Extra Matter

Too hot to handle?

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Jeremy Parzen Will be teaching a seminar in Food and Wine Journalism in Piedmont in the autumn. Here’s part of the pitch:

The origins of pain, longing, and [mimetic] desire in food blogging today stretch back to early Greek tragedy and beyond. Yes, this trend in food writing today has also been molded by the rise of reality television. And yes, there are technical, societal, and cultural factors that have contributed to these phenomena as well.

But looking at these currents from an epistemological perspective, I ask myself: How did we get from Betty Crocker’s tips for grilling to Page Six stories about alcohol-fueled orgies at a celebrity chef’s Manhattan restaurant? What role does food culture and food writing play in our ethos — personal and national?

That’d be fun.

Podcasts

Food and status I'll have what their lordships are having

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:56 — 16.6MB)

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Food has probably been a marker of social status since the first woman gathered more berries than her sister. It still is. Some foods are authentically posh, others undeniably lower class, and there’s no way I’m going to go out on a limb and say which is which.

Because foods serve as social markers, the history of cuisine is also a history of the democratisation – some would say vulgarisation – of elite dishes, and perhaps noone has chronicled that more effectively than Rachel Laudan. Her book Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History shows clearly how foods move from high cuisine to low. Recently, in some places, the flow has reversed as elites have taken up what they imagine to be rustic, peasant food. The 100% wholewheat sourdough loaf, chewy of crust and riddled with large holes, became a desirable bread only very recently. As we chatted about these things, one thing became clear. There’s very little chance that food will lose its status as a marker of status any time soon.

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Notes

  1. Rachel Laudan recently reworked her thoughts on bread: Why did our ancestors prefer white bread to wholegrains?. That will take you to her website and details of Cuisine and Empire.
  2. Our earlier conversation was Sugar and salt: Industrial is best.
  3. Banner photo shows poor old George IV of the United Kingdom, consuming his magnificent Coronation Dinner alone, watched by a crowd of thousands. Well, not quite alone. Aside from the onlookers in the galleries, there were about 170 diners in Westminster Hall with him and a few hundred more scattered through various rooms in the Palace of Westminster. But the King was effectively alone.
  4. Smaller image shows John, Duc de Berry, in blue on the right, exchanging New Year’s gifts at a banquet.
Extra Matter

Let them eat kale

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The UK’s shortage of vegetables ((Which Modern Farmer helpfully extends to “vegetable-like fruits,” bless its cotton socks.)) remains in the news.

Meanwhile, people who don’t rely on supermarkets for their fresh produce seem to be doing fine, like my friend Dan, who sent this note.

Haven’t really even noticed the lettuce shortage. We eat Spanish broccoli, but mostly eat local, seasonal greens. Loads of kale, cavolo nero etc around here now, and cauliflower.

He also mentioned Claytonia perfoliata, aka miner’s lettuce and winter purslane. I’d forgotten about that, to be honest, though I used to grow it in the UK. Very good it is too.

There are, in fact, many more salad leaves than were pictured in the article in Eat This Newsletter and the current shortage ought to be a great incentive to try some of them. Instead, it seems to be bringing out the worst in at least one newspaper columnist.

Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 048

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6 February 2017

  1. Me, I’m not weeping over the iceberg lettuce shortage in the UK. The silver lining: It prompted this little post that explained just how precarious supply lines are and offered some alternatives. I recognised all except Tango. What is it?
  2. More biodiversity for citizen scientists. Rob Dunn’s lab at North Carolina State University wants you to pay particular attention to pumpkin predators. There’s a very contentious statement in the middle of that piece, which I might address elsewhere.
  3. A favourite contributor to Eat This Podcast gets star treatment: Ken Albala “takes on the tangled world of noodles”.
  4. A global history of the coconut, with recipes.
  5. On the other hand, some coconut scholars don’t fully agree. Dig deeper.
Extra Matter

Worst food diagram ever?

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Marion Nestle describes this diagram as “my favourite figure”.

Calories

I hope she’s joking, because I can’t make head nor tail of it. ((Well, I can, but only with considerable effort.))

It’s from a USDA publication on U.S. Trends in Food Availability and a Dietary Assessment of Loss-Adjusted Food Availability, 1970-2014

Note, first, that the data are for food availability, which “serve as a proxy for food consumption”. So it’s measuring what’s there and saying all of it was eaten. Fair enough.

Inside the report are tables and graphs that are far more informative than that circular abomination — what are we even supposed to be comparing?

Marion Nestle concludes:

[C]alories from all food groups increased, fats and oils and the meat group most of all, dairy and fruits and vegetables the least.

While the report says:

Americans continue to fall short of the recommended amounts in USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans for fruit, vegetables, whole grains, seafood, and dairy products, and their consumption continues to exceed the recommended amounts for total grains, some protein foods, saturated fat, and added sugars. In order to meet these recommendations, Americans would need to lower their consumption of added fats, refined grains, and added sugars and sweeteners, and to increase their consumption of vegetables, whole grains, dairy products, and fruit.

Go to it.