To talk about food is to talk about everything; economics, politics, emotion, gender, age, etc. The list is limitless. Everyday the world is opening its eyes more and more to the breadth of how food directly affects so many areas of our day-to-day lives. We are eating smarter than we have been for the past sixty years. Topics of not just what our food is but what is in it, where it comes from and who produces it, is of greater concern than ever before. As we are spending more time thinking and talking about the foods that sustain us, we are finding more things that we both like and dislike about them. Although we are talking more about the foods that sustain us, we prefer to talk about the foods that enrich us. We are getting tunnel vision for the things that are pleasing to the eye and the mouth.
The world of food does reach beyond the plate of the kitchen. While the pleasure of food is something that everyone should be entitled to, it’s only the doorway to the food world. Eating is only the sensory or sensory-psychological reward for having good food.
In the interest of preservation, having good food should be motivating us to understand or protect what good food takes and/or where it comes from.
Can we truly take pleasure in eating a dish that is made from unhealthy ingredients, farmed by underpaid workers, destroys the environment by being shipped hundred- even thousands of miles or represents the unfair treatment of animals or the environment?
Is that pleasure?
Being a foodie does not obligate you to be an activist nor does it mean that we cannot enjoy food without being brought down by the reality of the great social or environmental injustices associated with the foods we eat. But if we are alert and accept that the cuisine on our plate is merely the product of dozens- even hundreds of eco-agricultural and socio-economic processes and constructs, then we can utilize our food, not just as our cultural compass but as an instrument of social change.
However, if you are eating solely for the purpose of pleasure, you are not a foodie but a more of a fluffer in the food porn industry.
To concentrate so intently on only the pleasure of eating without the recognition of the bigger factors at play in the food world, is to embrace the parole without the langue.
