Food As Plaything - Haute Cuisine, Locally Sourced, Organic, And Gluten Free, America's Dietary Obsession

 America was always a meat-and-potatoes satisfying, nutritious meal.  Farmers and their families worked hard, and there was no room for frills, eccentricities, or special needs.  Food was fuel, sustenance, and the stuff of life nothing more. 

Farm families looked forward to the evening meal because he was hungry. They woke up early to feed the pigs and the chickens, milk the cows, and untether the goats, ate a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, walked to school and back, tilled the fields, harvested, took care of babies and young children and by dinner time were as hungry as bears. 

No one ever asked what was for dinner, for it was always the same, varied only by the season, and was a function of what animal had been slaughtered, what vegetables were in the garden, and the size of the chicken brood. No one complained, for food was functional, a necessity, filling and sustaining. 

Times have changed and food for most, while a necessity, is also a plaything, a pastime, a hobby, an obsession.  Dinner is not simply to nourish but to please.  The color palette, the architecture, the fanciful mix of ingredients that suggest exotica, open the door to unique remoteness, that give off the scent of internationalism and sophisticated taste all represent America's new, prosperous, bourgeois culture. 

Millions of dollars are spent on food processors, Japanese steel cutlery, six-burner Viking stoves, sous-vide cookers, fine oak cutting boards, track lighting, center islands, French copper cookware, tinted rose and amber-colored glasses, perfectly weighted and balanced table settings, and much more. 

Trips to the grocery store have given way to three or four vendor locales - farmers markets, specialty butchers, fish mongers, bakeries and ethnic food stalls. 

Book shelves are stacked with recipe books and food travelogues.  Cut-out recipes from the New York Times, Food & Wine, and Gourmet are sorted and filed in alphabetical folders in kitchen drawers. Cell phones all have interactive food apps and social media are filled with food sites. 

In addition to this culinary revolution, a number of special dietary restrictions have emerged - waiters at restaurants routinely ask if we have any allergies or food restrictions he should know about.  Are we gluten or lactose intolerant? Vegan dishes are starred, low sodium and low-fat offerings are noted. 

Guests with any of these dietary restrictions will inform the hostess before hand to that she can prepare dinner accordingly.  When such prior notice has not been given, guests will often carefully separate offending items, the most polite of them in a way which suggests incompleteness rather than triage. 

 Locally grown products are preferred but the reasons are flimsy and illogical at best.  We live in a globalized market which has revolutionized the market - fresh fruits and vegetables any time of year, fish from the four corners of the globe - and 'local' is nothing more than imaginative whimsy.  Why fuss with Old MacDonald when the best, most well-tended, highest quality product may come from another continent?   

 

Nothing we buy whether peanut butter, ice cream, olive oil, salt or pasta is local; so why the flapdoodle about local produce?  It is an affectation, a political statement, a sign of good intentions but no more. 

Everything the food-aware American buys must be organic, when the cost is high and the benefits marginal.  The risks of cancer from a non-organic diet compared to an organic one are so low they are barely recorded.  While no one prefers a lettuce salad soaked in Monsanto, a good washing will take care of most of the offensive bits, and lifespan is barely affected by the rest. 

Americans are locked in a closed system where food has lost its basic function  and has become a part of the haute bourgeoisie obsession with ascribed value. 

Julia Child once said that the sign of a good cook was his roast chicken.  That is a simple product done to perfection; and while many households would never serve such a common, pedestrian, cheap food to guests, they have lost sight of inherent value and have turn to appearance, novelty, and fancy. 

The Paleolithic diet is a modern nutritional plan based on the presumed diet of Paleolithic humans. It is based on the premise that human genetics have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, which marked the end of the Paleolithic era, around 15,000 years ago, and that modern humans are adapted to the diet of the Paleolithic period.

The Paleolithic diet consists mainly of fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, eggs, vegetables, fruit, fungi, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, potatoes, refined salt, refined sugar, and processed oils. 

One of the hottest restaurants today is NOMA in Copenhagen.  The master chef is Rene Redzepi who forages for the ingredients that go into his five-star dishes. He gathers wild grasses, seaweed, leaves, periwinkles, nuts, and berries.  Although he does not bill his fare as Paleolithic for obvious reasons, he is a chef in that tradition.  He cooks his food, which is a big improvement on early the caveman, but he still has a profound belief that whatever grows can be eaten.

In Africa 'bush meat' - field rat, snake, monkey, lizard, or wild dog, whatever is available - is no different. Both cuisines are sensible, practical, and interesting without a lot of fol-de-rol. The Bushmen of South Africa eat hard-to-find grubs, not as a delicacy but particularly rich in fat and calories. Insects are eaten throughout the Third World.  In the bars and outdoor clubs in the quartiers of Kinshasa, dried, roasted, and salted caterpillars are eaten as snacks with beer. 

Going out of the way to recreate a subsistence diet, whether Paleolithic or African veldt, strip it down to its horny, tough, inedibility, and call it modern cuisine is an example of this fanciful obsession with food as plaything. 

Of course this idle obsession with food is for those with money. Those less fortunate are still eating cornpone, fatback, and greens, the occasional Big Mac and a Dairy Queen, candy and chips and bloating to obesity. Successive American governments have tried to encourage citizens to reform and return to healthier foods, but without success.  Cheap, processed high-sugar, high-salt foods are addictive. In a penurious two-job, low-paying trailer park existence, families have only the whammy of these immediately pleasing, endorphin-producing foods to look forward to. 

The Food Pyramid - that complicated, indecipherable image of a proper diet - was revised again and again to be more user friendly, but no one paid attention to it.  The current Secretary of Health is trying his best to wean poor Americans off their heart-stopping diets to no avail. 

So, it is only the upper middle classes who fuss with food and have turned it into this high-end plaything. Something fun to do on weekends, to share with friends.  A proper bougie meal not only shows off learned cooking skills, but shouts, 'I have been there!, to Thailand, China, India, the Azores, and Bali. Food is a sign of internationalism, progressivism, and broad thinking.  

'Toys 'R' Us' was the name of a popular toy store chain a few years ago.  'Foods 'R' Us' is the moniker, the meme, the essence of the American foodie, proud to show off his wares, his sophistication, his fancy, and his money.