Foodies are the new Hipsters
According to B.R. Meyers over at The Atlantic, there is a scourge of foodies looming over America. Foodies are bad because they fly to Vietnam for pho. All of them do, which is evil. But even if they stopped doing that, Meyers would still be mad because he hates that people enjoy food at all. Anthony Bourdain is the devil for encouraging people to love cooking, Michael Pollan is evil for making the elitist claim that fast food is bad for us.
Meyers would prefer writers who tell us to eat nothing but crackers and die lonely. I think Bukowski writes like that, right? Oh wait, ham sandwiches. Meyers hates ham sandwiches too. I think he wants us to be breatharians.
Meyers says poor people don’t love food. They eat slop and they hate it but they have clean souls and will go to heaven for eating slop and hating it. Loving food is a symptom of being a rich, elitist bastard who kills children. You know who loved food? Hitler.
Meyers wants us to read food writing that’s about how bad we are for loving food, just like his article. I read it and I think I would much rather have been having pre-marital sex or listening to rock and roll music. Or reading Anthony Bourdain.
Tagged: Anthony Bourdain, B.R. Meyers, best, foodies, hipsters, The Atlantic
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YOU'RE SAYING (11)
Jonathan said | 16 February, 2011
Yeah, it seems like you’re actually reacting to someone else’s take on foodies. I mean, it’s fine to be lazy in a blog post, everyone does it, but you’re ascribing a lot of arguments to Meyers that aren’t there, including “All of them do,” despite the fact that he says the opposite. And Pollan isn’t elitist for saying fast food is bad for us, but rather for falsely sanctifying the killing and eating of an animal.
You’re not arguing with Meyers, so I’m not going to argue with you, but it’s disappointing to read something so reductive and disengaged with the source material.
Gerry said | 16 February, 2011
Michael Pollan gloats over eating horribly treated animals? Really? And while many people attack Anthony Bourdain for just that, I think that he has given a lot of thought to the ethics of food, more so than even some vegetarians. He just has a brutish voice when discussing this stuff. Jaime Oliver, Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, and dozens of others have done so much more than Morrissey in terms of making people confront the facts of food production. I have been called a foodie, and I really love and respect meat as a human food, but I have never gloated over the poor treatment of an animal. No one I know has, no matter how much they love food.
I think the entire industrialized food system treats the entire earth badly, not just the part of it that produces meat. I think the palm oil in Earth Balance is evil. It causes the massive destruction of rain forests in Borneo, which leads to the death of millions of animals. Rice and cotton are two of the most destructive crops we grow, and are directly responsible for the destruction of massive, country-sized areas of animal habitat, which in turn kills many many animals and causes extinction.
Meyers’ definition of a foodie is a straw man. He creates imaginary and falsely assumed traits that tie them all together so that he can create a sort of pariah to expunge all our collective sins.
Read this:
http://www.salon.com/food/francis_lam/2011/02/11/br_myers_moral_crusade_against_foodies/index.html
Gerry said | 16 February, 2011
Do the Maasai herdsman of East Africa hate animals? Did the Native Americans hate the deer and bison they hunted? Did the Mongolians hate the horses they worshipped for providing them with food, transportation, and livelihood? Do you hate the vegetables you kill and eat?
Gerry said | 16 February, 2011
Also, I posted this earlier, but it disappeared:
Meyers’ claim that people like Michael Pollan or even Anthony Bourdain (despite his reputation) gloat over eating horribly treated animals is simply ridiculous. Jaime Oliver and Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall have all done way more to educate people about food than Morrissey.
Even the claim that anyone at all gloats over eating horribly treated animals is a stretch. People allow animals to be treated horribly because they mainly don’t see it, and those animals are treated horribly not because people hate them, but because it’s more efficient in an industrial system. The food writers Meyers attacks are the very people trying to get the public to confront the facts of food production.
Jonathan said | 16 February, 2011
Yeah, I’m still not sure who you’re arguing with. Not Meyers. Maybe some composite evil vegan?
It doesn’t really matter to me if Mongolians hate the horses they eat, since that’s not what we’re talking about, though certainly you and I can agree there’s a difference between livelihood, as you say, and indulgence. I think the point that he’s arguing here isn’t that eating meat is wrong, but that the way the members of the “foodie fringe” talk among themselves, they’ve convinced themselves of their own moral arguments, even going so far as to convince themselves of their duty. It’s a way of absolving themselves of even answering the ethical questions anyone would rightly raise.
Also, pretty sure the Native Americans weren’t overbreeding the bison and creating giant ecological problems, but my history is sketchy on that one.
Gerry said | 16 February, 2011
Also, read this reply in Salon:
http://www.salon.com/food/francis_lam/2011/02/11/br_myers_moral_crusade_against_foodies/index.html
Jonathan said | 16 February, 2011
Well, Francis Lam is a great, smart writer. I’d be willing to bet that Myers wouldn’t include him in the foodie fringe. I mean, I get it: Myers is a crank and certainly conservative, and his essay is full of bombast. But I still don’t see an answer to the moral questions he raised anywhere even in Lam’s piece.
I don’t think Myers is saying food is “below consideration,” but rather it’s been falsely elevated, become an abstraction without that abstraction being examined. Anyway, I’ll stop. Was just looking for a little more than “nanna nanna boo boo.” Ah well.
Nat said | 16 February, 2011
I think you have attacked vegetarians before in your post or maybe just not supported them in their quest to make good with animals. It’s a tough decision when the priority for foodies is flavor, but the priority should be to protect the rights of those without a voice, every meal. Plants do not have a nervous system by the way and the volume of crops devoted to animal feed is remarkable. Why are you so angry with vegetarians? And who is eating cotton?
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Nat said | 16 February, 2011
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Comment left via our iPhone app. Download it now [http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/lost-at-e-minor/id329708458?mt=8].
Gerry said | 17 February, 2011
Actually, we are eating cotton. Look at the ingredients on most bags of potato chips.
Also, wearing cotton is consuming cotton.
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Brigitte said | 16 February, 2011
I read the article ready to agree with your but … I think I’m more on the side of the Atlantic, gloating over eating horribly treated animals isn’t exactly wonderful. Your rant was really funny, but most of what you said I didn’t get out of the article, sorry
You can love food without hating animals – and I think that was just one point that the Atlantic article made.