Are we fetishizing food at the expense of our health, safety, and security?

Is our obsession with an elitist food culture causing harm to our food security and safety, while malnutrition and hunger quietly persist?

There is a rampant fetishization of food and cooking in our society. We are obsessed with glamourizing cooking and restaurant shows on cable TV. We crave disturbingly expensive cooking equipment and glossy, leather-bound cook books. In turn, these drive purposefully elitist ingredients and obscure and challenging preparation styles — and all this among many other food-related vices.

Yet, most people in our country are not eating well. Many are hungry. Most are unhealthy and most of us are in incredibly precarious food safety and security positions. Micro-nutrient deficiencies and a general lack of primary food and nutrition knowledge rarely, if ever, enter public policy discourse.

On this Matthew Yglesias writes:

I think there are real dangers in the growing trend toward chefs and food writers being the public face of arguments about the need to reform policies in the agriculture/food area. A fancy chef or a food writer, at the end of the day, ought to be an elitist about the subject. That’s the whole point of the enterprise, after all. But it’s not really the point of public policy… We want—I want—good advice about shopping, cooking, and eating written by someone who cares for people who care. But the requirements of good writing for a hobbyist audience aren’t the same as the requirements of broad policy.

There’s an entirely separate and important question in here about elitism in policy-making. Our nation’s transportation policy continues to be driven by an elitist view of mobility and access. When asked how a Canadian should navigate his draconian and ignorant copyright bill, former Industry Minister Jim Prentice suggested all Canadians hire a lawyer.

Diabetes, cancers, obesity, child hunger, food supply disruptions — why talk about these when there’s a restaurant makeover on the tube? Many of the resources for cooking only ostracize or infantilize readers. And research announcements like this week’s wine drinking findings serve only to confuse and frustrate people.

Yglesias offers this:

Good policy—especially good environmental policy—would have a substantial impact on the relative price of different food products. Notably, meat in general and beef in particular would become more expensive. At that point, the nation’s cooks will turn their lonely eyes to the nation’s food writers for some different recipes. And those who rely for their sustenance on takeout will find that the well-paid executives of the nation’s food service industry find a way to adapt their services to the new business climate.

I’m all for local decision-making, and we must continue with local action and organizing, but until the free market totally collapses, many consumers will be shopping and cooking using only price cues in the broken consumer economy.

Very serious policy decisions need to be made that begin to affect consumer behaviour. In many cases, it’s been municipalities that are moving food and nutrition policy, and that’s not surprising. Cities continue to lead the anti-transfat movement, for instance. In the same way, we need to make food security and production — and resilient communities, generally — a primary expectation for (local) governments.

There is much work to do, but for now, I’m going to watch Restaurant Makeover…

Tagged as: food fetish, food safety, food security, health, local, policy, retaurant makeover