[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.
Count me in with Glenn Reynolds about the overwhelming smug that covers this oh-so-pensive worry by a foodie over What Food Says About Class in America. Judging from the article, the first thing that it says about class is that people who make a fetish over what they’re having for dinner often come across as utterly lacking any.
Here’s an especially infuriating bit – which comes from a woman who spends twelve grand a year on food:
“This is our charity. This is my giving to the world,” says Alexandra, finally, as she packs lunchboxes—organic peanut butter and jelly on grainy bread, a yogurt, and a clementine—for her two boys. “We contribute a lot.”
No, this is your indulgence, Alexandra. You’re calling it a ‘charity’ because it makes you feel better. And you aren’t contributing; you’re patronizing… well, I was going to add “…a class of specialized vendors who are happy to cater to your own, luxurious needs” to the end of that sentence, but it works just as well if I don’t.
As for the author: if she’s so worried about food insecurity, she should try donating one-tenth of her monthly food budget to a good soup kitchen. Like the Food Bank for NYC; which I can’t help but notice didn’t get any kind of link, contact information, or even a mention by name in the Newsweek article.
Moe Lane
LIsa Miller is the religion writer at Newsweek, so I’m surprised that she’s writing about food, and not just bashing Benedict XVI and Catholicism as she does, whenever she can.
But reading the article, it’s clear her religion is foodyism. The purity of her food and her smugness as she eats it is what will save her.
Chesterton was right: when you believe in nothing, you’ll believe in anything.
If she was really concerned about poor people, how about pushing to drop ethanol so food isn’t being wasted as fuel? Moron.
I think I know enough about these people to see where they’re coming from. It’s their way of embracing capitalism with a clean conscience. They want everyone to be a foodie, to eat locally grown organic free range…however many modifiers strike their fancy…and by spending their money on the people who provide those services, they are helping that industry to grow and eventually take over agriculture.
Dolly, minor correction: those who believe in nothing will fall for anything. But on your main point, I agree, Chesterton was right.
When I was a kid, all we had was store-brand peanut butter and jelly on white bread . . . and we liked it!
As someone who is unemployed and STILL doesn’t qualify for foodstamps because the MD system is FUBAR…we’re back to store brand peanut butter and jelly…on cheap white bread…and WE like it.
Rich Vail
Pikesville, MD
The Vail Spot
I was thinking about this subject before I found this post. How ironic is it that nobody really has to go hungry in U.S. anymore, so the beautiful people are now obsessing over obesity and the amount of time spent by children playing computer games?
Dennis Miller sums it up well, “Help for the truly helpless, but not for the clueless.”
I really, truly believe that all these “foodies” should have to spend a whole year during which they can’t eat anything they didn’t grow and harvest, forage, or kill and dress themselves. I’ll give them “locavore”. Dumbsh*ts.
jorgxmckie, I’ve occasionally dropped the sanctimoniousness turd at dinner parties with these people, when I tell them, “Until you kill, gut, skin, and butcher at least one large mammal, you don’t have the right to eat meat.”
Another useful line: “All you’re doing is forcing some poor black or hispanic meat-packer to undergo the psychic changes of becoming a killer, so you can continue to claim purity.”
What’s really ironic is that while the author wails about her neighbor not being able to buy enough food, she notes that poverty “forces” them to order takeout. Some broccoli, peppers, and noodles tossed in some soy sauce and a few other things lying around the kitchen would be cheaper and more nutritious than that domino’s they’re eating because they can’t afford ‘better’. Or how bout some chicken thighs and rice with some green bean?? That’ll be less than the chinese takeout. The choices are there, but her poor, put upon neighbor makes the wrong ones and all the author does is make excuses for her.
This and every year, we chow down on naturally free range venison. Somehow meat always tastes better when it has hung in the front yard for a few days and the kids get to take the tails to school for “show and tell.”
what never seems to amaze me is that despite the fashionable obsession with all this foodism. There is not a shred of reproducible data to substantiate a singel one of their religious rituals.
Nada!
that includes organic food, the vitamin du jour, the profusion of oddities that you get at GNC, even the obsession w low fat foods and fast food.
Nutritional science is not scienced, it is cargo cult science.
there are three and only three facts about food anyone needs to know.
carbs are 4 Cal/gm
protiens 4 cal/ gm
fats 9 cal/ gm
the rest is intermediatory metabolism ( ie if you take a lot of carn calories and no fat, you body will convert the carbs to fat) and thermodynamics.
RSM:
Let’s hear it for the “store brand” peanut butter! When I was about 9 or 10, my Dad changed careers and took a big pay cut starting out. Our family of four ate a lot of dang cheap meals, and I always wondered where my folks got those half-gallon jars of no-way-in-hell-organic off-off-brand peanut butter, the kind you had to stir up ’cause it would separate overnight. Almost makes me want to do some grocery shopping at the Dollar Store or Big Lots…
I picked the exact quote to pick on just a couple days ago! We both reacted to the whole charity misconception. It’s so annoying. You called it an indulgence, and I called it “paying extra for a product you think is superior.” Which is a more wordy and less literate way to say ‘indulgence,’ me thinks.
Have a look if you have time.
http://nooneofanyimport.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/justaquickbitofsnark/