The Morale Case against Foodies

[The empressof all]

Although I have broken up with him as my secret boyfriend....The article in this months Atlantic with a focus on Tony's new book is rather harsh on all of us "elitist" foodie types. Now I've never traveled to Asia for just a bowl of Pho...nor have I flown to Paris to buy cheese I do love my monthly special moments when the Saveur arrives...and I do keep quite a collection of Food and Wine in the bathroom. So am I doomed to hell and back....and No...I wouldn't eat a tortured cat ....but then again I eat a Vegan diet....:rofl:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/the-moral-crusade-against-foodies/8370/

[grasswire]

1. well that was extremely interesting

I'll be sending it to a few elitist and gluttonous foodies I know. Ha!

[Warpy]

2. I tend to agree with Livy that the elevation of chefs

is a definite sign of decadence preceding collapse. Chefs only achieve this position when an alarming wealth disparity has occurred and the chef who can stimulate the jaded palates of the overly wealthy becomes prized among all their minions.

What's truly ironic about the modern decadence of wealth is how diets have suddenly been reversed: the poor are dining on the choicest muscle meats and sweetest seafood while the jaded rich are dining on offal, headcheese, and trash fish like sea urchin, all artfully arranged in small portions on plates highly decorated with slivered veg garnishes and wee dots of sauce.

It's no mystery why Bourdain seeks that sort of stuff out, preferring "lights" (lungs) over loin, it's what his wealthy patrons have demanded for years and the only way the peasants will get them is if they know where a real butcher shop is and can request them ahead of time, something unavailable in 99% of the country.

I'm finding myself more and more annoyed by the constant tweaking of good food into unrecognizable forms as I get older and crankier and the main thing I'd like to do with most celebrity chefs is slap them silly.

[Retrograde]

4. You make a very good point

It's no longer about the food per se, but about how much it ultimately costs, and what's hard to find. The organ meat example to cite is true: I happen to like organ meats, and remember when you could get them cheaply in any supermarket. Now they're a luxury and correspondingly priced - unless you happen to live near a Mexican market that still carries them. I think this is also due to centralization of meat packing: you don't have local butchers much anymore, just store employees who open the big boxes they get from the meat packers.

The "Eat Local" motto seems to have transmuted into "Fly somewhere to taste the local specialty". Nice if you can afford it.

I wonder how the super-refined Japanese upper-class sensibility, where all the rice grains in the sushi are arranged in the same direction, and one is expected to admire the artistry of the chef as much as the taste of the food (I specify upper class because I don't thing the people who actually produced the food were as much into the asthetics as in having enough to eat) came about.

[tigereye]

6. generally I agree- the obsession with rarer and rarer kinds

of foods for outrageous prices, while so many have nothing to eat around the planet is kind of sickening. I do think that some "famous" chefs are in it for the cooking and the joy and the taste, though.

[Duer 157099]

3. Milk toast?

"These include a sort of milk-toast priest, anthologized in Best Food Writing 2010, who expounds unironically on the “ritual” of making the perfect slice"

"milk-toast" ??? Really? The Atlantic?

Wow.

Or maybe it's cuz it's a foodie article?

[grasswire]

5. yeah maybe it's a pun

that's the ticket. :-)

[NashVegas]

8. That IS Pretty Funny

But then, so is the lack of copy editors.

[NashVegas]

7. I Can't Help What a Group of Clueless Wannabees Is Responsible For

When something like 150,000 people wrote in protest of what the Clinton administration was going to do organics, and Michael Pollan became a best-selling author, a host of parasites saw the big business potential in food.

That's not my fault.

I've had a truffle. It didn't make me orgasm. But someone, somewhere, has a way to make a shitload of money off of a handful and so they are a commodity. And wannabees are attracted to commodities.

It's not difficult to see who brings the goods to the table and who is using "the great leveller" aka, the internet, to hop onto someone else's train.

It's no different from bloggers who re-package other peoples' content and wisdom to promote their own "brand." Business travelers and jet-setters have been going to France for decades. They're only writing about the local brasserie, now, because someone else found a way to make money off of writing about it.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

9. I don't understand the bizarre food combinations.

Dh and I once ate at the Art Institute of Houston. One of those ripoff private schools where people run up huge student loan debts.

I had to send the meat back to get it cooked. Big plates and pretentious tiny amounts of food.

The ending was a fruit compote with licorice liqueur. YUCK.

I had a horrible stomachache and DH and I had to dash home so he could use the facilities.

There are a lot of things I cannot eat due to either just not liking them or food allergies.

I guess it's postmodernism.

As Moe, the bar owner, said on the Simpsons: "Postmodernism. Pomo. Weird for da sake of weird."