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At some point in my life I became extremely fussy about wanting to know where my food came from — particularly the meat — and the conditions under which all of
by gorgoiler 6y ago
At some point in my life I became extremely fussy about wanting to know where my food came from — particularly the meat — and the conditions under which all of it was produced. Vegetables, cereals, meat, dairy, the lot.
No more spring onions from farms employing exploited labour. Certainly nothing imported from countries without labour regulations or farming standards. No more indoor only “free range” chicken etc.
I’ve met the cows I eat and the hipsters who grow my cabbage. Both are very pleasant and show no signs of duress. All my suppliers have first names and Instagram accounts. There’s lots of evidence, alongside the produce itself, to cross reference their credentials. The market exists for more expensive, more carefully reared and more kindly cultivated produce of all kinds.
I trust only a handful of restaurants to get these details right and have had to accept that eating out is even more of a luxury than it used to be. None of the trusted restaurants are the local ghost kitchens, nor are they likely to be. Competing on price and efficient goes completely against the, ahem, grain.
I don’t want food to be cheap, fast, or efficient, and rarely — if ever — to be prepared by strangers I will never meet.
- ciarannolan 6y ago> I don’t want food to be cheap, fast, or efficient, and rarely — if ever — to be prepared by strangers I will never meet. This is a mode of existence available to only the extremely privileged. It's a great luxury to be this picky about what you eat.
- gorgoiler 6y agoIt might feel like a privilege to those stuck in a major metropolis. Out here in a fairly rural second tier city, it’s a way of life. (Though perhaps my privilege is that I can “afford” to live away from a major population centre? I’m a high school teacher. Demand for my skills is spread more widely than most tech jobs.)
- jkinudsjknds 6y agoPretty sure there's plenty of people in rural second tier cities who don't get enough to eat, before any consideration of the cow's instagram following.
- RankingMember 6y agoThis is an amazing level of privilege to the point that it almost seems like Silicon Valley parody. I completely agree with the aim (animal welfare, fair wages), but just want to note that 99.9999% of the population don't have the means (money, time, local availability, etc.) to live this way.
- jarjoura 6y agoThis is indeed a sketch from Portlandia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__PVLB8Nm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__PVLB8Nm4
- gorgoiler 6y agoI disagree that I am privileged to have access to the fat of the land, but if you want to talk privilege then remember this in the context of: 1/ paying someone else to cook for you 2/ paying another person to deliver this food to you 3/ funding a fleet of SWEs and marketers to run the whole thing for you, by paying a double digit surcharge over what you might have paid if you’d gone to the restaurant in person. I would say that the privileged are those funding the Seamless / Deliveroo serfs. I can’t afford to.
- RankingMember 6y agoMaybe things are different in the UK, but in the US the only people with the time and money to be as choosy as you seem to be are the very privileged. Millions of people barely have their heads above water and they'll take the most efficient (in terms of time and money) calories they can get. Having the time to do the kinds of vetting you seem to do is a privilege itself. I hope the day comes where everyone has the means to be this conscious of their food, however, as I agree with your motivations (at least insofar as I understand them in an online post :P).
- gorgoiler 6y agoIronically, aren’t jobs like ghost kitchen line cook and gig economy delivery rider behind the lowering of the quality of life for the “have-nots“? All this while, at the same time, the “haves” continue to order their brunch using Colins-Organic-Chicken.app.
- Mumps 6y agoThis sounds almost cut and paste from an episode of Portlandia. While the intention is commendable, as other point out, it's so (sadly) far out of reach for the vast majority of the populace. Under current wealth distributions this will never even be approximately reasonable to expect or carry out.
- cblconfederate 6y agoOTOH, i would eat your high horse
- gorgoiler 6y agoWhen did you last visit a farm? Maybe a farm-to-table joint in SoHo, Soho, or SoMa makes things seem glamorous. The prices probably do. In rural England, raising livestock and growing food is so run of the mill it’s incredible to think it’s some kind of privilege to have access to primary sources of food. It’s not even expensive. You just have to not live in the/a Metropolis.
- cblconfederate 6y agoI grew up in a rural place. A lot of our food is from relatives and from our own animals and plants. None of them are hipsters though, nor do they have instagram accounts. We don't apply the same standards to commercial food or when dining out: i know it would be incredibly taxing for the environment if commercial food did not exist. I just hope food technology improves so that we can replicate good quality in high quantities. I don't think organic can scale, nor would i support trying it.
- gorgoiler 6y agoThank you for the followup; an interesting read. For me, a positive trend I’ve seen over the past few years is a growing number of young people moving back to the countryside and either directly into agriculture / agribusiness / “ag”, or to doing supporting jobs in agriculture towns. Commercial farming in the UK has always been an above average social category. The days of the farmstead are almost done, whereas the barley barons — or at least the social class closer to that end of the income spectrum — are on the up. (If you know The Archers, think Brian Aldridge vs Pip Archer vs Eddie Grundy.) Like a billion other people, they all post about it on Instagram. It’s surprisingly common.