Planting Seeds of Elitism
Yesterday I did an interview with a magazine reporter for a story she was doing on eating local in the Dallas area. My first reaction was to think how incredible it was that this idealistic and ultimately unachievable aspiration—basing our diet on what’s produced locally—was still prime carrion for media vultures. Then, however, I realized that, tired as the topic seems, I appreciated the opportunity to publicly reiterate yet again the most important takeaway from my book Just Food.
And that message is this: while the global food system that we’re inevitably a part of is mind-boggling in its complexity, we can, as individual consumers, simplify it immensely by eliminating all animal products from our diets. That’s it. End of message. For all the headaches that Just Food left me nursing, the chance to make this point—this simple point—and have people respond to it with appreciation, remains deeply gratifying.
The forces of obfuscation, however, can be daunting. We generally tend to think of the industrial food producers as the exclusive source of this calculated confusion. Spew out enough fog, the reasoning goes, and we’ll eat the industrial food cake. Look closely at what’s happening in the world of Slow Food, however, and you’ll find another kind of confusion at work. Basically, in the world of elite eating, nothing is ever good enough, everything can be made more “natural,” and depth of preciousness is endless. When this is the case, culinary elitism prevails.
The cycle of foodie one-up-manship spun with blinding speed last Sunday, when the Times published a piece by Margaret Roach arguing that it’s no longer enough to give ourselves ulcers over how far our food traveled. Real foodies must now also fret about the kinds of seeds that were used (and not GMO vs non-GMO—but something more basic) to grow that food. Remarkably, this warning holds true even if we grow the food ourselves in our own garden. It’s not enough, in other words, to worry about conventional/organic or local/imported or farmer’s market/supermarket or dependent/self-sufficient. Oh no. We now have to furrow our brows over seed quality.
I suppose we can frame any peripheral issue to make it seem central. And perhaps I’m being dismissive over this upping-the-ante of agro-anxiety. But my problem with journalistic fear-mongering over non-GMO seeds is two-fold, both of which bear on the accessibility of our reformist message. First, as I’ve alluded to, only the rarest kind of consumer is going to spend the requisite time researching the endless iterations of these distinctions. When it comes to reaching a critical mass with an important food message, simplicity is a necessity. “Eat plants” is simple and meaningful and inclusive and compassionate. Eat local, organic, shade grown, fair traded, picked by virgins, and now grown with “proper” seeds is confusing, often meaningless, and almost always alienating.
My second point bears directly on this alienation. When foodie fashionistas gain access to the most valuable journalistic real estate to set the bar of culinary behavior even higher, I cannot help but think about Pierre Bourdieu, the French social theorist whose book Distinction brilliantly crystalized the politics of cultural capital. It goes like this: when an agricultural distinction starts to reach the masses, the owners of cultural capital—in this case agricultural capital—sanctify a less attainable distinction in order to maintain their monopoly on cultural power. That’s what I think telling concerned consumers to start worrying about seed quality is all about. That’s what I think slow food is all about.
Tomorrow: book review of The Lucky Ones by Jenny Brown (apologies for saying it would be today)
LOL!
Great post!
Yes, I have real problems with the slow food movement. They have turned out to be viscerally hostile toward the vegan movement (and I suppose it is vice verse).
Nothing spells elitism like a $75.00 a plate fundraiser for something as noble as some slow foodies to take a European jaunt for a cooking competition. Nothing spells elitism like a $14 pint of ice-cream produced from local “free range/grass fed cows” (which is funny because I’m certain the rest of the products ingredients are not local, and the amish are up in arms because the business is getting their local milk from more industrialized farmers)
I’ve seen this insidious movement influence so called “vegans” who have decided, with public declarations no less, that giving up their car (which is easy when they live within a few blocks of the place they work and don’t have children) entitles them to no longer “deny” themselves the “luxury” and now eat said ice-cream. Weak. Perverse. Meme.
So well put. I, too, have to put shackles on my hostility for this sybaritic cohort of food snobs.
I am all for keeping slogans simple and picking one’s battles but: GMOs effect flora and fauna in yet unknown ways. I give talks on this topic and am concerned with the proliferation of so-called Free Trade Agreements which will allow GMOs to proliferate in the US and abroad. It is a different for of cruelty to feed a domestic animal GMO feed instead of natural forage and they can sense, including taste, the difference and will not eat GMOs (or eat them last) given a choice. The argument you present today suffers from an anthropocentric-only analysis of the GMO plague and it misses the unintended (or man’s indifference to) consequences for the natural. Cross pollination with wild species of flora is real and then GMO compounds enter the food chain and produce unknown effects on animals. There are also social costs to humans such as food security degradation through monoculture, feeding cancer precursors, land aggregation, the financing costs of GMO seeds displaces millions, land grabs in South America and Africa by BigAg to grow GMO crops in economies of scale, more glycophosphate use and pollution and human health effects.
While stating “don’t eat meat” is a great thing, it should not be stated to the exclusion of other issues or you are essentially asking humans to disengage from consideration of their environment and consciousness at a time when more such consideration must occur. The days of simple solutions and one stop shopping are over. Kudos for quoting a french philosopher but Le Tour is more on point concerning the complexity and interrelatedness of meat and GMOs. Stengler (a Belgian living in France whom I dislike) would be more relevant to a discussion of why slow food is important to emphasizing the social aspect of food production and eating. As far as a culinary elite goes, isn’t that aspirational and interesting for the reader? Doesn’t this possibility encourage innovation and better quality dreams and vegan dinners? When I dine out I try to pick a restaurant which prepares food I do not have the skills to make taste the way it does and I give consideration to sourcing policy. Am I an effete snob because of this? (Do not answer that)
I expect an interview to state all the relevant issues and discuss their importance and relation to each other and greater concerns such as the environment and the social and recommend the best means to a possible future — including recognizing the harm of GMOs as more than a distinction on a label. Incidentally NAFTA and the TPP Art. 17 any foreign company may sue for lost profit is the host country has a GMO labeling law on the grounds this “distinction” will reduce profit by causing consumers to purchase non GMO. An estimated 85% of Americans believe GMO labeling is something they want to see so they can choose GMO or not and yet the FDA has so far not agreed, stating that GMO labeling is “confusing”. GMOs represent an effort to commodify food even further and this is possibly the worst thing for humans (whether they eat meat or not) and animals. GMO animals are next, as the Aquabounty salmon is in comment period and will be approved and other GMO animals will be allowed into the US via FTAs through the treaty free trade mechanism and without specific democratic vote on the matter in the US. Aren’t GMO animals themselves a condition of cruelty in most or all cases? Isn’t being genetically modified to exist in contravention of one’s genetic expression and being unable to fulfill that natural potential cruelty?
Maybe the reader can use stop eating meat as a starting point and not the false assurance of a quick solution? Yo say “simplify” the “global food system”, an undefined boogeyman, but the problem I have with today’s post is I truly get the impression the the global food issue is being dumbed down by telling the audience that merely not eating animals is the man issue. Maybe that is the the correct position on not eating animals but there is no monolithic solution to the global food system.
Agreed. Stopping animal products is a good (very good) starting point, but doesn’t go far enough. Not only are GMO issues problematic, but the heavy use of pesticides and herbicides, food deserts, and corporate control of our food systems, and worker issues are all part of the larger issue of food justice.
BTW, would have LOVED to have heard from you on the “Man and Beast” post.
@Lori. Always a good reality check to see your comments as your are well grounded and get right to the heart of the matter. What Man and Beast post? Was/am on deadline hell and maybe missed this?