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April 04, 2005
Fast food is for slower plebians . . .
This post about fast food reminded me of the supreme arrogance of so many people I've come to tolerate and even love. This sort of trade-off between short-term pleasure and long-term welfare is not irrational. It is necessary for living a good life. And it helps explain why people do things like smoke, have extra-marital affairs and vote for Howard Dean. Yet instead of acknowledging that such a rational trade-off is taking place, Spurlock & Co. are genuinely disgusted by the thought of liking McDonalds. Rather, they live in a world where basic choices about personal consumption must reflect profound ethical commitments.What this mentality loves the most is the art of condescending to their inferiors without seeming to do that at all. Why, they're downright concerned. And this "concern" often takes on a sanctimonious air which reminds me of religious activists who claim they want to "help" the less virtuous achieve new lives, new sex-free sex lives, etc. A typical example is to be found in the so-called "slow food" movement. (Closely linked to the "sustainable development" folks.) Slow food may not be for everybody, but then, hey, not everyone is superior enough to care about the little people. Besides, not everyone can afford to: Slow Food's aim is to promote food and wine appreciation. One doesn't imagine soft-middled Barolo-sniffing gourmands as being manifesto-thumping radicals, but they are. The SF manifesto states, at www.slowfood.com, "We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods."There's that blasted infrastructure at work again! What's an ordinary hard-working family (the kind with neither the time nor the money for gourmet shopping) to do? As Slow Food fan and chef Marco Canora of Hearth, New York City, writes in a Q&A on egullet.com, "The movement encourages people to stop eating at fast-food restaurants where the food has little or no nutritional value and to cook at home instead... I think it is unrealistic to expect people who have been working long hours to keep clothes on their children's backs to come home with raw ingredients and spend an hour preparing a meal for their entire family. When faced with the option of going to the store and buying a tomato, onion, lettuce, and ground meat so you can go home and make tacos, or taking your kids to Taco Bell where the tacos cost 59 cents each, I think most people are going to choose the latter."Immortal gods! We've lost 93 percent of our food product diversity? No wonder the little people have turned to McDonalds! And I don't doubt the statistics are accurate; I remember food products which are no longer on the shelves. Speaking of such extinct food products, whatever happened to Kellogg's Concentrate© cereal? Where's the EPA now that we really need them? As an effete champion of Classical Values, I feel a special duty to remind readers of the old days. And the fact is, the Romans knew how to do slow food! Here is a sample ancient Roman menu: Dormouse stuffed with asafoetida and fish puréeYum! Or how about "parrot livers, peacock brains, flamingo tongues and the spleens of moray eels?" Hell, the Romans practically invented slow food! the Romans were remarkable, inventive cooks who would surely have looked upon the mass-produced, tasteless slop we eat today with deep disdain. Everything the Romans ate was organic, fresh, without additives or colourings, and usually home-produced and home-cooked.Et tu much at McDonalds, plebians? I say, let them eat peacock brains! posted by Eric on 04.04.05 at 08:42 PM
Comments
I know. My link was, er, a bit of a (peacock) tongue-in-cheek one. Most of the time, the Romans ate bread. The ancients are constantly being dragged into both sides of the Culture War, and I thought this example was particularly amusing. Eric Scheie · April 5, 2005 08:30 AM There is a serious epidemic with fast food in this country, I should know, I eat out like twice a week. And it's disgusting, but at 10:00 at night there is nothing else out there, and I figure I've been working out... what they hey. But I at least know the crap i'm eating, and only allow it because I'm staying healthy. The simple fact is that most americans have no idea what a healthy 'lifestyle' (ie good diet, decent food, and exercise) really is. Preety soon it will start killing us. was at the grocery store the other day, and middle-aged adults were taking a class in how to eat correctly. They were quickly writing down such insights as "corn and potatoes don't count as vegtables", "just because the package says 'lite' does not mean it is low in fat" and "processed meals tend to contain a number of volatile chemicals since the food itslef has no 'flavor'". Ever watch the low-carb people eat a breakfast of all bacon, thick and dripping with grease.... that is not healthy. Not that I'm against low-carb, I've seen it work. But people still want the 'easy' option of ordering a wendy's burger with lettuce instead of a bun and calling it healthy. the biggest problem we see is in the children, where marketing selling junk food and fast food has been succesfull in creating type II diabetes in kids as young as 6-10. Yes, it is the parents fault, but it is also malicious advertising to sell to children who cannot identify good from bad. This means we have a whole generation carrying the habits to enhance heart disease, diabetes and cancer. This will dramatically infleunce the medical care if hospitals become overwrought with obeseity problems. alchemist · April 5, 2005 03:19 PM |
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They can't even be internally consistant, much less historically accurate in the article on Roman eating. Two paragraphs down, they note the "bustling trade" in Roman fast-food. That's an understatement -- most of your food was "home-produced and home-cooked" if you were a rich landowner and you consider your slave cooking it as such. The average person didn't even own an oven for cooking his own bread, and lived day to day on Roman fast-food.
What a bunch of bull that story is. "Oh, the Romans ate so well!" Tell that to the middle class guy who ate mashed chickpeas and sardines every day.