I want to talk about my love of food in words that wouldn’t irritate me if someone else wrote them. That’s a weird thing to say. What I mean is, I want to write about the things I like without embodying those Portlandia characters who drill their server on the roaming acreage of their free-range chicken named Colin.
Foodies are easy to rip on. Gabrielle Hamilton gave an interview in which she said that they bum her out and strike her as a population with misplaced priorities. When I first heard that I was all “Right!? Who ARE these people?” Then five minutes later I was all “Wait. Is that me?”
The thing is, I love going to farmers markets. I try to buy local, and I avoid factory-farmed meat. I collect olive oil and I own more than one variety of sea salt. I have a list of food journalists whose work I read regularly, and if you indulge me I will talk to you about food culture for hours. But I’m not these people.
This brings me to my point. Food, as an interest, is extremely popular and on trend in a way that it never has been. And like any trend worth its salt, it prompts quite a bit of discussion and naturally some polarity will grow out of that. It’s healthy, for sure. I love me some lively debate.
On the one hand, there’s now a significantly bigger stage and more captive audience for important issues like the ethics of factory farming, food security, nutrition education, and the availability of affordable, quality staples in low-income communities. These are all critical topics that owe their visibility, in part, to pop culture’s current obsession with food consumption. Their messages have caught fire, progress is being made, and that is 100% a good thing.
On the other hand, I find that with the emergence of a foodie culture, a misplaced elitism has cropped up within certain contingents, who like Hamilton alluded to, might not have their priorities straight. Half the people who buy only organic and preach sustainability are just parroting a philosophy that they read summarized on a reusable Whole Foods tote. And if one more restaurant calls itself as farm to table, I might cry. That sounds bitter, and I’m not. I think I’m just noticing the meaning get lost in the repetition.
It’s interesting, this idea that the food we choose to consume contributes to a lifestyle, and not just to life. But like anything else, I guess you take the bad with the good, munch on your small batch artisanal root vegetable chips and move on.
And I don’t mean to sound protective of anything, like I think I’m the only person with an olive oil collection who isn’t a douche. I’m not saying that I was a foodie before it was trendy, like a hipster who gets their dander up when their favorite indie band achieves mainstream success on the wings of an Apple commercial. I like Whole Foods too. I’m just observing what I think is a fascinating shift in our culture, that I am complicit in, whether I like it or not.
Back to Gabrielle Hamilton - I read her memoir, Blood Bones and Butter, last summer and found something of an ideal in her philosophy. The woman is so honest and unapologetic about her relationship with food. She writes rhapsodically about the experiences that shaped her life and the restaurant she opened, without once drawing from the well of beaten to death buzzwords in the landscape. There’s intense emotion behind her food, but she isn’t wholly absorbed by the industry.
I think this is why I was so drawn to her perspective, which seemed to me to be, very simply, that eating well and feeding people well is categorically important to her. It’s a part of life…no more, no less. And that’s my jam too.
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