.
Choices won't feed us.
posted by vorfeed at 10:49 AM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
Well, that's the chief problem with this article's argument. Many of the Italians who "embraced factory-made pasta and canned tomatoes" in the "first half of the 20th century" were eating dried pasta or canned tomatoes which came from a 100-mile radius of them. And they were supplementing their preserved food with fresh local food... food that would have been available, if sparse, even if the supply of dried pasta and canned tomatoes dwindled, as it did during both world wars.
This is not a picture of the way we live today. Today, the vast majority of our food comes from far away, often overseas, and its delivery depends on the interaction of a number of complex systems. Many Americans and Europeans don't have local food (industrial or not) to fall back on in case the supermarkets are suddenly empty. That's not a positive, and it's not something that the article's ethos can address. Maybe "you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you" is overkill, but the idea that food should be chosen on a case-by-case basis solely according to whether "natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial" is overkill, too. The latter assumes an ever-functioning system of transportation, even though a historian like the author should know that isn't a given.
In short: it's one thing to celebrate industrialized food; it's quite another to celebrate globalized food. No amount of "choices" can overshadow the danger of having huge swathes of the population who cannot feed themselves if the merry-go-round ever stops.
Choices won't feed us.
posted by vorfeed at 10:49 AM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
Now who's painting?
Memememe.
As someone else noted, the author is framing the discussion as stark binary one, which isn't helped by the misleading title. Not many are eager to go back to a time where everything is done by hand, but people are interested in reducing the amount of chemicals in their food. That's hardly being a Culinary Luddite.
posted by nomadicink at 10:53 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Memememe.
As someone else noted, the author is framing the discussion as stark binary one, which isn't helped by the misleading title. Not many are eager to go back to a time where everything is done by hand, but people are interested in reducing the amount of chemicals in their food. That's hardly being a Culinary Luddite.
posted by nomadicink at 10:53 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Agree with the 'straw man' comment further up, and the 'twisted rhetoric' analysis. Even for a blog article (as opposed to a scientific statement), this is shallow.
Also: author is likely not so good a cook. Never grew her own tomatoes or anything. Lousy, or at least knee-jerky old-school sociologist (in the sense that she constructs a "movement" where one should be looking very much more carefully at the mechanics of individual people's food choices). Quite a sloppy collector of facts, too. See the whole "from the 4th page of the article" citation above; every single statement would be worth a study of its own, but is completely worthless as 'facts' without any sort of further reference. Look at this for example:
In the second half, Japanese women welcomed factory-made bread because they could sleep a little longer instead of getting up to make rice
The only loaf of bread I saw in Japan was a misguided effort to present me with what our host assumed to be a "Western" breakfast. I know, this proves nothing. But a non-named number of Japanese women's sleep and bread-buying choices over a time span of fifty years in a country that large proves nothing either. A historian should know.
Short version: dump. It is not nostalgia that makes one (me) critical of "culinary modernism", it is the list of additives in small print on the can label (or whatever), the knowledge that someone is profiting from selling crap as food to people who (historians or not) are too naïve to understand that they are being scammed (or that someone else in some other part of the world has to suffer for the production of all that junk), and it is the fact that any home made hamburger with home made fries and home made mayonnaise (while not necessarily much healthier than the fast-food variety, although even that needs further study) tastes at least ten times better than whatever we can buy at Our Favorite Chain.
posted by Namlit at 11:06 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Also: author is likely not so good a cook. Never grew her own tomatoes or anything. Lousy, or at least knee-jerky old-school sociologist (in the sense that she constructs a "movement" where one should be looking very much more carefully at the mechanics of individual people's food choices). Quite a sloppy collector of facts, too. See the whole "from the 4th page of the article" citation above; every single statement would be worth a study of its own, but is completely worthless as 'facts' without any sort of further reference. Look at this for example:
In the second half, Japanese women welcomed factory-made bread because they could sleep a little longer instead of getting up to make rice
The only loaf of bread I saw in Japan was a misguided effort to present me with what our host assumed to be a "Western" breakfast. I know, this proves nothing. But a non-named number of Japanese women's sleep and bread-buying choices over a time span of fifty years in a country that large proves nothing either. A historian should know.
Short version: dump. It is not nostalgia that makes one (me) critical of "culinary modernism", it is the list of additives in small print on the can label (or whatever), the knowledge that someone is profiting from selling crap as food to people who (historians or not) are too naïve to understand that they are being scammed (or that someone else in some other part of the world has to suffer for the production of all that junk), and it is the fact that any home made hamburger with home made fries and home made mayonnaise (while not necessarily much healthier than the fast-food variety, although even that needs further study) tastes at least ten times better than whatever we can buy at Our Favorite Chain.
posted by Namlit at 11:06 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Choices won't feed us.Well, they will if there's a long drought and all your local crops die. In that case, nothing but choices will feed you.
I suspect, for what it's worth, that she's talking about people like Alice Waters. And I'm actually not convinced that it is possible to live decently where I live using Alice Waters's prescriptions. Life was pretty harsh around here before the railroad arrived. She swears it can be done, if you just talk to Europeans who live in cold climates about how their ancestors subsisted on preserved foods, but I'm dubious. I think it's a fantasy that masks the fact that being an 18th century Russian serf or Swedish peasant actually kind of sucked.
posted by craichead at 11:10 AM on August 15, 2010 [5 favorites]
I open my frig. I grab an apple. I wash it. I eat it. Yum. That was fast.
posted by sandiegoguides at 11:14 AM on August 15, 2010
posted by sandiegoguides at 11:14 AM on August 15, 2010
This article is the word version of being at a Welcome Freshman event and getting trapped in the corner by someone who sweats as fast as they talk and who wonders aloud if you think his ideas are "too dangerous".
posted by The Whelk at 11:19 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 11:19 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
Oh, come on people. The author is reacting to the real cultural movement which is the holier-than-thou foodie: localist, "artisianal," "traditional," etc. which every one of you knows exists. Is there some painting with broader brush strokes than is strictly necessary? Perhaps. But denying that there is a significant move to connect food with morality is disingenuous. It's out there, and we all know it.
Don't think she's being entirely fair but are still made uncomfortable by her argument. Well, if the shoe fits...
posted by valkyryn at 11:23 AM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
Don't think she's being entirely fair but are still made uncomfortable by her argument. Well, if the shoe fits...
posted by valkyryn at 11:23 AM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
"So to make food tasty, safe, digestible, and healthy, our forebears bred, ground, soaked, leached, curdled, fermented, and cooked naturally occurring plants and animals until they were literally beaten into submission. They created sweet oranges and juicy apples and non-bitter legumes, happily abandoning their more natural but less tasty ancestors. They built granaries, dried their meat and their fruit, salted and smoked their fish, curdled and fermented their dairy products, and cheerfully used additives and preservatives—sugar, salt, oil, vinegar, lye—to make edible foodstuffs."
I don't think this is what people mean when they complain about preservatives and "processed food." Complaints about, e.g. factory farming and high fructose corn syrup, have nothing to do with their function (faster production, lowering production costs, and extending shelf life), and everything to do with negative consequences of the method (environmental concerns, lower quality, health issues).
Don't conflate those concerns with the tenets of the raw food movement.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 11:25 AM on August 15, 2010
I don't think this is what people mean when they complain about preservatives and "processed food." Complaints about, e.g. factory farming and high fructose corn syrup, have nothing to do with their function (faster production, lowering production costs, and extending shelf life), and everything to do with negative consequences of the method (environmental concerns, lower quality, health issues).
Don't conflate those concerns with the tenets of the raw food movement.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 11:25 AM on August 15, 2010
"Big Macs are un-healthy, not tasty, and depend on a whole range of completely destructive practices including clearing the Brazilian rain forest. So it goes on my Don't list."
Okay, two out of three is not bad. "Not tasty", however, fails the reality test. If they didn't taste good, no one would buy them. Big Macs, (like ice cream sandwiches), are not something that I would eat at every meal. However, I get tired of assholes like Morgan Spurlock and The Committee For Science In The Public Interest browbeating me every time I eat something that doesn't conform to their religion.
posted by TDavis at 11:30 AM on August 15, 2010 [5 favorites]
Okay, two out of three is not bad. "Not tasty", however, fails the reality test. If they didn't taste good, no one would buy them. Big Macs, (like ice cream sandwiches), are not something that I would eat at every meal. However, I get tired of assholes like Morgan Spurlock and The Committee For Science In The Public Interest browbeating me every time I eat something that doesn't conform to their religion.
posted by TDavis at 11:30 AM on August 15, 2010 [5 favorites]
She swears it can be done, if you just talk to Europeans who live in cold climates about how their ancestors subsisted on preserved foods, but I'm dubious.
Pease porridge, bacon, sauerkraut, black bread, herring . . . yes, it was done, but not with any joy. It is not for nothing that Russian peasants traditionally serve vodka in tumblers.
A relevant point may be that winter activities were different in the past. Our businesses (except the obviously seasonal ones like waterparks or snowplowing) tick along 365 days a year, and every American is expected to undertake largely the same work activities regardless of climate, leading to off-kilter "fuel" consumption. It was probably easier to live on sparse local winter foods -- if no nicer -- when you expended less energy during the day.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:32 AM on August 15, 2010
Pease porridge, bacon, sauerkraut, black bread, herring . . . yes, it was done, but not with any joy. It is not for nothing that Russian peasants traditionally serve vodka in tumblers.
A relevant point may be that winter activities were different in the past. Our businesses (except the obviously seasonal ones like waterparks or snowplowing) tick along 365 days a year, and every American is expected to undertake largely the same work activities regardless of climate, leading to off-kilter "fuel" consumption. It was probably easier to live on sparse local winter foods -- if no nicer -- when you expended less energy during the day.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:32 AM on August 15, 2010
Pease porridge, bacon, sauerkraut, black bread, herring . . . yes, it was done, but not with any joy.
Don;t sound bad to me, but my taste buds are on loan from the 13th century (Oh bread and cheese and beer? Thank you. Got any poached pear? Lovely.)
posted by The Whelk at 11:36 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Don;t sound bad to me, but my taste buds are on loan from the 13th century (Oh bread and cheese and beer? Thank you. Got any poached pear? Lovely.)
posted by The Whelk at 11:36 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
She makes a rhetorical error in handing out the unpleasant labels in the first few paragraphs and then making her case. If her aim was to call localists and organic food nuts luddites, in order to make people re-examine their assumptions, it's wrong to call them luddites right away, because then their reaction is "LUDDITE AM I RAR GRAR" and they either stop reading or bat away her points before even thinking about them. It would be more effective if she made her case dispassionately and saved the label-applying for the final pars: "Viewed in this context, organic food enthusiasts are little more than diet luddites ..." etc.
posted by WPW at 11:39 AM on August 15, 2010
posted by WPW at 11:39 AM on August 15, 2010
But denying that there is a significant move to connect food with morality is disingenuous. It's out there, and we all know it.
First of all, who's denying it? I mean that as a serious question. Second, to what degree is it actually wrong to connect food choices and morality? If the way you spend your money determines how our production and distribution systems continue to develop, then how you exercise your spending choices, to the degree that you have choices, has macroeconomic consequences.
The way you phrased that: "denying [it] is disingenuous", and "made uncomfortable by her argument" suggests that to bring up the ethical or moral dimensions of choice is something one should feel guilty about. I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about examining the potential effects of my purchasing choices and I appreciate those who have written about them. Are you saying this is wrong? Is it wrong because it's moralizing? In which case, aren't you moralizing about that, and should you therefore feel guilty about doing so?
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:42 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
First of all, who's denying it? I mean that as a serious question. Second, to what degree is it actually wrong to connect food choices and morality? If the way you spend your money determines how our production and distribution systems continue to develop, then how you exercise your spending choices, to the degree that you have choices, has macroeconomic consequences.
The way you phrased that: "denying [it] is disingenuous", and "made uncomfortable by her argument" suggests that to bring up the ethical or moral dimensions of choice is something one should feel guilty about. I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about examining the potential effects of my purchasing choices and I appreciate those who have written about them. Are you saying this is wrong? Is it wrong because it's moralizing? In which case, aren't you moralizing about that, and should you therefore feel guilty about doing so?
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:42 AM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Eat Moar Pickles.
A message from Ye OL' Pickle Barrel-Ass & Sons. Purveyors of fine pickled produce to Her Majesty's Court since 1786.
posted by nola at 11:54 AM on August 15, 2010
A message from Ye OL' Pickle Barrel-Ass & Sons. Purveyors of fine pickled produce to Her Majesty's Court since 1786.
posted by nola at 11:54 AM on August 15, 2010
Oh bread and cheese and beer? Thank you. Got any poached pear? Lovely.)
Yeah but the bread is rye, and it's moldy, some folks over yonder got St. Vitus's dance.
But help yourself. Here's some "beer" we made with the same moldy rye.
What are pears?
posted by Max Power at 11:54 AM on August 15, 2010 [7 favorites]
Yeah but the bread is rye, and it's moldy, some folks over yonder got St. Vitus's dance.
But help yourself. Here's some "beer" we made with the same moldy rye.
What are pears?
posted by Max Power at 11:54 AM on August 15, 2010 [7 favorites]
the real cultural movement which is the holier-than-thou foodie: localist, "artisianal," "traditional," etc. which every one of you knows exists.
So what? Objecting to how people act and behave culturally is different from objecting to the substance of what they're saying. I think people mix their perceptions of the "holier-than-thou" foodie movement with the realities of our present-day food systems. This article is indeed a straw-man argument. I think the historical points raised are worth considering, but in critiquing binaries, the author just sets up her own binary of past vs. present: which would you choose? It's not that simple - it's never that simple. Let's look at the complex systems we've created and talk about whether they are a social or environmental good, overall. Let's not leap to the idea that critiques of the industrial food system are shallow and motivated by identity politics.
The people I most often see railing against advocates for systemic change in the food system are generally pretty well distanced from the actual work going on in the movement. Alice Waters is an easy target, but most people who are diligently working on the ground to rebuild local food economies have the same problems with her arguments as outsiders do. IT's a shallow perception that everyone in the food movement comes from that mold. In flat reality, the people I know who are actually most concerned about food justice, and doing the most about it, are in the food movement - not outside it. It makes little sense for people doing nothing about it to lob lazy critiques at people involved in the movement, who are usually the very ones working to change the present inequalities and nutritional deficiencies the current system creates.
posted by Miko at 11:59 AM on August 15, 2010 [4 favorites]
So what? Objecting to how people act and behave culturally is different from objecting to the substance of what they're saying. I think people mix their perceptions of the "holier-than-thou" foodie movement with the realities of our present-day food systems. This article is indeed a straw-man argument. I think the historical points raised are worth considering, but in critiquing binaries, the author just sets up her own binary of past vs. present: which would you choose? It's not that simple - it's never that simple. Let's look at the complex systems we've created and talk about whether they are a social or environmental good, overall. Let's not leap to the idea that critiques of the industrial food system are shallow and motivated by identity politics.
The people I most often see railing against advocates for systemic change in the food system are generally pretty well distanced from the actual work going on in the movement. Alice Waters is an easy target, but most people who are diligently working on the ground to rebuild local food economies have the same problems with her arguments as outsiders do. IT's a shallow perception that everyone in the food movement comes from that mold. In flat reality, the people I know who are actually most concerned about food justice, and doing the most about it, are in the food movement - not outside it. It makes little sense for people doing nothing about it to lob lazy critiques at people involved in the movement, who are usually the very ones working to change the present inequalities and nutritional deficiencies the current system creates.
posted by Miko at 11:59 AM on August 15, 2010 [4 favorites]
A whole essay on history, food, nutrition and health and no mention of how refrigeration changed a whole lot of that? Hmmmm.
Also, I am tired of statements like "Many plants contain both toxins and carcinogens," when they are trotted out in defense of the other chemicals we put in our food. As if they are equivalent!
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:00 PM on August 15, 2010
Also, I am tired of statements like "Many plants contain both toxins and carcinogens," when they are trotted out in defense of the other chemicals we put in our food. As if they are equivalent!
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:00 PM on August 15, 2010
For our ancestors, natural was something quite nasty. Natural often tasted bad. Fresh meat was rank and tough, fresh fruits inedibly sour, fresh vegetables bitter. Natural was unreliable. Fresh milk soured; eggs went rotten. Everywhere seasons of plenty were followed by seasons of hunger. Natural was also usually indigestible. Grains, which supplied 50 to 90 percent of the calories in most societies, have to be threshed, ground, and cooked to make them edible.
This woman is nuts. Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
As some of you have said, I think she wants us to believe in a world where your corn is bitter and tough, or it comes out of a Green Giant can. And ditto on the thought that this screed could only come from somebody who neither cooks, nor has any gardening, hunting, foraging, or any other experience with food except micorwave and enjoy.
posted by Sukiari at 12:02 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
This woman is nuts. Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
As some of you have said, I think she wants us to believe in a world where your corn is bitter and tough, or it comes out of a Green Giant can. And ditto on the thought that this screed could only come from somebody who neither cooks, nor has any gardening, hunting, foraging, or any other experience with food except micorwave and enjoy.
posted by Sukiari at 12:02 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
I blame Bruce Ames for the "plants contain toxins" line of argument.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:03 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:03 PM on August 15, 2010
This woman is nuts. Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
This may refer to selective breeding of plants an livestock to improve on their respective size and quality. I'm just guessing as to her meaning here.
posted by nola at 12:07 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
This may refer to selective breeding of plants an livestock to improve on their respective size and quality. I'm just guessing as to her meaning here.
posted by nola at 12:07 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
I thought it was a fascinating article, and those that say it was "hooray fast food" simplky didn't read it until the final paragraph where it talks about "culinary ethos."
Thanks.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:08 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Thanks.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:08 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
"But mom broke up with Brad; she didn't like craftsmen, she said, because they were too much like actual Victorians, always spouting all kinds of crap about how one thing was better then another thing, which eventually led, she explained, to the belief that some people were better than others."
- The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:14 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
- The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:14 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Choices won't feed us.
Well, they will if there's a long drought and all your local crops die. In that case, nothing but choices will feed you.
First of all, that's not necessarily true. No one said that local food had to be fresh. In the past, most local food was preserved... and today, there's nothing keeping us from preserving it in a local factory.
Besides, that's why I said that "you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you" was overkill. I think it's pretty obvious that we need a sustainable mix of local and non-local food -- one which would allow people to get by if there were no non-local food, and would allow them to get by if there were no local food -- rather than all-one or all-the-other.
That said, most people are pretty much living all-one lives, and they're doing it chiefly because our society considers choice to be much more important than sustainability. The problem is that it's not: not if we still want to have choice over the long run.
posted by vorfeed at 12:18 PM on August 15, 2010
Well, they will if there's a long drought and all your local crops die. In that case, nothing but choices will feed you.
First of all, that's not necessarily true. No one said that local food had to be fresh. In the past, most local food was preserved... and today, there's nothing keeping us from preserving it in a local factory.
Besides, that's why I said that "you shouldn't eat anything not produced within 100 miles of you" was overkill. I think it's pretty obvious that we need a sustainable mix of local and non-local food -- one which would allow people to get by if there were no non-local food, and would allow them to get by if there were no local food -- rather than all-one or all-the-other.
That said, most people are pretty much living all-one lives, and they're doing it chiefly because our society considers choice to be much more important than sustainability. The problem is that it's not: not if we still want to have choice over the long run.
posted by vorfeed at 12:18 PM on August 15, 2010
Who is "uncomfortable" with either the (yes) fact that morality and food are connected in lots of ways in our culture, or those arguments? If I'd written that article I'd perhaps be uncomfortable with the wishy-washiness of my presentation, but then I haven't.
Another thing altogether is whether someone who makes some specific food choices needs, by default, to be dubbed any of the following: "holier-than-thou foodie: localist, "artisianal," "traditional," etc.", scare quotes or not, and whether being localist, artisianal, or self-proclaimed-ly better than the next foodie means automatically that one has made (in terms of food selection) bad or uninformed or silly choices (because industrial food is fine, and the occasional sweat-grown potato straight out of the ground might be difficult to retrieve, or green or whatnot). I don't believe that there is a logical link between a made-up group's attitude and actual individual food choices. People can be stupidly religious and preachy about food and nevertheless make very good choices; but they may as well make some very bad ones. People can be utterly uninformed about food but, because they happen to have something of a good taste, arrive at fine food choices; others are uninformed and fall for the junk-food industry and its products, and that's that.
This woman is nuts. Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
And that: Hmmm, Nuts...
posted by Namlit at 12:20 PM on August 15, 2010
Another thing altogether is whether someone who makes some specific food choices needs, by default, to be dubbed any of the following: "holier-than-thou foodie: localist, "artisianal," "traditional," etc.", scare quotes or not, and whether being localist, artisianal, or self-proclaimed-ly better than the next foodie means automatically that one has made (in terms of food selection) bad or uninformed or silly choices (because industrial food is fine, and the occasional sweat-grown potato straight out of the ground might be difficult to retrieve, or green or whatnot). I don't believe that there is a logical link between a made-up group's attitude and actual individual food choices. People can be stupidly religious and preachy about food and nevertheless make very good choices; but they may as well make some very bad ones. People can be utterly uninformed about food but, because they happen to have something of a good taste, arrive at fine food choices; others are uninformed and fall for the junk-food industry and its products, and that's that.
This woman is nuts. Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
And that: Hmmm, Nuts...
posted by Namlit at 12:20 PM on August 15, 2010
This woman is nuts. Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
Yes, humanity has spent millennia developing the sciences of animal husbandry, agriculture, and selective breeding for no reason whatsoever.
posted by darksasami at 12:26 PM on August 15, 2010 [22 favorites]
Yes, humanity has spent millennia developing the sciences of animal husbandry, agriculture, and selective breeding for no reason whatsoever.
posted by darksasami at 12:26 PM on August 15, 2010 [22 favorites]
Fresh meat was rank and tough? Fruits were sour and vegetables were bitter, and so on?
If you happen to be in a warmer state, try a banana from a banana tree in a landscaping design; it's hard to notice they're even banana trees unless you know, because the fruits are the size of pinky fingers and much less edible. If you're up north, pick a little apple from a random fruiting tree and try it; it's like flavored wood. Also, all wild figs contain deceased wasp larvae, which is something that makes my summer memories a lot less idyllic in retrospect, although no less crunchy.
Her point was: nature is a crapshoot. Some vegetables, fruits and nuts were ready to eat before H. sapiens figured out how pollen and grafting worked, but many weren't.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:28 PM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
If you happen to be in a warmer state, try a banana from a banana tree in a landscaping design; it's hard to notice they're even banana trees unless you know, because the fruits are the size of pinky fingers and much less edible. If you're up north, pick a little apple from a random fruiting tree and try it; it's like flavored wood. Also, all wild figs contain deceased wasp larvae, which is something that makes my summer memories a lot less idyllic in retrospect, although no less crunchy.
Her point was: nature is a crapshoot. Some vegetables, fruits and nuts were ready to eat before H. sapiens figured out how pollen and grafting worked, but many weren't.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:28 PM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
I ate at Burger King today, but not before I told off the nearest green supermarket for gaining their credence through evocative dichotomies.
posted by danb at 1:25 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by danb at 1:25 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
She should read Ruth Schwart-Coen's More Work for Mother. The evidence on mass manufacture actually reducing working time is a bit dodgy. Coen suggests that time-use surveys indicate something different - namely, people (especially women) having to work just as much, perhaps a bit more, on housework, due to other factors (children spending less time in the home, the relative absence of household help even in relatively poor families, etc.). In all, this is typical history-as-progress nonsense. "Nobody understands that the past wasn't some idyllic utopia..." Really? Nobody understands that? The urban gardening movement is all about going back to 19th-century Britain? Co-ops are just about the petit-bourgeoisie turning themselves into a rentier class? The food stamp-to-farmer's market program is old-school elitism? F--- you and the iron wagon you rode in on.
If we urge the Mexican to stay at her metate, the farmer to stay at his olive press, the housewife to stay at her stove, all so that we may eat handmade tortillas, traditionally pressed olive oil, and home-cooked meals, we are assuming the mantle of the aristocrats of old.
Right, it's much better to urge the Mexican woman to leave the miserable farms in the south and head to Juarez where she can work in a maquiladora for pennies a day until she gets raped, murdered and left in a gutter. The tortilla factory is only a social revolution for those members of the society who don't have to work in it (or in a similar factory).
posted by outlandishmarxist at 1:32 PM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
If we urge the Mexican to stay at her metate, the farmer to stay at his olive press, the housewife to stay at her stove, all so that we may eat handmade tortillas, traditionally pressed olive oil, and home-cooked meals, we are assuming the mantle of the aristocrats of old.
Right, it's much better to urge the Mexican woman to leave the miserable farms in the south and head to Juarez where she can work in a maquiladora for pennies a day until she gets raped, murdered and left in a gutter. The tortilla factory is only a social revolution for those members of the society who don't have to work in it (or in a similar factory).
posted by outlandishmarxist at 1:32 PM on August 15, 2010 [6 favorites]
I live in a county that produces vast quantities of food. Grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, meat, and some specialty commodities -- mostly shipped away after some local processing (there are nearby industrial meatpacking and frozen vegetable plants, for example), though of course they are sold locally, too. Plus, of course, there are smaller producers (often organic, biodynamic, and so on) selling purely locally.
So I could eat entirely locally without giving up very much at all -- but only because of the investments in and connections to modern and industrial agriculture. Go back 100 or more years, and although there were some more options in some ways (for example, the salmon runs had not yet been decimated), there were fewer in other ways. Winter eating got pretty slim and monotonous, and people (mostly women and children but in this area also some Chinese immigrant workers) worked very long hours to create those meals, preserve the food, etc.
I think it's totally fair to call the locavore/foodie/whatever people on the question of sustainability in human terms. Artisanal food tastes great (I sure eat a lot of it, and enjoy it very much), but definitionally it doesn't scale up very well, and historically it relied on production systems that aren't very acceptable to contemporary values.. I'm all for improving the modern food system, but I really doubt that the answers are going to be found in artisanal production.
posted by Forktine at 1:47 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
So I could eat entirely locally without giving up very much at all -- but only because of the investments in and connections to modern and industrial agriculture. Go back 100 or more years, and although there were some more options in some ways (for example, the salmon runs had not yet been decimated), there were fewer in other ways. Winter eating got pretty slim and monotonous, and people (mostly women and children but in this area also some Chinese immigrant workers) worked very long hours to create those meals, preserve the food, etc.
I think it's totally fair to call the locavore/foodie/whatever people on the question of sustainability in human terms. Artisanal food tastes great (I sure eat a lot of it, and enjoy it very much), but definitionally it doesn't scale up very well, and historically it relied on production systems that aren't very acceptable to contemporary values.. I'm all for improving the modern food system, but I really doubt that the answers are going to be found in artisanal production.
posted by Forktine at 1:47 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
Also, Luddism deserves a much better defense: http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html
posted by outlandishmarxist at 1:48 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by outlandishmarxist at 1:48 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Yeah, you'd expect a historian not to use "luddite" as a synonym for "backwards and stupid".
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 1:52 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 1:52 PM on August 15, 2010
Right, it's much better to urge the Mexican woman to leave the miserable farms in the south and head to Juarez where she can work in a maquiladora for pennies a day until she gets raped, murdered and left in a gutter. The tortilla factory is only a social revolution for those members of the society who don't have to work in it (or in a similar factory).
I think you are underestimating just how bad life can be back home on the farm, and how much better your life chances are when you take that maquiladora job. It's picturesque in the village, sure, but -- particularly for the women -- it can be just incredibly tough. Using a metate once as an experiment is kind of fun; using one for hours every day, plus farming, plus childcare, plus cooking (over an open fire, with all the lung disease and burn injuries that that implies), and on and on and on, isn't so much fun.
It's also really simplistic and inaccurate to reduce the women who are making those tough choices to "raped, murdered and left in a gutter." While even one murder is too many, that isn't what happens to the vast, vast majority of women who move to the city. The people who move do so with open eyes, knowing that it will be tough, but knowing also that they and their families will have more options as a result.
posted by Forktine at 1:59 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
I think you are underestimating just how bad life can be back home on the farm, and how much better your life chances are when you take that maquiladora job. It's picturesque in the village, sure, but -- particularly for the women -- it can be just incredibly tough. Using a metate once as an experiment is kind of fun; using one for hours every day, plus farming, plus childcare, plus cooking (over an open fire, with all the lung disease and burn injuries that that implies), and on and on and on, isn't so much fun.
It's also really simplistic and inaccurate to reduce the women who are making those tough choices to "raped, murdered and left in a gutter." While even one murder is too many, that isn't what happens to the vast, vast majority of women who move to the city. The people who move do so with open eyes, knowing that it will be tough, but knowing also that they and their families will have more options as a result.
posted by Forktine at 1:59 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
As a foodie, I've been guilty of some of this, some of the time, but usually only as way to rationalize spending the kind of money one must spend to eat like Alice Waters. At the end of the day I still love Kraft macaroni and cheese just about as much as I love artisanal rosemary flatbread with fresh goat cheese.
posted by jnrussell at 2:04 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by jnrussell at 2:04 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
All this talk about fast food has me craving a Filet O'Fish. I know it's not local, but since it's fish, isn't it a little better for the planet than other things on the menu?
It's Hoki, and that's not overfished, right?
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:18 PM on August 15, 2010
It's Hoki, and that's not overfished, right?
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:18 PM on August 15, 2010
The author is reacting to the real cultural movement which is the holier-than-thou foodie: localist, "artisianal," "traditional," etc. which every one of you knows exists.
No, but I've read about them. Much like the trust-fund hipster, these people exist in much higher populations as the subject of contrarian movement articles, than in reality.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:23 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
No, but I've read about them. Much like the trust-fund hipster, these people exist in much higher populations as the subject of contrarian movement articles, than in reality.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:23 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
As a foodie, I consider myself to be more into sustainable practices than artisan practices. Yes, artisan food tastes good, but it's a luxury. I'd like the entire world to have sustainable food, which should be possible for an appropriate population (population growth is the one thing nobody likes to talk about). This doesn't mean I want everyone to be eating flatbread paninis that were handmade.
As a general rule, I try to stick to vegetables as the main thing in my meals. I'm not too particular about them being "unprocessed." I use a pressure cooker and put them up for the winter in cans, and that cooks the heck out of them. These things really don't take much time. I can usually put dinner on the table in 30-45 minutes. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I do keep frozen meals on hand for when I'm short on time, but I usually buy the kind of thing I would normally prepare, like a vegetarian curry. I'm not a vegetarian, I just don't eat meat all that often because it's expensive, not the best thing for the planet, and carries a greater foodborne illness risk than most veggies. I'll still eat it once in a while, or if someone serves it to me.
What I have an issue with is the extravagances made cheap by our messed up food system. For example, meat and starch are artificially cheap because of subsidies, and so we somehow have stuff like dollar menu double cheeseburgers. We have a glut of cheap, non-nutritious food that the government encourages people to eat via economic incentives. What we need is to either end the food subsidies (which probably wouldn't work that well) or have a more balanced subsidy system. I kind of like the idea of subsidizing nutrients based on their recommended daily value rather than specific crops. That way, farmers would be encouraged to grow broccoli, spinach, beans and other vegetables aside from the cheap starches that mostly go to unhealthy food and livestock.
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:31 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
As a general rule, I try to stick to vegetables as the main thing in my meals. I'm not too particular about them being "unprocessed." I use a pressure cooker and put them up for the winter in cans, and that cooks the heck out of them. These things really don't take much time. I can usually put dinner on the table in 30-45 minutes. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I do keep frozen meals on hand for when I'm short on time, but I usually buy the kind of thing I would normally prepare, like a vegetarian curry. I'm not a vegetarian, I just don't eat meat all that often because it's expensive, not the best thing for the planet, and carries a greater foodborne illness risk than most veggies. I'll still eat it once in a while, or if someone serves it to me.
What I have an issue with is the extravagances made cheap by our messed up food system. For example, meat and starch are artificially cheap because of subsidies, and so we somehow have stuff like dollar menu double cheeseburgers. We have a glut of cheap, non-nutritious food that the government encourages people to eat via economic incentives. What we need is to either end the food subsidies (which probably wouldn't work that well) or have a more balanced subsidy system. I kind of like the idea of subsidizing nutrients based on their recommended daily value rather than specific crops. That way, farmers would be encouraged to grow broccoli, spinach, beans and other vegetables aside from the cheap starches that mostly go to unhealthy food and livestock.
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:31 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Wendell Berry? Would the shoe fit him?
I really wish she had named who or what groups she was talking about!
posted by craichead at 2:41 PM on August 15, 2010
I really wish she had named who or what groups she was talking about!
posted by craichead at 2:41 PM on August 15, 2010
Yes, humanity has spent millennia developing the sciences of animal husbandry, agriculture, and selective breeding for no reason whatsoever
I take it you have, like the author, never eaten wild vegetables, or wild meat. If you had, it wouldn't be possible to craft a statement like you have. Did you even read the article?
She is not implying that the grass that was later to become corn is awful. She is not implying that the small mammals that lived 20 million years ago only to evolve into cattle tasted awful. She is instead suggesting that corn and beans and beef from more recent times was not palatable.
posted by Sukiari at 2:47 PM on August 15, 2010
I take it you have, like the author, never eaten wild vegetables, or wild meat. If you had, it wouldn't be possible to craft a statement like you have. Did you even read the article?
She is not implying that the grass that was later to become corn is awful. She is not implying that the small mammals that lived 20 million years ago only to evolve into cattle tasted awful. She is instead suggesting that corn and beans and beef from more recent times was not palatable.
posted by Sukiari at 2:47 PM on August 15, 2010
No, but I've read about them. Much like the trust-fund hipster, these people exist in much higher populations as the subject of contrarian movement articles, than in reality.
Somebody's keeping Whole Foods etc in business.
posted by jonmc at 2:51 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Somebody's keeping Whole Foods etc in business.
posted by jonmc at 2:51 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Her point was: nature is a crapshoot. Some vegetables, fruits and nuts were ready to eat before H. sapiens figured out how pollen and grafting worked, but many weren't
This much is very true, but I think she was not referring to the ancient progenitors of our current vegetables and meat animals when she she wrote what she did. She was instead imagining that all meat from the old days (to my mind, before 1900 or so) was rotten, and all fruits and vegetables were nearly inedible.
As a person who enjoys many kinds of foraged wild foods, and who hunts and fishes, I have a hard time believing her. Yak, bison, and buffalo meats are delicious and about as close as one may now come to the domesticated cattle without entering the realm of domestication.
Who knows, maybe she needs her beef to be blanded with corn at the final feeding stages, and requires a pound of salt for her veggies and a pound of sugar for her fruits. With a palate trained to expect such excess, fresh natural food may well be boring compared to KFC.
posted by Sukiari at 2:55 PM on August 15, 2010
This much is very true, but I think she was not referring to the ancient progenitors of our current vegetables and meat animals when she she wrote what she did. She was instead imagining that all meat from the old days (to my mind, before 1900 or so) was rotten, and all fruits and vegetables were nearly inedible.
As a person who enjoys many kinds of foraged wild foods, and who hunts and fishes, I have a hard time believing her. Yak, bison, and buffalo meats are delicious and about as close as one may now come to the domesticated cattle without entering the realm of domestication.
Who knows, maybe she needs her beef to be blanded with corn at the final feeding stages, and requires a pound of salt for her veggies and a pound of sugar for her fruits. With a palate trained to expect such excess, fresh natural food may well be boring compared to KFC.
posted by Sukiari at 2:55 PM on August 15, 2010
Yak, bison, and buffalo meats are delicious and about as close as one may now come to the domesticated cattle without entering the realm of domestication.Weren't American buffalo hunted almost to extinction by 1900, though? I don't think that's a very good example of the sustainable wonders of pre-industrial foodways!
posted by craichead at 3:03 PM on August 15, 2010
The article is from 2001: here's the full version.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:08 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:08 PM on August 15, 2010
I think you are underestimating just how bad life can be back home on the farm, and how much better your life chances are when you take that maquiladora job. It's picturesque in the village, sure, but -- particularly for the women -- it can be just incredibly tough. Using a metate once as an experiment is kind of fun; using one for hours every day, plus farming, plus childcare, plus cooking (over an open fire, with all the lung disease and burn injuries that that implies), and on and on and on, isn't so much fun.
I think you are underestimating just how bad life in the cities can be and overestimating how aware people who move from rural to urban areas are of the consequences of that move. You are also forgetting that rural-urban migration rates are not historically fixed, and worldwide, they have gone up astronomically since the SAP programs from the 70's through the 90's, suggesting that things have gotten much worse for rural people since the "leaders of the free world" decided to tread the path of agricultural centralization. What I'm suggesting with these points is that 1) yes, things are bad in the country and have gotten much worse recently; 2) the reason they have gotten worse is that international governing institutions decided to implement policies that tend to hurt local farmers; 3) people in a bad situation want to get out of that situation, but they may be mistaken in choosing certain alternatives; 4) slum life is not an improvement on rural life. I don't know, for example, where you get the idea that rural women cook over open fires, whereas urban women cook on electric or gas stoves. Women in slums often cook over open fires, and the only difference between doing it in an urban setting and doing it in a rural setting is that you're much more likely to create a massive conflagration in the urban setting. And now, instead of chopping their leg open with a scythe or getting kicked by a bull, they can get their hand ripped off by a rendering machine; 5) people who come to work in maquiladoras do not become members of the middle class, and even comparing them with, say, Mexican workers who come to the U.S. to work on farms, who may be earning as much as $60 a day compared to $60 a month, is not accurate.
posted by outlandishmarxist at 3:16 PM on August 15, 2010
I think you are underestimating just how bad life in the cities can be and overestimating how aware people who move from rural to urban areas are of the consequences of that move. You are also forgetting that rural-urban migration rates are not historically fixed, and worldwide, they have gone up astronomically since the SAP programs from the 70's through the 90's, suggesting that things have gotten much worse for rural people since the "leaders of the free world" decided to tread the path of agricultural centralization. What I'm suggesting with these points is that 1) yes, things are bad in the country and have gotten much worse recently; 2) the reason they have gotten worse is that international governing institutions decided to implement policies that tend to hurt local farmers; 3) people in a bad situation want to get out of that situation, but they may be mistaken in choosing certain alternatives; 4) slum life is not an improvement on rural life. I don't know, for example, where you get the idea that rural women cook over open fires, whereas urban women cook on electric or gas stoves. Women in slums often cook over open fires, and the only difference between doing it in an urban setting and doing it in a rural setting is that you're much more likely to create a massive conflagration in the urban setting. And now, instead of chopping their leg open with a scythe or getting kicked by a bull, they can get their hand ripped off by a rendering machine; 5) people who come to work in maquiladoras do not become members of the middle class, and even comparing them with, say, Mexican workers who come to the U.S. to work on farms, who may be earning as much as $60 a day compared to $60 a month, is not accurate.
posted by outlandishmarxist at 3:16 PM on August 15, 2010
Weren't American buffalo hunted almost to extinction by 1900, though? I don't think that's a very good example of the sustainable wonders of pre-industrial foodways
In the old days of market hunting, everything that twitched was shot and sent back east. I don't know if anybody advocates the same sort of behavior now.
But what does this have to do with flavor? Her implication is that these animals are all unfit to eat, rank and rotten tip to tail.
posted by Sukiari at 3:17 PM on August 15, 2010
In the old days of market hunting, everything that twitched was shot and sent back east. I don't know if anybody advocates the same sort of behavior now.
But what does this have to do with flavor? Her implication is that these animals are all unfit to eat, rank and rotten tip to tail.
posted by Sukiari at 3:17 PM on August 15, 2010
Oh, and I think she's mostly angry at the "Slow Food" movement, at least from reading Slow Food: The French Terroir Strategy and Culinary Modernism [pdf] (linked on her most popular articles page).
From my point of view, her big thesis is that there was, before the advent of "slow food" and other like movements, something she calls "Culinary Moderism": letting poor people eat the food formerly reserved to the elite, like white bread, red meat, etc.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:22 PM on August 15, 2010
From my point of view, her big thesis is that there was, before the advent of "slow food" and other like movements, something she calls "Culinary Moderism": letting poor people eat the food formerly reserved to the elite, like white bread, red meat, etc.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:22 PM on August 15, 2010
(But I don't think "Culinary Modernism" is a very helpful concept: of course poor farmers wanted to eat white bread and meat, and when they could, they did: it took until 1956 for the livestock levels of Provence to overtake their 1471 high mark.)
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:31 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:31 PM on August 15, 2010
TDavis: Okay, two out of three is not bad. "Not tasty", however, fails the reality test. If they didn't taste good, no one would buy them. Big Macs, (like ice cream sandwiches), are not something that I would eat at every meal. However, I get tired of assholes like Morgan Spurlock and The Committee For Science In The Public Interest browbeating me every time I eat something that doesn't conform to their religion.
So if I say 'I don't find this tasty' I am somehow browbeating you, but if you say the opposite, then that is a good dialog? If your point is that you should be able to enjoy certain things then it follows directly that you have no right to insist that I find them palatable.
It sure as hell tastes like Crisco with artificial flavoring added to me. If that's what you want in your food, please let me know when I said you couldn't have it.
posted by paisley henosis at 3:54 PM on August 15, 2010
So if I say 'I don't find this tasty' I am somehow browbeating you, but if you say the opposite, then that is a good dialog? If your point is that you should be able to enjoy certain things then it follows directly that you have no right to insist that I find them palatable.
It sure as hell tastes like Crisco with artificial flavoring added to me. If that's what you want in your food, please let me know when I said you couldn't have it.
posted by paisley henosis at 3:54 PM on August 15, 2010
4) slum life is not an improvement on rural life.
That isn't true, at least in terms of access to education, health care, and child survival rates. People are not total idiots; if life is better back on the farm that is where they will go. The "why do they move to the cities instead of staying home where they can grow food?" canard has been around for my entire life (which is exactly the period where development and trade policies have sent money to urban areas rather than rural) -- people respond to the incentives and information they have available, and make remarkably informed and nuanced decisions.
I don't know, for example, where you get the idea that rural women cook over open fires, whereas urban women cook on electric or gas stoves.
That depends on where you are, what the local subsidies (or lack thereof) are for gas, charcoal, and other fuels, etc. Regardless, an urban family is more likely to have access to a gas stove than a rural family because there is simply more wealth in cities, and because the subsidies that exist are more likely to flow to urban dwellers.
people who come to work in maquiladoras do not become members of the middle class,
I'm not aware of anyone who is saying that they do. They are a lot closer to the middle class than is the person on a subsistence farm, however, which is the comparison here.
Anyway, all of this is a derailment from the main point of the article and the main focus of the discussion here; I'd be happy to take this to email if you want to continue the back and forth.
posted by Forktine at 3:56 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
That isn't true, at least in terms of access to education, health care, and child survival rates. People are not total idiots; if life is better back on the farm that is where they will go. The "why do they move to the cities instead of staying home where they can grow food?" canard has been around for my entire life (which is exactly the period where development and trade policies have sent money to urban areas rather than rural) -- people respond to the incentives and information they have available, and make remarkably informed and nuanced decisions.
I don't know, for example, where you get the idea that rural women cook over open fires, whereas urban women cook on electric or gas stoves.
That depends on where you are, what the local subsidies (or lack thereof) are for gas, charcoal, and other fuels, etc. Regardless, an urban family is more likely to have access to a gas stove than a rural family because there is simply more wealth in cities, and because the subsidies that exist are more likely to flow to urban dwellers.
people who come to work in maquiladoras do not become members of the middle class,
I'm not aware of anyone who is saying that they do. They are a lot closer to the middle class than is the person on a subsistence farm, however, which is the comparison here.
Anyway, all of this is a derailment from the main point of the article and the main focus of the discussion here; I'd be happy to take this to email if you want to continue the back and forth.
posted by Forktine at 3:56 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
But what does this have to do with flavor? Her implication is that these animals are all unfit to eat, rank and rotten tip to tail.Because buffalo wasn't available to most people, and trying to make it available to everyone would have resulted in its extinction. The average ordinary joe before 1900 wasn't eating a lot of meat period, and the meat he or she was eating was not big game. If you were urban, maybe you could buy tongue or a pig's head to boil or something like corned beef: cheap cuts of meat that were affordable, at least sometimes, on a worker's salary. If you were rural, maybe you could kill a chicken once in a while, but certainly not every day and probably not every week. Maybe you worked for someone rich, and they'd let you take home the offal or the tough cuts after they'd eaten the yummy stuff. I'm not saying that delicious meat didn't exist, but I don't think most people were eating very much of it.
posted by craichead at 4:01 PM on August 15, 2010
There needs to be a new Law: a key signifier that a thread is really about resentment rather than what it is superficially about is when the word "hipster" comes into play. It's a good sign that nothing's going to be decided on the merits of the arguments presented because the two sides are not arguing about the same thing at all. One side is arguing about the thing in question. The other side is complaining that there are people out there who think they're just so fucking cool, and the topic at hand is just a proxy battle for resenting that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:16 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:16 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Foodie capitalism is awesome. More and tastier choices, and sometimes even healthier ones too. Just got back from a trip to my (small and out of the way) hometown, spending considerable time in its restaurants and supermarkets for the first time in 20 years. The change was astonishing -- and this was a place that had farmers' markets in the 1980s.
On the other hand, foodie socialism ought to be a hanging offense. Industrial agriculture has made hunger nearly a thing of the past everywhere that economies have been sufficiently sophisticated to let it develop. That we can have the First Lady of the United States take fat poor people as her main issue to work on is tribute to that. (And I'm not saying that it isn't an issue of concern, just that it is a pretty high-class problem to have in historical terms.) Agriculture is a low-margin business which ranks low on the list of attraction for investment capital and management talent as it is -- if foodie socialists are allowed to mess with it even slightly, God help us.
posted by MattD at 4:27 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
On the other hand, foodie socialism ought to be a hanging offense. Industrial agriculture has made hunger nearly a thing of the past everywhere that economies have been sufficiently sophisticated to let it develop. That we can have the First Lady of the United States take fat poor people as her main issue to work on is tribute to that. (And I'm not saying that it isn't an issue of concern, just that it is a pretty high-class problem to have in historical terms.) Agriculture is a low-margin business which ranks low on the list of attraction for investment capital and management talent as it is -- if foodie socialists are allowed to mess with it even slightly, God help us.
posted by MattD at 4:27 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
Industrial agriculture has made hunger nearly a thing of the past. Oh right, we forgot. Silly us.
posted by outlandishmarxist at 4:45 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by outlandishmarxist at 4:45 PM on August 15, 2010
outlandishmarxist, at least finish reading the sentence before jumping on what looks like an anticapitalist talking point.
posted by darksasami at 4:53 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by darksasami at 4:53 PM on August 15, 2010
Foodie Socialists? What does that even mean?
posted by werkzeuger at 4:58 PM on August 15, 2010
posted by werkzeuger at 4:58 PM on August 15, 2010
valkyryn:
But denying that there is a significant move to connect food with morality is disingenuous. It's out there, and we all know it.
Well, of course there is. But that movement is nothing like this article's caricature of it.
posted by ixohoxi at 5:13 PM on August 15, 2010
But denying that there is a significant move to connect food with morality is disingenuous. It's out there, and we all know it.
Well, of course there is. But that movement is nothing like this article's caricature of it.
posted by ixohoxi at 5:13 PM on August 15, 2010
...Agriculture is a low-margin business which ranks low on the list of attraction for investment capital and management talent...
You might want to check out Stockman Grass Farmer. Management Intensive Grazing, crucial for growing all that socialist grassfed meat, is the bleeding edge of agriculture right now.
posted by werkzeuger at 5:23 PM on August 15, 2010
You might want to check out Stockman Grass Farmer. Management Intensive Grazing, crucial for growing all that socialist grassfed meat, is the bleeding edge of agriculture right now.
posted by werkzeuger at 5:23 PM on August 15, 2010
If you were rural, maybe you could kill a chicken once in a while, but certainly not every day and probably not every week. Maybe you worked for someone rich, and they'd let you take home the offal or the tough cuts after they'd eaten the yummy stuff. I'm not saying that delicious meat didn't exist, but I don't think most people were eating very much of it.
This ignores what was probably a primary source of meat for rural Americans before 1900: fish and/or small game. The idea that early rural Americans weren't eating much meat isn't supported by the evidence; meat and potatoes have been our staples since the first days of colonization, with vegetables merely an afterthought.
Peasants in other countries ate a largely meatless diet, but that's because they were being bled dry by their landowners. As is so often the case with food, this was mostly due to highly unequal distribution, not shortage.
posted by vorfeed at 5:24 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
This ignores what was probably a primary source of meat for rural Americans before 1900: fish and/or small game. The idea that early rural Americans weren't eating much meat isn't supported by the evidence; meat and potatoes have been our staples since the first days of colonization, with vegetables merely an afterthought.
Peasants in other countries ate a largely meatless diet, but that's because they were being bled dry by their landowners. As is so often the case with food, this was mostly due to highly unequal distribution, not shortage.
posted by vorfeed at 5:24 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Foodie Socialists? What does that even mean?
I'm guessing it isn't supposed to mean enormous farm subsidies for high-calorie, low-nutrient crops.
posted by Miko at 5:26 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
I'm guessing it isn't supposed to mean enormous farm subsidies for high-calorie, low-nutrient crops.
posted by Miko at 5:26 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
This ignores what was probably a primary source of meat for rural Americans before 1900: fish and/or small game. The idea that early rural Americans weren't eating much meat isn't supported by the evidence; meat and potatoes have been our staples since the first days of colonization, with vegetables merely an afterthought.Rural Americans, maybe, although of course that was predicated on some sort of nasty stuff having to do with displacement of the previous population. Rural people anywhere else? I don't think so. Urban people in America? Nope.
Peasants in other countries ate a largely meatless diet, but that's because they were being bled dry by their landowners. As is so often the case with food, this was mostly due to highly unequal distribution, not shortage.Ok, but do you think it's a coincidence that the breakdown of those social hierarchies happened at the same time as urbanization and industrialization, which brought about industrialized food production? I don't think it was. I'm not sure that it would be possible to have pre-modern modes of food production with modern ideas about democracy, workers' rights, child labor, women's equality and whatnot.
posted by craichead at 5:35 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
I didn't write in defense of agribusiness socialism (like the incumbent system of subsidies), but in assertion that more self-interested or supposedly selfless market interference by foodies was not the solution. If we de-subsidized corn and soy a dozen conventional eggs or a pound of conventional pork might be 10% more expensive, but if we forced them into some non-conventional agriculture strictures the increase would be a lot more than that. I'd be interested to be corrected. but don't believe that there's a single category of daily-consumption food or beverages where even 5% of the developed world's consumption is anything other than conventionally produced.
posted by MattD at 5:52 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by MattD at 5:52 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
To defend "fast food" by defending pantry staples is just hilariously disingenous. Yet another sexy premise/gotcha article based on a facile interpretation of a trend. I think the media is officially eating itself at this point.
Modern, fast, processed food is a disaster.
This is her first sentence. It is interpreted for the purposes of this article as any food that has enjoyed any human intervention. Is she unaware of how the term "fast food" is used in the United States?
That food should be fresh and natural has become an article of faith. It comes as something of a shock to realize that this is a latter-day creed.
A latter-day creed meaning after about 9000 BC, apparently, since she goes into the threshing and the selective breeding.
The presumed corollary—that country people ate better than city dwellers—does not.
Who is presuming this corollary? I learned the basic concept of the feudal system in lower elementary school.
Oh good lord, it just gets sillier from there.
posted by desuetude at 7:17 PM on August 15, 2010
Modern, fast, processed food is a disaster.
This is her first sentence. It is interpreted for the purposes of this article as any food that has enjoyed any human intervention. Is she unaware of how the term "fast food" is used in the United States?
That food should be fresh and natural has become an article of faith. It comes as something of a shock to realize that this is a latter-day creed.
A latter-day creed meaning after about 9000 BC, apparently, since she goes into the threshing and the selective breeding.
The presumed corollary—that country people ate better than city dwellers—does not.
Who is presuming this corollary? I learned the basic concept of the feudal system in lower elementary school.
Oh good lord, it just gets sillier from there.
posted by desuetude at 7:17 PM on August 15, 2010
Rural Americans, maybe, although of course that was predicated on some sort of nasty stuff having to do with displacement of the previous population. Rural people anywhere else? I don't think so. Urban people in America? Nope.
That's why I specified rural Americans -- which is who you were talking about in the portion of your comment I highlighted.
As for "urban people in America", you're wrong. They also ate meat. Salt pork was plentiful in the early colonies, and food in early urban areas was dependent on the same agricultural cycle that held sway in rural areas. In 1875, Carroll Wright's groundbreaking study found that working poor in Massachusetts, some of which "had to go without necessary clothing", were eating "pork chops and steak for breakfast, not to mention pie or cake. They had meat again, if they could afford it, at the noon meal along with potatoes, and perhaps more pie." A survey taken in 1907 of the Standard of Living Among Workingmen's Families in New York City found that more than 30% of their food budget went to meat, and that the poor showed "a tendency to spend in increasing proportion for meats as income rises, and to diminish relative expenditure for bread and other cereal foods". "In nearly all these families the important meal of the day is in the evening, when the entire family is present. The menu consists of meat, potatoes, occasionally soup, coffee or beer."
I don't doubt that the American urban poor ate much less meat than the rich, but the idea that they ate meat "certainly not every day and probably not every week" is inaccurate.
Ok, but do you think it's a coincidence that the breakdown of those social hierarchies happened at the same time as urbanization and industrialization, which brought about industrialized food production? I don't think it was.
Of course it wasn't a coincidence. Urbanization and industrialization couldn't have happened without the breakdown of social structures which previously kept peasants indentured to the land... but at the same time, I think it's a bit much to claim that modern ideals make pre-modern modes of food production impossible. It may be hard to get people to swallow subsistence farming as it was traditionally practiced, but that doesn't necessarily preclude doing it in a more modern way.
posted by vorfeed at 7:49 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
That's why I specified rural Americans -- which is who you were talking about in the portion of your comment I highlighted.
As for "urban people in America", you're wrong. They also ate meat. Salt pork was plentiful in the early colonies, and food in early urban areas was dependent on the same agricultural cycle that held sway in rural areas. In 1875, Carroll Wright's groundbreaking study found that working poor in Massachusetts, some of which "had to go without necessary clothing", were eating "pork chops and steak for breakfast, not to mention pie or cake. They had meat again, if they could afford it, at the noon meal along with potatoes, and perhaps more pie." A survey taken in 1907 of the Standard of Living Among Workingmen's Families in New York City found that more than 30% of their food budget went to meat, and that the poor showed "a tendency to spend in increasing proportion for meats as income rises, and to diminish relative expenditure for bread and other cereal foods". "In nearly all these families the important meal of the day is in the evening, when the entire family is present. The menu consists of meat, potatoes, occasionally soup, coffee or beer."
I don't doubt that the American urban poor ate much less meat than the rich, but the idea that they ate meat "certainly not every day and probably not every week" is inaccurate.
Ok, but do you think it's a coincidence that the breakdown of those social hierarchies happened at the same time as urbanization and industrialization, which brought about industrialized food production? I don't think it was.
Of course it wasn't a coincidence. Urbanization and industrialization couldn't have happened without the breakdown of social structures which previously kept peasants indentured to the land... but at the same time, I think it's a bit much to claim that modern ideals make pre-modern modes of food production impossible. It may be hard to get people to swallow subsistence farming as it was traditionally practiced, but that doesn't necessarily preclude doing it in a more modern way.
posted by vorfeed at 7:49 PM on August 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
"Agriculture is a low-margin business which ranks low on the list of attraction for investment capital and management talent."
This claim depends entirely upon how "agriculture" is defined. If the meaning is limited solely to those activities directly involved in growing crops and raising livestock, then, yes, agriculture so defined is a relatively low-margin business. However, the reason it does not attract investment capital (objective) and management talent (subjective) is not because agriculture is "low-margin," but because there is hardly another industry on this planet that requires, as a necessary element, the very high, long-term, non-liquid level of financial commitment that agriculture has traditionally required. Cause and effect are confused in the quoted statement. If you look at certain slices of "agriculture" where folks have figured out ways to separate production from direct land-ownership (which is what requires such massive, long-term financial investment and commitment), you'll find much higher (on average) rates of return. Examples that come to mind are industrial chicken/turkey/pork production. (Above applies to U.S. agriculture during the last century).
Now, if you're going to broaden the definition of "agriculture" to include everything that happens to a raw foodstuff making its way from farm-to-table in a modern, developed-world society, then the quoted statement is false. Take a look at ConAgra, Kraft, IBP, Cargill, Monsanto, etc..... While the bottom has been falling out of the average investment bank/financial services firm (presumably replete with lots of "management talent" and ridiculously huge amounts of "investment capital"), corporate agriculture has been humming along just fine. After all, you gotta eat - even if it is junk - no matter how you define it.
posted by webhund at 8:08 PM on August 15, 2010
This claim depends entirely upon how "agriculture" is defined. If the meaning is limited solely to those activities directly involved in growing crops and raising livestock, then, yes, agriculture so defined is a relatively low-margin business. However, the reason it does not attract investment capital (objective) and management talent (subjective) is not because agriculture is "low-margin," but because there is hardly another industry on this planet that requires, as a necessary element, the very high, long-term, non-liquid level of financial commitment that agriculture has traditionally required. Cause and effect are confused in the quoted statement. If you look at certain slices of "agriculture" where folks have figured out ways to separate production from direct land-ownership (which is what requires such massive, long-term financial investment and commitment), you'll find much higher (on average) rates of return. Examples that come to mind are industrial chicken/turkey/pork production. (Above applies to U.S. agriculture during the last century).
Now, if you're going to broaden the definition of "agriculture" to include everything that happens to a raw foodstuff making its way from farm-to-table in a modern, developed-world society, then the quoted statement is false. Take a look at ConAgra, Kraft, IBP, Cargill, Monsanto, etc..... While the bottom has been falling out of the average investment bank/financial services firm (presumably replete with lots of "management talent" and ridiculously huge amounts of "investment capital"), corporate agriculture has been humming along just fine. After all, you gotta eat - even if it is junk - no matter how you define it.
posted by webhund at 8:08 PM on August 15, 2010
Read the full one linked to by Monday, stony Monday, skimmed the UTNE article.
She's a "historian of science" rather than a social historian, so its not really surprising that her social analysis is a bit wobbly.
What is surprising is how incoherent her argument is. If modern = industrial = fast/convenient = good then the point that fast food has always been with us is more than a tad self defeating. It supports the title of the UTNE version, but not the rest of her argument.
She also sold this article repeatedly, and one of its main points in all versions is that people in cities with industrially produced food are better off than people in the country with local/artisanal/home-made food. Somewhere along the line, she dropped the bit about just how bad adulterated food was in industrial Victorian cities.
Maybe she just realized that was a completely counterproductive point, but to my mind it makes her look downright dishonest.
Shame on ya, Rachel Laudan. Shame on ya for being crap.
posted by Ahab at 8:51 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
She's a "historian of science" rather than a social historian, so its not really surprising that her social analysis is a bit wobbly.
What is surprising is how incoherent her argument is. If modern = industrial = fast/convenient = good then the point that fast food has always been with us is more than a tad self defeating. It supports the title of the UTNE version, but not the rest of her argument.
She also sold this article repeatedly, and one of its main points in all versions is that people in cities with industrially produced food are better off than people in the country with local/artisanal/home-made food. Somewhere along the line, she dropped the bit about just how bad adulterated food was in industrial Victorian cities.
Maybe she just realized that was a completely counterproductive point, but to my mind it makes her look downright dishonest.
Shame on ya, Rachel Laudan. Shame on ya for being crap.
posted by Ahab at 8:51 PM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]
That's why I specified rural Americans -- which is who you were talking about in the portion of your comment I highlighted.I actually wasn't specifically talking about Americans, which is why I said "your ordinary average Joe," not "your ordinary average American." I was, however, specific here:
I don't doubt that the American urban poor ate much less meat than the rich, but the idea that they ate meat "certainly not every day and probably not every week" is inaccurate.The full quote is:
If you were rural, maybe you could kill a chicken once in a while, but certainly not every day and probably not every week.The fact that I was talking about rural people is signaled by the phrase "if you were rural." And while I've been reading around a bit and it appears that Americans ate more meat in the 19th century than I thought (and than was true for Europeans), that was in fact true for a lot of the rural population. Specifically, in the postbellum period, both white and black sharecroppers didn't eat a ton of meat, and what they did eat tended to be salt pork and occasional chicken, both of which were more like the tough meat that the author describes than like the buffalo and yak that you like to hunt.
And of course, the difference between the U.S. Europe wasn't just the presence or absence of feudalism. Nor was it that there was slavery in the U.S. and not in Europe. It's that there was a lot of available land in America. That couldn't be sustained forever, because at some point the population superseded the available open farm land. And it was only possible in the first place because of the genocide and displacement of the native population. If your model for the future is that we'll recreate 18th and 19th century America, there seem to be some big problems with that. What sparsely-settled continent do you suggest we take over?
posted by craichead at 8:56 PM on August 15, 2010
Somewhere along the line, she dropped the bit about just how bad adulterated food was in industrial Victorian cities.
To be fair, she does reference Upton Sinclair's The Jungle on the PDF's 5th page (p. 40), but it's to say that food from the past sucked, sucked sucked sucked. I think that's the problem with the article: she's mixing everything up, from Le Roy Ladurie to her own views on cooking, and it doesn't really add up.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:15 PM on August 15, 2010
To be fair, she does reference Upton Sinclair's The Jungle on the PDF's 5th page (p. 40), but it's to say that food from the past sucked, sucked sucked sucked. I think that's the problem with the article: she's mixing everything up, from Le Roy Ladurie to her own views on cooking, and it doesn't really add up.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:15 PM on August 15, 2010
I don't have a "model for the future that we'll recreate 18th and 19th century America". I was simply replying to your inaccurate view of American meat eating pre-1900. You (and the author of the article) seem to want meat to have been rare and/or unpleasant, but it was not actually so. Not in America. Delicious meat did exist, in plenty, and Americans were eating the hell out of it.
And, again, your point about the postbellum period is not universal. Look at the charts on this link one more time -- the people in Parland Plantation and Campfield Settlement were rural Southern sharecroppers between 1860 and 1900, and they were getting between 50% and 78% of their meat from wild animals. Another 20% came from pigs and cows. The highest percentage of chicken on the entire chart is 10.4%. Of course, maybe chicken remains were simply more difficult to identify years down the road... but that much more difficult?
posted by vorfeed at 9:27 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
And, again, your point about the postbellum period is not universal. Look at the charts on this link one more time -- the people in Parland Plantation and Campfield Settlement were rural Southern sharecroppers between 1860 and 1900, and they were getting between 50% and 78% of their meat from wild animals. Another 20% came from pigs and cows. The highest percentage of chicken on the entire chart is 10.4%. Of course, maybe chicken remains were simply more difficult to identify years down the road... but that much more difficult?
posted by vorfeed at 9:27 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Ahab is spot on.
I just finished reading Ms. Laudan's CV and it's pretty clear that she's milked this particular article quite a bit for almost a decade. Having presented it in various forms and reincarnations in a number of different forums, you'd think that she'd have a more coherent argument formed by now.
As Ahab mentioned, adulterated food ("fast" or otherwise) has been around and will probably always be with us. ("Swindled" is a great historical summary of this topic). It's not a function of how "sophisticated" (city) or "simple" (country/peasant) a food is. It's more (but not entirely) a function of how many times a food (and component ingredients) has to change hands between producer and ultimate consumer. In that respect, "fast" food is no different than "toxic mortgages" bundled up and resold as prime grade securities. Garbage in; garbage out.
So it's just flat wrong to conclude that "city" food is better than "country" food - no matter the metric. If she's trying to pick a fight with people who insist that a pound of Barilla "industrial" pasta is far worse in significant ways than a pound of home-made pasta, then she's part of the problem. Not too many people (except for the lunatic fringe on both extremes of the "fast food" argument) would seriously dispute that there's little nutritional difference between the two pastas. (Indeed, as William Alexander's recent book "52 Loaves" points out, the same additives that are probably in your average box of grocery store pasta are almost certain to also be in every bag of "pure" flour on the grocery store shelf - the same flour from which my lovely home-made "fresh" pasta is made). When I take the time to make home-made pasta, I do it principally because of the experience (ever make pasta with a 7 year old?) or because I want a shape/texture that can't be purchased easily. But there's a world of difference between an ultra-processed "needs no refrigeration" boxed, heat-and-serve pot roast with a 100+ ingredient list (most of them reading like a Chem 201 exam) and my grandmother's 7 ingredient recipe. Is one truly "better" than the other. You bet.
Laudan would be far better off making the argument that the nutritional deficit in today's "fast food" (whether that be restaurant fast food a'la McDonald's/Subway/[insert franchise] or prepared heat-and-serve frozen/canned/pouched food purchased at grocery stores) is just as detrimental to the health of those segments of the population who proportionally over-consume such items as was the nutritional deficit of similar populations during the Victorian era, as just one example. Over a lifetime, it really doesn't matter whether the bad "fast food" is alum and sawdust as flour extenders in Victorian daily bread or astronomical calorie/sodium/fat levels in 21st century McBurger.
Crap food is crap food.
posted by webhund at 9:53 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
I just finished reading Ms. Laudan's CV and it's pretty clear that she's milked this particular article quite a bit for almost a decade. Having presented it in various forms and reincarnations in a number of different forums, you'd think that she'd have a more coherent argument formed by now.
As Ahab mentioned, adulterated food ("fast" or otherwise) has been around and will probably always be with us. ("Swindled" is a great historical summary of this topic). It's not a function of how "sophisticated" (city) or "simple" (country/peasant) a food is. It's more (but not entirely) a function of how many times a food (and component ingredients) has to change hands between producer and ultimate consumer. In that respect, "fast" food is no different than "toxic mortgages" bundled up and resold as prime grade securities. Garbage in; garbage out.
So it's just flat wrong to conclude that "city" food is better than "country" food - no matter the metric. If she's trying to pick a fight with people who insist that a pound of Barilla "industrial" pasta is far worse in significant ways than a pound of home-made pasta, then she's part of the problem. Not too many people (except for the lunatic fringe on both extremes of the "fast food" argument) would seriously dispute that there's little nutritional difference between the two pastas. (Indeed, as William Alexander's recent book "52 Loaves" points out, the same additives that are probably in your average box of grocery store pasta are almost certain to also be in every bag of "pure" flour on the grocery store shelf - the same flour from which my lovely home-made "fresh" pasta is made). When I take the time to make home-made pasta, I do it principally because of the experience (ever make pasta with a 7 year old?) or because I want a shape/texture that can't be purchased easily. But there's a world of difference between an ultra-processed "needs no refrigeration" boxed, heat-and-serve pot roast with a 100+ ingredient list (most of them reading like a Chem 201 exam) and my grandmother's 7 ingredient recipe. Is one truly "better" than the other. You bet.
Laudan would be far better off making the argument that the nutritional deficit in today's "fast food" (whether that be restaurant fast food a'la McDonald's/Subway/[insert franchise] or prepared heat-and-serve frozen/canned/pouched food purchased at grocery stores) is just as detrimental to the health of those segments of the population who proportionally over-consume such items as was the nutritional deficit of similar populations during the Victorian era, as just one example. Over a lifetime, it really doesn't matter whether the bad "fast food" is alum and sawdust as flour extenders in Victorian daily bread or astronomical calorie/sodium/fat levels in 21st century McBurger.
Crap food is crap food.
posted by webhund at 9:53 PM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
If you shop with a modicum of care you can avoid meat that's been needle-tenderized (a process which makes marginal cuts more saleable but which drives E.coli from the surface where it's likely more likely be cooked off and into the flesh itself where it it is far more likely to survive cooking unless you burn it to a crisp), ammonia injected, or subjected to "advanced meat recovery" machines which can for example suck spinal matter into the meat, increasing your risk of exposure to prion diseases. You can also avoid mixed batches of different sources of ground beef, which can increase your chances of exposure to any of the above.
And that's just a list of some of the things present in the food itself, a situation that has actually gotten worse in recent decades rather than better. We haven't gotten into the more removed concerns of industrial practices and their impact on the environment, the overuse of antibiotics, something which we will almost certainly regret very badly as a species ourselves within a very few years.
So to dismiss paying attention to the source of your food and the manner in which it's produced (paying more if you have to) as fashionable nonsense is ignorant. And before you ask "who's got time to investigate all this this", certain stores will handle all of this for you and not only document it fully but are delighted to tell you as much as you want to know about it. And because of this "movement", there are more of these stores every day. Yes, you'll pay a little more per pound: a difference maybe equal to the price of one very cheap beer or Super Big Gulp. If it's not worth that, I don't know what to say to you.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:24 PM on August 15, 2010
And that's just a list of some of the things present in the food itself, a situation that has actually gotten worse in recent decades rather than better. We haven't gotten into the more removed concerns of industrial practices and their impact on the environment, the overuse of antibiotics, something which we will almost certainly regret very badly as a species ourselves within a very few years.
So to dismiss paying attention to the source of your food and the manner in which it's produced (paying more if you have to) as fashionable nonsense is ignorant. And before you ask "who's got time to investigate all this this", certain stores will handle all of this for you and not only document it fully but are delighted to tell you as much as you want to know about it. And because of this "movement", there are more of these stores every day. Yes, you'll pay a little more per pound: a difference maybe equal to the price of one very cheap beer or Super Big Gulp. If it's not worth that, I don't know what to say to you.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:24 PM on August 15, 2010
I was simply replying to your inaccurate view of American meat eating pre-1900.Congratulations! You scored a point! It doesn't actually have anything to do with the author's claims, though, because she never addressed America in particular and never said that meat was rare.
You (and the author of the article) seem to want meat to have been rare and/or unpleasant, but it was not actually so.She actually didn't say it was rare in the passage to which you objected, although she would have been correct if she did. She said it was tough. Nothing you've cited disputes that, actually. You haven't shown that the average American, much less the average anyone else, was eating meat that was equivalent to the fresh bison and yak meat that you hunt.
You have, however, linked to some things that have suggested that even in America, where the food situation was unusually good, a lot of people didn't have enough to eat. And one point in favor of modern industrial food production is that it's pretty much eradicated real hunger and diseases of malnutrition in the developed world. That isn't to deny that we have big problems with food, but we no longer suffer from things like the pellagra (niacin deficiency) epidemic that killed 100,000 Southerners in the early 20th century.
I'm not entirely sure what she's trying to say. But if she's trying to say that you wouldn't envy the food choices of most people born before you, then that seems fairly uncontroversial to me. The thing is, I probably also wouldn't envy the food choices of most people alive today.
posted by craichead at 2:18 AM on August 16, 2010
A look at her CV does clear things up regarding her areas of expertise and perhaps her motivations. An independent scholar needs the limelight to manage a career.
But I agree that the central problem with the article isn't about the content, it's about the organization and the floppy, sweeping argument based on generalizations that cover milennia. It's hard to pick a point to argue with or refute, because she's all over the world and across time, selecting a few particular points here and there to throw back at an argument that she herself constructed and that no one else has really posited. Yes, food history is interesting and there's a tremenous amount to be learned from the past about the problem of provisioning the population without undermining it at the same time. But this is a sound-bite, badly argued and badly organized treatment of material better covered elsewhere (without the 'hook' of "contrarian historian takes on snotty foodies").
posted by Miko at 6:08 AM on August 16, 2010
But I agree that the central problem with the article isn't about the content, it's about the organization and the floppy, sweeping argument based on generalizations that cover milennia. It's hard to pick a point to argue with or refute, because she's all over the world and across time, selecting a few particular points here and there to throw back at an argument that she herself constructed and that no one else has really posited. Yes, food history is interesting and there's a tremenous amount to be learned from the past about the problem of provisioning the population without undermining it at the same time. But this is a sound-bite, badly argued and badly organized treatment of material better covered elsewhere (without the 'hook' of "contrarian historian takes on snotty foodies").
posted by Miko at 6:08 AM on August 16, 2010
From her blog:
Nice, very nice actually, to be idea of the day in the New York Times blog. The idea, in a nutshell, is that modern food is great, a huge improvement on the last 10,000 years. Not perfect. But reason to go forward, not wallow in nostalgia.posted by Miko at 6:10 AM on August 16, 2010
Not exactly revolutionary you might think. Well lots do. I am just relishing the thought of responding to the flood of hostile comments. I love controversy.
Nor is it a new idea of mine. Here’s a link to the original article A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We should Love Fast, New, Processed Food which appeared nine years ago!
Back story. Darra Goldstein asked me to write something for the first issue of Gastronomica, the food journal for grownups that was then just a gleam in her eye. And she included it in the lovely volume, The Gastronomica Reader published by the University of California Press which celebrated 10 years of the journal. And from there it went to Utne Reader. And from there to the NYT.
That’s called legs.
I love controversy.
No! Trolled!
But worthwhile in that it got me thinking. I might not agree with what I think she's trying to say, but I would like to see the same points argued well.
As one tiny example of what might be included in that argument, I'd love to know whether (and at exactly what point) urban diet related mortality rates in industrialized countries did drop below rural diet related mortality rates. And then see whether that's really about access to health care rather than anything to do with food at all...
posted by Ahab at 6:30 AM on August 16, 2010
No! Trolled!
But worthwhile in that it got me thinking. I might not agree with what I think she's trying to say, but I would like to see the same points argued well.
As one tiny example of what might be included in that argument, I'd love to know whether (and at exactly what point) urban diet related mortality rates in industrialized countries did drop below rural diet related mortality rates. And then see whether that's really about access to health care rather than anything to do with food at all...
posted by Ahab at 6:30 AM on August 16, 2010
And one point in favor of modern industrial food production is that it's pretty much eradicated real hunger and diseases of malnutrition in the developed world.
Some diseases of malnutrition have been largely eradicated, yes.
Real hunger? Oh my. No, that has not been "pretty much eradicated."
posted by desuetude at 6:40 AM on August 16, 2010
Some diseases of malnutrition have been largely eradicated, yes.
Real hunger? Oh my. No, that has not been "pretty much eradicated."
posted by desuetude at 6:40 AM on August 16, 2010
I would like to see the same points argued well.
Well, I feel like the main points are pretty uncontroversial when argued well: attitudes toward food are influenced by nostalgia, nutrition has posed various sets of problems throughout human history, the advances of the last century have produced an abundance of calories available to people in the more affluent sectors of the world and reduced raw hunger (though have inadvertently caused spikes in other food-related illnesses and other kinds of malnutrition, as well as deleterious economic and environmental effects). When stated blandly they don't roil the waters. These are reasonable observations, but they don't tell us anything about the desirability or optimization of our current food system, or whether there are models for nutrition in some places in the past that are helpful and should be revived for the present day. It's not true that suffering around food has been universal throughout all human history until the last century. It's just not.
I'd love to know whether (and at exactly what point) urban diet related mortality rates in industrialized countries did drop below rural diet related mortality rates
I think this is just impossible to say, becuase it's not at all easy to isolate "diet related" causes of morbidity and mortality from other living conditions: disease vectors and epidemic disease, climate, politically induced poverty, social class, medical understandings, etc. It's rare that you can pin down a community's health profile and say "it was because of the food." Food is almost always a factor, but it's interconnected with all of these other complex phenomena.
posted by Miko at 6:54 AM on August 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
Well, I feel like the main points are pretty uncontroversial when argued well: attitudes toward food are influenced by nostalgia, nutrition has posed various sets of problems throughout human history, the advances of the last century have produced an abundance of calories available to people in the more affluent sectors of the world and reduced raw hunger (though have inadvertently caused spikes in other food-related illnesses and other kinds of malnutrition, as well as deleterious economic and environmental effects). When stated blandly they don't roil the waters. These are reasonable observations, but they don't tell us anything about the desirability or optimization of our current food system, or whether there are models for nutrition in some places in the past that are helpful and should be revived for the present day. It's not true that suffering around food has been universal throughout all human history until the last century. It's just not.
I'd love to know whether (and at exactly what point) urban diet related mortality rates in industrialized countries did drop below rural diet related mortality rates
I think this is just impossible to say, becuase it's not at all easy to isolate "diet related" causes of morbidity and mortality from other living conditions: disease vectors and epidemic disease, climate, politically induced poverty, social class, medical understandings, etc. It's rare that you can pin down a community's health profile and say "it was because of the food." Food is almost always a factor, but it's interconnected with all of these other complex phenomena.
posted by Miko at 6:54 AM on August 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
I know food miles are bad and I think it's nuts that we can buy cherries and strawberries all year round, flown in, instead of waiting for them to come in season as we did when I was a child (I loved it when cherry season started - it meant summer was coming). But I live in the UK - if I ate only what was produced within 100 miles, or only food my great-grandmother would recognise, I'd eat mainly mince and carrots and really look forward to my annual fruit.
The other issue is that 'fast food' is cheap food. In an ideal world we could all be foodies, but remember many people in cities in Britain (and probably America too) are living in 'food poverty' - three miles or more away from the nearest place that sells fresh food, in poor areas where most people don't have access to a car or much spare cash for the bus, so thjey are reliant on the local convenience store. There are several reasons why McDonald's are doing well in this recession - it is the only restaurant some people can afford to eat in. If I'm stuck in town without a way home and need to eat, I can buy a Big Mac and medium fries for half the price of a box of supermarket sushi; many people just can't afford to spend twice as much on their meal, or if they can, they don't know what to get.
posted by mippy at 7:53 AM on August 16, 2010
The other issue is that 'fast food' is cheap food. In an ideal world we could all be foodies, but remember many people in cities in Britain (and probably America too) are living in 'food poverty' - three miles or more away from the nearest place that sells fresh food, in poor areas where most people don't have access to a car or much spare cash for the bus, so thjey are reliant on the local convenience store. There are several reasons why McDonald's are doing well in this recession - it is the only restaurant some people can afford to eat in. If I'm stuck in town without a way home and need to eat, I can buy a Big Mac and medium fries for half the price of a box of supermarket sushi; many people just can't afford to spend twice as much on their meal, or if they can, they don't know what to get.
posted by mippy at 7:53 AM on August 16, 2010
She actually didn't say it was rare in the passage to which you objected, although she would have been correct if she did. She said it was tough. Nothing you've cited disputes that, actually. You haven't shown that the average American, much less the average anyone else, was eating meat that was equivalent to the fresh bison and yak meat that you hunt.
"The fresh bison and yak meat that you hunt" is a bizarre qualifier, and suggests that you've never been hunting for small game. Rabbits, pigeons, pheasant, and most other small game aren't "tough", unless you happen to get an old one... and even then, that's what stew or braising is for, just as with tougher cuts from the supermarket. That was my point from the very beginning, when I linked to the page which shows that hundreds of Southern sharecroppers in the mid 1800s were getting half their meat or more from wild animals. Maybe meat like that isn't "equivalent to fresh bison and yak", but it's not "rank and tough" either. Even wild squirrel isn't bad.
The idea that wild game is "tough" and "rank" comes straight from a long campaign of advertising, along with the homogenizing and blanding of American food. Nobody at the time would have thought so, and very few who hunt today think so, despite the fact that hardly anyone hunts bison or yak.
Using today's sensibilities as a barometer to explain that food back then was gross is nothing more than a circular argument. I'm quite sure that Americans from the 1800s would say the same about the modern diet, especially our heavy consumption of ethnic food, salads, and rice.
That isn't to deny that we have big problems with food, but we no longer suffer from things like the pellagra (niacin deficiency) epidemic that killed 100,000 Southerners in the early 20th century.
Diabetes kills 3.4 million people per year worldwide, and has gone from a little-known genetic disease (my parents have it, and I had to explain what it was to my classmates back in the 80s) to a diet-triggered epidemic. Type II diabetes, known as "adult-onset diabetes" and virtually unknown in children just twenty years ago, is now very common among kids under 12. From the link: "obesity is the hallmark of type 2 diabetes".
The idea that we "no longer suffer from things like pellagra" requires ignoring the fact that we do suffer from other deadly diseases which come straight from our food.
posted by vorfeed at 8:52 AM on August 16, 2010
"The fresh bison and yak meat that you hunt" is a bizarre qualifier, and suggests that you've never been hunting for small game. Rabbits, pigeons, pheasant, and most other small game aren't "tough", unless you happen to get an old one... and even then, that's what stew or braising is for, just as with tougher cuts from the supermarket. That was my point from the very beginning, when I linked to the page which shows that hundreds of Southern sharecroppers in the mid 1800s were getting half their meat or more from wild animals. Maybe meat like that isn't "equivalent to fresh bison and yak", but it's not "rank and tough" either. Even wild squirrel isn't bad.
The idea that wild game is "tough" and "rank" comes straight from a long campaign of advertising, along with the homogenizing and blanding of American food. Nobody at the time would have thought so, and very few who hunt today think so, despite the fact that hardly anyone hunts bison or yak.
Using today's sensibilities as a barometer to explain that food back then was gross is nothing more than a circular argument. I'm quite sure that Americans from the 1800s would say the same about the modern diet, especially our heavy consumption of ethnic food, salads, and rice.
That isn't to deny that we have big problems with food, but we no longer suffer from things like the pellagra (niacin deficiency) epidemic that killed 100,000 Southerners in the early 20th century.
Diabetes kills 3.4 million people per year worldwide, and has gone from a little-known genetic disease (my parents have it, and I had to explain what it was to my classmates back in the 80s) to a diet-triggered epidemic. Type II diabetes, known as "adult-onset diabetes" and virtually unknown in children just twenty years ago, is now very common among kids under 12. From the link: "obesity is the hallmark of type 2 diabetes".
The idea that we "no longer suffer from things like pellagra" requires ignoring the fact that we do suffer from other deadly diseases which come straight from our food.
posted by vorfeed at 8:52 AM on August 16, 2010
In related food writing, here's why a tortilla factory is a social revolution. Because otherwise, mamacita would be spending half her day doing nothing but preparing enough tortillas for her family.
I'm not discounting the article, but it's not either or. I can make corn tortillas completely from scratch in a relatively short time using mostly traditional methods with the addition of a food processor and store-bought ingredients. Alton Brown showed me how.
posted by Huck500 at 8:52 AM on August 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
I'm not discounting the article, but it's not either or. I can make corn tortillas completely from scratch in a relatively short time using mostly traditional methods with the addition of a food processor and store-bought ingredients. Alton Brown showed me how.
posted by Huck500 at 8:52 AM on August 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
if I ate only what was produced within 100 miles
Nobody is asking anyone to eat only what is produced within 100 miles. That didn't even happen in the 1500s. Food has always been traded.
The 100-Mile Diet is just a concept introduced by a specific couple of people that encouraged people to explore the products and seasonality of their own region. Even they did not recommend it as a lifestyle, nor adopt it as a permanent lifestyle. After they introduced it, many people practiced the idea as an experiment for a short time, and many wrote about it. Some continue to use it as a working principle that influences their buying decisions but doesn't dictate every part of their diet, and some practice it rigidly. But I think the idea that anyone is prescribing this as the only healthy way to eat is a straw man.
I have participated in my state's Eat Local Month (now a week) and found it really fascinating to get that good an understanding of what's available when. I learned about some new foods and some new sources of food, learned to cook different things than I otherwise would have, and met a lot of new people who provided the food I ate. I still privelege local food over industrial and long-distance food, and am active in the movement to increase the local food resources available, but even I would never advocate for obeying a rigid rule like that.
There's a big, big gap between eating a lot more local food and forcing yourself to eat only local food. The benefits of even increasing your local food intake by 10% are huge, for the economy and for your taste buds. No one is going to force 100-mile diet on anyone, and no one is suggesting it's practicable or logical for everyone. It is an interesting and educational construct to apply to food sourcing, temporarily or permanently, but not a requirement. It's meant to address the fact that most people have a very, very vague idea (a) what foods are produced in their region; (b) who produces them; (c) when those foods are in season; (d) what role those foods and people they play in your region's economy; (e) what resources it takes to produce them; (f) what impacts that food production has on local environments; or (g) the tremendous amount of labor, knowledge, and energy that goes into producing food. The 100-Mile Diet concept is just one means used to the end of increasing people's understanding about their local food resources. Trying it for a day or a week or even one meal is an enlightening process. Anyone doing it beyond that is making an unusually big commitment, which you might or might not admire, but you certainly are not going to be required by anybody to follow suit.
posted by Miko at 8:53 AM on August 16, 2010
Nobody is asking anyone to eat only what is produced within 100 miles. That didn't even happen in the 1500s. Food has always been traded.
The 100-Mile Diet is just a concept introduced by a specific couple of people that encouraged people to explore the products and seasonality of their own region. Even they did not recommend it as a lifestyle, nor adopt it as a permanent lifestyle. After they introduced it, many people practiced the idea as an experiment for a short time, and many wrote about it. Some continue to use it as a working principle that influences their buying decisions but doesn't dictate every part of their diet, and some practice it rigidly. But I think the idea that anyone is prescribing this as the only healthy way to eat is a straw man.
I have participated in my state's Eat Local Month (now a week) and found it really fascinating to get that good an understanding of what's available when. I learned about some new foods and some new sources of food, learned to cook different things than I otherwise would have, and met a lot of new people who provided the food I ate. I still privelege local food over industrial and long-distance food, and am active in the movement to increase the local food resources available, but even I would never advocate for obeying a rigid rule like that.
There's a big, big gap between eating a lot more local food and forcing yourself to eat only local food. The benefits of even increasing your local food intake by 10% are huge, for the economy and for your taste buds. No one is going to force 100-mile diet on anyone, and no one is suggesting it's practicable or logical for everyone. It is an interesting and educational construct to apply to food sourcing, temporarily or permanently, but not a requirement. It's meant to address the fact that most people have a very, very vague idea (a) what foods are produced in their region; (b) who produces them; (c) when those foods are in season; (d) what role those foods and people they play in your region's economy; (e) what resources it takes to produce them; (f) what impacts that food production has on local environments; or (g) the tremendous amount of labor, knowledge, and energy that goes into producing food. The 100-Mile Diet concept is just one means used to the end of increasing people's understanding about their local food resources. Trying it for a day or a week or even one meal is an enlightening process. Anyone doing it beyond that is making an unusually big commitment, which you might or might not admire, but you certainly are not going to be required by anybody to follow suit.
posted by Miko at 8:53 AM on August 16, 2010
I linked the wrong link to the people who started the 100-Mile Diet idea, James and Alisa Smith.
posted by Miko at 8:55 AM on August 16, 2010
posted by Miko at 8:55 AM on August 16, 2010
The idea that wild game is "tough" and "rank" comes straight from a long campaign of advertising
Absolutely true... I just came back from Quebec City and while there I ate caribou, wapiti (elk), deer, and bison, some in a restaurant and some from the freezer of a hunter. It was a bit tougher, but not unreasonable, and the taste was 100x better than store-bought beef, especially the venison and caribou.
posted by Huck500 at 8:57 AM on August 16, 2010 [2 favorites]
Absolutely true... I just came back from Quebec City and while there I ate caribou, wapiti (elk), deer, and bison, some in a restaurant and some from the freezer of a hunter. It was a bit tougher, but not unreasonable, and the taste was 100x better than store-bought beef, especially the venison and caribou.
posted by Huck500 at 8:57 AM on August 16, 2010 [2 favorites]
I can buy a Big Mac and medium fries for half the price of a box of supermarket sushi;
You can't, however, buy it for less than buying bulk beef, potatoes, and buns and dividing by how many (vastly superior) burgers that makes, if you know how to shop well (meaning you buy what's cheap that day, not what you want.)
There's also the time factor, though... many less affluent people have to work more than one job.
posted by Huck500 at 9:02 AM on August 16, 2010 [2 favorites]
You can't, however, buy it for less than buying bulk beef, potatoes, and buns and dividing by how many (vastly superior) burgers that makes, if you know how to shop well (meaning you buy what's cheap that day, not what you want.)
There's also the time factor, though... many less affluent people have to work more than one job.
posted by Huck500 at 9:02 AM on August 16, 2010 [2 favorites]
That was my point. If you know how to shop well. If you know how to cook. If you have the mathematical and nutritional knowledge to work out that that will cost less. If you have enough money to buy all those ingtredients in one go (about £10) rather than a single daily meal (about £2). Many people don't know or can't do these things. Home-made burgers are great, but I have the time and know-how to make them - if you've been brought up on boxed or processed food, you may not.
And none of these apply if you are stuck away from home without access to your kitchen and have to take your pick from what's available.
posted by mippy at 9:33 AM on August 16, 2010
And none of these apply if you are stuck away from home without access to your kitchen and have to take your pick from what's available.
posted by mippy at 9:33 AM on August 16, 2010
Many people don't know or can't do these things.
That's quite true, but that is no reason not to encourage people who are able to do these things, and no reason not to work to change those realities for those who aren't currently able.
posted by Miko at 10:38 AM on August 16, 2010
That's quite true, but that is no reason not to encourage people who are able to do these things, and no reason not to work to change those realities for those who aren't currently able.
posted by Miko at 10:38 AM on August 16, 2010
Absolutely, but it's going to take a while. Jamie Oliver tried to change the eating habits of a town, and unsurprisingly there was resistance - people in Rotherham were resistant to change, or felt a bit patronised, and some mothers would hand their children chips through the school gates as they refused to eat 'that healthy stuff'. It takes time to change a food culture and providing more choice early on really helps.
posted by mippy at 6:52 AM on August 17, 2010
posted by mippy at 6:52 AM on August 17, 2010
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Also, I find this interesting:
"If we urge the Mexican to stay at her metate, the farmer to stay at his olive press, the housewife to stay at her stove, all so that we may eat handmade tortillas, traditionally pressed olive oil, and home-cooked meals, we are assuming the mantle of the aristocrats of old."
posted by hermitosis at 9:33 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]