19 ms·

Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

82 points by tacon 12y ago

tacon 12y ago
I thought this was the craziest title, until I read the entire essay. And now I think the author has made a very deep analysis of modern society. It's almost as if there is a conservation law for conservative ideas. Sex isn't doing it anymore, so we are switching to food where we impose moral judgements on others who are "doing it wrong".
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dalke 12y ago
  I found it difficult to read the entire essay, so I didn't. I had problems with a lot of the characterizations. To start, "What happens when, for the first time in history, adult human beings are free to have all the sex and food they want?" This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves. The 1960s/1970s era of free love, after the pill and before HIV/AIDS and drug resistant venereal diseases was also, I think, more free than now. The author writes that HIV/AIDS is "manageable", for those with access to good medical care, but doesn't dismiss the point that it's not true that adults now are freer in their ways than (again, a subpopulation of) adults in the 1960s. "let us imagine some broad features of the world seen through two different sets of eyes: a hypothetical 30-year-old housewife from 1958 named Betty, and her hypothetical granddaughter Jennifer, of the same age, today." Home deep freezers weren't really available until after the Second World War, so that description of a 1958 era is one of food plenty, not food deficit, and that description is only true for a couple of decades. "If there is anything “fresh” on the plate, it is likely a potato." That's just not true. I've seen the pictures of the farmers in the late 1800s/early 1900s coming into town with their produce on wagons. There's more than just potatoes during the growing season. For a real-world example, see http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html , and quoting from Barbara Hubbard, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20, 1956: "This is a treat for them, especially when they are served hamburgers, fruit salad, carrot sticks, and an ice cream bar for dessert. They consider this menu a real party and what could be easier for Mother. When the children finish their supper they usually go upstairs to watch Daddy shave and tell him about their day. Then he reads them a story and tucks them into bed. This gives me time to broil a steak, mix the green salad, and dress the baked potatoes with sour cream and chives." So, the children have fruit salad and carrot sticks, and in addition to potato, the adults have a green salad. On the same link, a menu from Family Circle, August 1957, includes corn, salad, and honeydew melon, and from Women's Day 1959 has tomatoes, vegetable salad, and a fruit basket. Both have more than just potatoes. "Wavering in and out of vegetarianism" As was recently pointed out to me, C.S. Lewis in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", written in the 1950s, ridicules vegetarianism as being faddish. It's easy to believe that the author created examples specifically to illustrate a point, rather than to describe real cultural trends. What I see, when I look at the same events, is a move away from a conformist culture to a diverse culture. The moral strictures of church, class, race, gender, etc. are less binding. Remember too the author writes for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. As such, works from them are more likely to be aligned with conservative views, and not, say, rail against patriarchy.
  - tacon 12y ago
    It would have helped if you read the entire essay. I was a kid during that 1958 description, and it is exactly what was happening in my house (Alexandria, VA). My mom wasn't shopping at farmers markets. And now no one particularly cares how much sex you have in the privacy of your home, but "food woo" is rampant, and if you are feeding your kids gluten, well, you are just a bad parent. At the moment my father is having chronic bowel issues, so my sisters are urging "probiotics", a term coined in 1907 (patent medicine era) that has little or no actual proof of efficacy, but that doesn't stop marketers from acting like it's critical to health. The doctor is not wrong if he doesn't bring up probiotics, just like he's not wrong for not bringing up alternative medicine. >This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves. No, the freedom to have all the sex you want is new, for pretty much everyone in the US. Not everyone takes advantage of it, but there is little or no limit on your private sexual behavior now. Just consider gay marriage. And there was a huge risk with private sexual behavior back then. Part of the "food woo" is the curse of capitalism, the infinite and never ending expansion of choice in the marketplace. With all those new food variations, it's important to convince people that they are eating wrong. That it is becoming a moral choice is just icing on the cake for marketers.
    - dalke 12y ago
      Like I said, I couldn't get through the essay because I fundamentally disagreed with it. You say your memories of the 1950s are in agreement with it. I point out multiple examples from that era which show it isn't the case. I trust copies of literature from that era better than I do memories of childhood. I know how distorted my own memories of childhood were compared to the reality of the 1970s. Here's another: http://calorielab.com/news/2005/08/25/family-dinners-school-lunches-and-fast-food-in-the-1950s/ http://calorielab.com/news/2005/08/25/family-dinners-school-... - "Dinners consisted of meat, potatoes, a green vegetable, dinner rolls, salad. and dessert." Or look at the image of a Swanson's TV dinner from the 1950s , http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the-decades-american-food-history.html http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the... , with potato and peas. You say your mom wasn't shopping at a farmer's market. I never mentioned that - my reference was to 50 years previous. Fruit and vegetables are available at the supermarket. Here are pictures of a 1950s supermarket. http://fl4projects.tumblr.com/post/16150521363 http://fl4projects.tumblr.com/post/16150521363 . See the produce section? Same for http://www.pinterest.com/pin/27021666487620537/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/27021666487620537/ . You say that "food woo" is rampant now. I pointed out that C.S. Lewis against vegetarianism of the 1950s. Or I can point you to http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243 http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243 and how "From the 1930s through the '60s, Americans were convinced you had to have a certain kind of bowl to make a proper green salad: a plain, unvarnished wooden bowl which could never be washed." Or I could point out the radium craze of the early 1900s, when it seems you could get just about anything with a bit of radium added to it, for good health. Here's a better description of my point, at http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article10.htm http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article10.htm : > Why do so many people think American families are facing worse problems now than in the past? Partly it's because we compare the complex and diverse families of the 1900s with the seemingly more standard-issue ones of the 1950s, a unique decade when every long-term trend of the 20th century was temporarily reversed. In the 1950s, for the first time in 100 years, the divorce rate fell while marriage and fertility rates soared, creating a boom in nuclear-family living. The percentage of foreign-born individuals in the country decreased. And the debates over social and cultural issues that had divided Americans for 150 years were silenced, suggesting a national consensus on family values and norms. ... > But much nostalgia for the 1950s is a result of selective amnesia-the same process that makes childhood memories of summer vacations grow sunnier with each passing year. The superficial sameness Of 1950s family life was achieved through censorship, coercion and discrimination. People with unconventional beliefs faced governmental investigation and arbitrary firings. African Americans and Mexican Americans were prevented from voting in some states by literacy tests that were not administered to whites. Individuals who didn't follow the rigid gender and sexual rules of the day were ostracized. The 1950s also had the "curse of capitalism". All of the new processed food companies want to get in on the action, after the rationing of the war. Look at http://thehairpin.com/2013/10/lets-eat-some-weird-shi http://thehairpin.com/2013/10/lets-eat-some-weird-shi and see just how many ways the free market was trying to convince people in the 1950s to add a bit of their branded processed food to a recipe. "Fill the center of the peaches with Miracle Whip." "Split frankfurter buns in half and spread with Kraft Mayonnaise. Fill with good thick strips of Velveeta and brush the tops of the buns with melted butter or Parkay Margarine.", etc. I don't see any awareness of these issues in that essay, which makes it very frustrating to read. It comes across like a specific, typically conservative viewpoint which emphasizes a certain hierarchical conformist culture.
- ringolo 12y ago
  Like sex, food is essential to survival as a species. When things are essential, there are always ways to do it "wrong" :)
- humanrebar 12y ago
  It's almost as if there is a conservation law for conservative ideas. Sex isn't doing it anymore, so we are switching to food where we impose moral judgements on others who are "doing it wrong". The author didn't appear to be advocating food-based morality to me. Did I miss something? It seems like the author is describing how food ethics have waxed while sexual ethics have waned. The final paragraphs about how that might be described by the ascendancy of the philosophy of Nietzsche (postmodern, materialist, and individualist), which certainly isn't a conservative philosphy (at least not in the American sense). Though perhaps you mean that there's conservation of morality? As in, everyone is compelled to judge each other by some standard or another? I suppose that could be true. But if it is, it's either a condemnation of postmodernism or of mankind itself since that compulsion would pit humanity against the "that's fine if it works for you" attitude.
Animats 12y ago
We know what happens when humans are free to have all the food we want. They get fat. Next question. The food guilt thing is a product of marketing. Visit a Whole Foods and look at the displays. Sex guilt is back. (For straight people only.) It's not clear why. In the US, it's not due to religion; the religious right peaked in the last century. There are whole new areas of guilt since the 1980s, from sexual harassment to an expanded definition of rape. Not only are abortions harder to get, even birth control pills are harder to get. Women's clothing is more conservative, too.
- lentil_soup 12y ago
  "We know what happens when humans are free to have all the food we want. They get fat. Next question". I'm not so sure about that, not all societies that can "have all the food" they want are fat, for example France.
  - antidaily 12y ago
    Obesity rates are way up in France over the last 10 years too, though. They've doubled.
    - r00fus 12y ago
      Has food become more available in the past decade? Or perhaps France is getting more factory-food on the shelves? Ten years ago I didn't notice that people were going hungry.
      - ANTSANTS 12y ago
        It might be tied to the increased rates of immigration many European countries have seen in recent years.
  - GuiA 12y ago
    I don't know if I agree or not with you, but I don't think France is the best example because it has such a strong food culture. I'm a French person who's been living in the US for about 5 years now. My main realization regarding the way food is treated in each country is that in France, the relationship with food is conditioned culturally very strongly since the moment you're born. When you grow up as a French person in a culturally French family, you grow up in an environment where you constantly hear about what foods go and don't go with one another, how you should eat, etc. You hear this through your own family, through meals at schools, through meals you share when you go to your friend's house, and so on. Little things like "you're supposed to eat bread with your salad", "we've already had meat for lunch let's not have it for dinner", "don't eat with your hands", etc. For the first 18 years of your life, you hear these things on an everyday basis to the point that when you start living on your own, they're part of your subconscious. If you ate pizza on Monday, you're not going to eat it again on Tuesday because you'll hear your grandma's voice in your head that says "You already had pizza last night, eat some vegetables tonight". When you have dinner with your friends in college, you're likely to still cook something fairly healthy because most people share that upbringing with you. And then when you raise a family of your own, you yourself repeat these things and the cycle continues. This culture has evolved and been passed from generation to generation over centuries, and the result is that the average French person has a fairly strong instinct for "eating healthily" because of this, even though they're not compulsively counting calories at every meal. Their cultural baggage means they can just cook according to their gut, and their meals are likely to be balanced over time. The same is probably true for other countries with strong food cultures such as other mediterranean countries, Japan/South Korea, and so on. Such a culture does not exist to such an extent in the US. I've found the contrast to be pretty stark - when I eat with French friends, there's an entire set of manners and habits that are never expressed but mutually understood, which does not happen when I eat with most American friends. As a teenager, I lived in the US with a host family for a summer who never ate together - different family members would just pick and choose from the fridge at different times of the day as they saw fit, with no regards for whether their food intake was balanced or not; then maybe once or twice a week, they'd have a barbecue all together. This would be completely inconceivable in a French family. That being said, France is changing, families are becoming more and more multicultural, and things like fast food restaurants are changing norms.
sowhatquestion 12y ago
These issues are simpler to explain than the author realizes--and without any special invocation of Kant. Simply put, technology has made sex a lot safer at the same time as it has made food a lot more dangerous. Sex is safer (in the sense of creating fewer risks and uncertainties), as we all know, thanks to developments like condoms, STD testing, contraception, and legalized abortion. Meanwhile, food is a lot more dangerous, thanks to food science being used to create "hyperpalatable" junk food--cf. Paul Graham's "The Acceleration of Addictiveness."[1] As a 20-something in the U.S., I look around me and see obesity as an almost guaranteed outcome once people reach a certain age (with diabetes and heart disease not far behind)--and like many of my peers, I'm spooked. In response to this, I wouldn't exactly say people have made healthy eating into a new Categorical Imperative. Instead, they've become paranoid and superstitious about what it is in modern food that's hurting them. Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes, etc. Meanwhile, evidence-based approaches to the issue have not yet produced a diet that is optimal, practical, and that provides the level of enjoyment that we're used to from food. I personally think that Soylent is off to a promising start, although it has a long way to go. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
- slapshot 12y ago
  > made food a lot more dangerous You are almost certainly too young to remember it in the United States, but it wasn't that long ago that food was terribly dangerous. Start at non-sterile meat, bad canning practices (botulism killed 2,000+ per year in the United States until around WWII, down to a handful today) and go all the way to pellagra (an easily-solved Vitamin B deficiency that still killed 7500 people per year in the US in the 1930s; effectively 0 today). Remember Wonder Bread? It seems like evil simple carbs today, but it was initially popular precisely because the color and texture proved that it wasn't adulterated like many local bakers did at the time (flour was expensive, sawdust was cheap and could stretch meager supplies). Food was not safe for a long time.
  - craigwblake 12y ago
    Let's put those numbers in perspective, though. The CDC [1] claims that 600,000 people die per year due to heart disease, most of the causes of which (again according to the CDC) are people's choices in food and drink. That's pretty good evidence that food, on the whole, is not safer now. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm
nazgulnarsil 12y ago
Employment conditions are scary, marriage seems to have stabilized at a much lower equilibrium, housing is no longer the bastion of security it once was, etc. I look around at my peers and I see people who don't feel that they are in control of their lives. This winds up going one of two ways. Either food is seen as one last unadulterated pleasure and abused, or tightly regimented as one last bastion of control. I think the health food sector is growing because it gives people a sense of autonomy, when that feeling is in short supply.
peterwwillis 12y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines applies very well here. The entire article is basically a philosophical ramble. I also think it's funny to remove the word 'New' from the title [only in part due to this being penned in 2009]
serve_yay 12y ago
A lot of this rests on an examination of two characters who ostensibly represent their respective eras, but I am really not sure the analysis of these two people holds up to much scrutiny. On what basis do we claim that Jennifer thinks sex is "de gustibus", for example? I suspect it is more likely that both would hold similar reservations, just regarding different circumstances. For example, they both may think some sexual activity is wrong but just disagree on which in particular. Maybe Betty thinks gay sex is wrong and Jennifer doesn't, but they would both agree that a person leaving their family behind to "run off" with a new and exciting partner. In fact the suggestion otherwise strikes me as veiled grumbling about "millennials".
- GuiA 12y ago
  I don't think the distinction here is extrapolated at all. Try explaining something like Tinder to someone born in the first half of the previous century, and how most urban single 20-somethings use it everyday.
wsc981 12y ago
I only skimmed the article, but I guess the link between food and sex was also shown in a Southpark episode: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s14e14-creme-fraiche http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s14e14-creme-fraiche
ndomin 12y ago
I call bullshit. I've gone much longer without sex than without food.
whiddershins 12y ago
I don't agree with the first paragraph, that social mores exist to limit the danger of uninhibited indulgence in sex. I think most if not all (other than disease) downsides of sexual indulgence are because it violates customs. The author has that completely backwards.
- fibbery 12y ago
  So you think "customs" are totally arbitrary? Not following the logic.
  - Sophistifunk 12y ago
    No, they're mostly designed to keep a few Italian men in white hats in charge of 16th century Europe. We should probably take a long hard look at them.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
thedufer 12y ago
Mods: could use a (2009) tag.
- dang 12y ago
  How could we have missed that very large year? Thanks!
martinflack 12y ago
How much of this is more easily explained in that Betty is conservative and her granddaughter Jennifer is liberal? Jonathan Haidt's TED talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives touches on sex and food (see time index 7:09): http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind If there is a shift in the decades in common cultural attitudes, it might be explained by a general pendulum swing back and forth between conservative attitudes versus liberal attitudes holding more common sway in any particular decade.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > How much of this is more easily explained in that Betty is conservative and her granddaughter Jennifer is liberal? Perhaps the author is trying to explore why they prototypical conservative believes one way and the prototypical liberal believes another. I'm not sure just calling one "conservative" and the other "liberal" really explains anything.
  - dalke 12y ago
    I don't think it does explain much. It could be that Betty is a poor Lithuanian immigrant living in the slums of NYC in the 1960s, and Jennifer has converted to Buddhism, but doesn't always follow the vegetarianism aspect of the religion. The problem with the example is that "Betty is much like any other American home cook in 1958" hides the diversity of America. Had Betty been living in New Mexico, there would be green chile on the plate. Had Betty been living in Louisiana then the food would be different still. But by given simple hypothetical examples it's all too easy for us to fill in the details with what we think are the right answers.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  My family is conservative and holds more traditional views about sex, family, and religion than most, yet is caught up in the obsession with healthy eating just as much as its liberal counterparts. That's what makes this interesting from my perspective: attitudes about food have changed dramatically across social boundaries and political boundaries, to a greater degree than even our attitudes about sex. You don't have to agree with the author's conclusions (I mostly don't) to be interested in the way food is being treated in recent years as simultaneously a status symbol and the object of moral and political dogma.
Thesaurus 12y ago
Holy PsyOps Batman.
zasz 12y ago
I find this whole article rather suspect. For example, people have always had premarital sex. (http://books.google.com/books?id=knN9HzkY1pEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=premarital+pregnancy+rates+america+nineteenth+century&source=bl&ots=33AKmshrTb&sig=ae-VOz3pg4fbFvzq1Be0TrxtZ-s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y1xuVMb2D5GuogSh0YHgDw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=premarital%20pregnancy%20rates%20america%20nineteenth%20century&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=knN9HzkY1pEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA...) And the author simply asserts, without any proof, that children from divorced families do worse. Really? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for-children/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for... I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican, and lo and behold, she's with the Hoover Institute. Thought-provoking article, but given the assumptions made and how they clash with the facts as I know them, I don't buy any of it.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  >I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican I am impressed by the open-mindedness you display.
Arnor 12y ago
> She also buys “organic” in the belief that it is better both for her and for the animals raised in that way, even though the products are markedly more expensive than those from the local grocery store. Is anyone really eating organic food because of a perceived health benefit anymore? Everyone I know who eats organic (myself included) is doing for the sake of environmental consciousness or animal welfare not personal health.
- Arnor 12y ago
  If you feel the need to downvote this, I think an explanation is in order... Perhaps your answer to my question is "Yes, I do eat organic food because of a perceived health benefit." If that's the case, a response would be more appropriate...
sgentle 12y ago
Sometimes I want to explain to someone what "begging the question" means in its original definition as a conclusion that relies on itself as a premise. I've often wished there was a perfect example of question-begging I could point to as a demonstration. Well, now I have one. The most important - really, the only - point that this waffling diatribe offers is that food and sex are moral equivalents. Except it doesn't ever prove that point. Rather, it sort of wafts it in the air ("is food the new sex?"), assumes they are connected ("The question before us today is not whether the two appetites are closely connected") then throws out random just-so assertions ("Both [...] can prove ruinous not only to oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself") The next thousand lines of condescending feigned surprise basically amount to "oh, how strange it is that although sex and food are very similar, we treat them differently". Yes, that would be surprising if they were very similar. But what if they're not very similar and you just made that up because it would be convenient for your worldview? When your conclusion is your premise, anything is possible. I present here my new essay: Is Sex the New Eugenics? Sex and eugenics are inextricably linked. At various times laws have been made and wars have been fought over both sex and eugenics. We previously thought eugenics was a good idea but we now see it as morally bankrupt. We previously thought sex was morally bankrupt but we now see it as a good idea. But since they're the same, that's wrong. Sex and Eugenics are the same. Nietzsche.

82 points by tacon 12y ago

tacon 12y ago

I thought this was the craziest title, until I read the entire essay. And now I think the author has made a very deep analysis of modern society. It's almost as if there is a conservation law for conservative ideas. Sex isn't doing it anymore, so we are switching to food where we impose moral judgements on others who are "doing it wrong".

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dalke 12y ago
I found it difficult to read the entire essay, so I didn't. I had problems with a lot of the characterizations. To start, "What happens when, for the first time in history, adult human beings are free to have all the sex and food they want?" This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves. The 1960s/1970s era of free love, after the pill and before HIV/AIDS and drug resistant venereal diseases was also, I think, more free than now. The author writes that HIV/AIDS is "manageable", for those with access to good medical care, but doesn't dismiss the point that it's not true that adults now are freer in their ways than (again, a subpopulation of) adults in the 1960s. "let us imagine some broad features of the world seen through two different sets of eyes: a hypothetical 30-year-old housewife from 1958 named Betty, and her hypothetical granddaughter Jennifer, of the same age, today." Home deep freezers weren't really available until after the Second World War, so that description of a 1958 era is one of food plenty, not food deficit, and that description is only true for a couple of decades. "If there is anything “fresh” on the plate, it is likely a potato." That's just not true. I've seen the pictures of the farmers in the late 1800s/early 1900s coming into town with their produce on wagons. There's more than just potatoes during the growing season. For a real-world example, see http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html , and quoting from Barbara Hubbard, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20, 1956: "This is a treat for them, especially when they are served hamburgers, fruit salad, carrot sticks, and an ice cream bar for dessert. They consider this menu a real party and what could be easier for Mother. When the children finish their supper they usually go upstairs to watch Daddy shave and tell him about their day. Then he reads them a story and tucks them into bed. This gives me time to broil a steak, mix the green salad, and dress the baked potatoes with sour cream and chives." So, the children have fruit salad and carrot sticks, and in addition to potato, the adults have a green salad. On the same link, a menu from Family Circle, August 1957, includes corn, salad, and honeydew melon, and from Women's Day 1959 has tomatoes, vegetable salad, and a fruit basket. Both have more than just potatoes. "Wavering in and out of vegetarianism" As was recently pointed out to me, C.S. Lewis in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", written in the 1950s, ridicules vegetarianism as being faddish. It's easy to believe that the author created examples specifically to illustrate a point, rather than to describe real cultural trends. What I see, when I look at the same events, is a move away from a conformist culture to a diverse culture. The moral strictures of church, class, race, gender, etc. are less binding. Remember too the author writes for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. As such, works from them are more likely to be aligned with conservative views, and not, say, rail against patriarchy.
- tacon 12y ago
  It would have helped if you read the entire essay. I was a kid during that 1958 description, and it is exactly what was happening in my house (Alexandria, VA). My mom wasn't shopping at farmers markets. And now no one particularly cares how much sex you have in the privacy of your home, but "food woo" is rampant, and if you are feeding your kids gluten, well, you are just a bad parent. At the moment my father is having chronic bowel issues, so my sisters are urging "probiotics", a term coined in 1907 (patent medicine era) that has little or no actual proof of efficacy, but that doesn't stop marketers from acting like it's critical to health. The doctor is not wrong if he doesn't bring up probiotics, just like he's not wrong for not bringing up alternative medicine. >This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves. No, the freedom to have all the sex you want is new, for pretty much everyone in the US. Not everyone takes advantage of it, but there is little or no limit on your private sexual behavior now. Just consider gay marriage. And there was a huge risk with private sexual behavior back then. Part of the "food woo" is the curse of capitalism, the infinite and never ending expansion of choice in the marketplace. With all those new food variations, it's important to convince people that they are eating wrong. That it is becoming a moral choice is just icing on the cake for marketers.
  - dalke 12y ago
    Like I said, I couldn't get through the essay because I fundamentally disagreed with it. You say your memories of the 1950s are in agreement with it. I point out multiple examples from that era which show it isn't the case. I trust copies of literature from that era better than I do memories of childhood. I know how distorted my own memories of childhood were compared to the reality of the 1970s. Here's another: http://calorielab.com/news/2005/08/25/family-dinners-school-lunches-and-fast-food-in-the-1950s/ http://calorielab.com/news/2005/08/25/family-dinners-school-... - "Dinners consisted of meat, potatoes, a green vegetable, dinner rolls, salad. and dessert." Or look at the image of a Swanson's TV dinner from the 1950s , http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the-decades-american-food-history.html http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the... , with potato and peas. You say your mom wasn't shopping at a farmer's market. I never mentioned that - my reference was to 50 years previous. Fruit and vegetables are available at the supermarket. Here are pictures of a 1950s supermarket. http://fl4projects.tumblr.com/post/16150521363 http://fl4projects.tumblr.com/post/16150521363 . See the produce section? Same for http://www.pinterest.com/pin/27021666487620537/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/27021666487620537/ . You say that "food woo" is rampant now. I pointed out that C.S. Lewis against vegetarianism of the 1950s. Or I can point you to http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243 http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243 and how "From the 1930s through the '60s, Americans were convinced you had to have a certain kind of bowl to make a proper green salad: a plain, unvarnished wooden bowl which could never be washed." Or I could point out the radium craze of the early 1900s, when it seems you could get just about anything with a bit of radium added to it, for good health. Here's a better description of my point, at http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article10.htm http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article10.htm : > Why do so many people think American families are facing worse problems now than in the past? Partly it's because we compare the complex and diverse families of the 1900s with the seemingly more standard-issue ones of the 1950s, a unique decade when every long-term trend of the 20th century was temporarily reversed. In the 1950s, for the first time in 100 years, the divorce rate fell while marriage and fertility rates soared, creating a boom in nuclear-family living. The percentage of foreign-born individuals in the country decreased. And the debates over social and cultural issues that had divided Americans for 150 years were silenced, suggesting a national consensus on family values and norms. ... > But much nostalgia for the 1950s is a result of selective amnesia-the same process that makes childhood memories of summer vacations grow sunnier with each passing year. The superficial sameness Of 1950s family life was achieved through censorship, coercion and discrimination. People with unconventional beliefs faced governmental investigation and arbitrary firings. African Americans and Mexican Americans were prevented from voting in some states by literacy tests that were not administered to whites. Individuals who didn't follow the rigid gender and sexual rules of the day were ostracized. The 1950s also had the "curse of capitalism". All of the new processed food companies want to get in on the action, after the rationing of the war. Look at http://thehairpin.com/2013/10/lets-eat-some-weird-shi http://thehairpin.com/2013/10/lets-eat-some-weird-shi and see just how many ways the free market was trying to convince people in the 1950s to add a bit of their branded processed food to a recipe. "Fill the center of the peaches with Miracle Whip." "Split frankfurter buns in half and spread with Kraft Mayonnaise. Fill with good thick strips of Velveeta and brush the tops of the buns with melted butter or Parkay Margarine.", etc. I don't see any awareness of these issues in that essay, which makes it very frustrating to read. It comes across like a specific, typically conservative viewpoint which emphasizes a certain hierarchical conformist culture.
ringolo 12y ago
Like sex, food is essential to survival as a species. When things are essential, there are always ways to do it "wrong" :)
humanrebar 12y ago
It's almost as if there is a conservation law for conservative ideas. Sex isn't doing it anymore, so we are switching to food where we impose moral judgements on others who are "doing it wrong". The author didn't appear to be advocating food-based morality to me. Did I miss something? It seems like the author is describing how food ethics have waxed while sexual ethics have waned. The final paragraphs about how that might be described by the ascendancy of the philosophy of Nietzsche (postmodern, materialist, and individualist), which certainly isn't a conservative philosphy (at least not in the American sense). Though perhaps you mean that there's conservation of morality? As in, everyone is compelled to judge each other by some standard or another? I suppose that could be true. But if it is, it's either a condemnation of postmodernism or of mankind itself since that compulsion would pit humanity against the "that's fine if it works for you" attitude.

Animats 12y ago

We know what happens when humans are free to have all the food we want. They get fat. Next question. The food guilt thing is a product of marketing. Visit a Whole Foods and look at the displays. Sex guilt is back. (For straight people only.) It's not clear why. In the US, it's not due to religion; the religious right peaked in the last century. There are whole new areas of guilt since the 1980s, from sexual harassment to an expanded definition of rape. Not only are abortions harder to get, even birth control pills are harder to get. Women's clothing is more conservative, too.

lentil_soup 12y ago
"We know what happens when humans are free to have all the food we want. They get fat. Next question". I'm not so sure about that, not all societies that can "have all the food" they want are fat, for example France.
- antidaily 12y ago
  Obesity rates are way up in France over the last 10 years too, though. They've doubled.
  - r00fus 12y ago
    Has food become more available in the past decade? Or perhaps France is getting more factory-food on the shelves? Ten years ago I didn't notice that people were going hungry.
    - ANTSANTS 12y ago
      It might be tied to the increased rates of immigration many European countries have seen in recent years.
- GuiA 12y ago
  I don't know if I agree or not with you, but I don't think France is the best example because it has such a strong food culture. I'm a French person who's been living in the US for about 5 years now. My main realization regarding the way food is treated in each country is that in France, the relationship with food is conditioned culturally very strongly since the moment you're born. When you grow up as a French person in a culturally French family, you grow up in an environment where you constantly hear about what foods go and don't go with one another, how you should eat, etc. You hear this through your own family, through meals at schools, through meals you share when you go to your friend's house, and so on. Little things like "you're supposed to eat bread with your salad", "we've already had meat for lunch let's not have it for dinner", "don't eat with your hands", etc. For the first 18 years of your life, you hear these things on an everyday basis to the point that when you start living on your own, they're part of your subconscious. If you ate pizza on Monday, you're not going to eat it again on Tuesday because you'll hear your grandma's voice in your head that says "You already had pizza last night, eat some vegetables tonight". When you have dinner with your friends in college, you're likely to still cook something fairly healthy because most people share that upbringing with you. And then when you raise a family of your own, you yourself repeat these things and the cycle continues. This culture has evolved and been passed from generation to generation over centuries, and the result is that the average French person has a fairly strong instinct for "eating healthily" because of this, even though they're not compulsively counting calories at every meal. Their cultural baggage means they can just cook according to their gut, and their meals are likely to be balanced over time. The same is probably true for other countries with strong food cultures such as other mediterranean countries, Japan/South Korea, and so on. Such a culture does not exist to such an extent in the US. I've found the contrast to be pretty stark - when I eat with French friends, there's an entire set of manners and habits that are never expressed but mutually understood, which does not happen when I eat with most American friends. As a teenager, I lived in the US with a host family for a summer who never ate together - different family members would just pick and choose from the fridge at different times of the day as they saw fit, with no regards for whether their food intake was balanced or not; then maybe once or twice a week, they'd have a barbecue all together. This would be completely inconceivable in a French family. That being said, France is changing, families are becoming more and more multicultural, and things like fast food restaurants are changing norms.

sowhatquestion 12y ago

These issues are simpler to explain than the author realizes--and without any special invocation of Kant. Simply put, technology has made sex a lot safer at the same time as it has made food a lot more dangerous. Sex is safer (in the sense of creating fewer risks and uncertainties), as we all know, thanks to developments like condoms, STD testing, contraception, and legalized abortion. Meanwhile, food is a lot more dangerous, thanks to food science being used to create "hyperpalatable" junk food--cf. Paul Graham's "The Acceleration of Addictiveness."[1] As a 20-something in the U.S., I look around me and see obesity as an almost guaranteed outcome once people reach a certain age (with diabetes and heart disease not far behind)--and like many of my peers, I'm spooked. In response to this, I wouldn't exactly say people have made healthy eating into a new Categorical Imperative. Instead, they've become paranoid and superstitious about what it is in modern food that's hurting them. Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes, etc. Meanwhile, evidence-based approaches to the issue have not yet produced a diet that is optimal, practical, and that provides the level of enjoyment that we're used to from food. I personally think that Soylent is off to a promising start, although it has a long way to go. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

slapshot 12y ago
> made food a lot more dangerous You are almost certainly too young to remember it in the United States, but it wasn't that long ago that food was terribly dangerous. Start at non-sterile meat, bad canning practices (botulism killed 2,000+ per year in the United States until around WWII, down to a handful today) and go all the way to pellagra (an easily-solved Vitamin B deficiency that still killed 7500 people per year in the US in the 1930s; effectively 0 today). Remember Wonder Bread? It seems like evil simple carbs today, but it was initially popular precisely because the color and texture proved that it wasn't adulterated like many local bakers did at the time (flour was expensive, sawdust was cheap and could stretch meager supplies). Food was not safe for a long time.
- craigwblake 12y ago
  Let's put those numbers in perspective, though. The CDC [1] claims that 600,000 people die per year due to heart disease, most of the causes of which (again according to the CDC) are people's choices in food and drink. That's pretty good evidence that food, on the whole, is not safer now. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm

nazgulnarsil 12y ago

Employment conditions are scary, marriage seems to have stabilized at a much lower equilibrium, housing is no longer the bastion of security it once was, etc. I look around at my peers and I see people who don't feel that they are in control of their lives. This winds up going one of two ways. Either food is seen as one last unadulterated pleasure and abused, or tightly regimented as one last bastion of control. I think the health food sector is growing because it gives people a sense of autonomy, when that feeling is in short supply.

peterwwillis 12y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines applies very well here. The entire article is basically a philosophical ramble. I also think it's funny to remove the word 'New' from the title [only in part due to this being penned in 2009]

serve_yay 12y ago

A lot of this rests on an examination of two characters who ostensibly represent their respective eras, but I am really not sure the analysis of these two people holds up to much scrutiny. On what basis do we claim that Jennifer thinks sex is "de gustibus", for example? I suspect it is more likely that both would hold similar reservations, just regarding different circumstances. For example, they both may think some sexual activity is wrong but just disagree on which in particular. Maybe Betty thinks gay sex is wrong and Jennifer doesn't, but they would both agree that a person leaving their family behind to "run off" with a new and exciting partner. In fact the suggestion otherwise strikes me as veiled grumbling about "millennials".

GuiA 12y ago
I don't think the distinction here is extrapolated at all. Try explaining something like Tinder to someone born in the first half of the previous century, and how most urban single 20-somethings use it everyday.

wsc981 12y ago

I only skimmed the article, but I guess the link between food and sex was also shown in a Southpark episode: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s14e14-creme-fraiche http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s14e14-creme-fraiche

ndomin 12y ago

I call bullshit. I've gone much longer without sex than without food.

whiddershins 12y ago

I don't agree with the first paragraph, that social mores exist to limit the danger of uninhibited indulgence in sex. I think most if not all (other than disease) downsides of sexual indulgence are because it violates customs. The author has that completely backwards.

fibbery 12y ago
So you think "customs" are totally arbitrary? Not following the logic.
- Sophistifunk 12y ago
  No, they're mostly designed to keep a few Italian men in white hats in charge of 16th century Europe. We should probably take a long hard look at them.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

thedufer 12y ago

Mods: could use a (2009) tag.

dang 12y ago
How could we have missed that very large year? Thanks!

martinflack 12y ago

How much of this is more easily explained in that Betty is conservative and her granddaughter Jennifer is liberal? Jonathan Haidt's TED talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives touches on sex and food (see time index 7:09): http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind If there is a shift in the decades in common cultural attitudes, it might be explained by a general pendulum swing back and forth between conservative attitudes versus liberal attitudes holding more common sway in any particular decade.

humanrebar 12y ago
> How much of this is more easily explained in that Betty is conservative and her granddaughter Jennifer is liberal? Perhaps the author is trying to explore why they prototypical conservative believes one way and the prototypical liberal believes another. I'm not sure just calling one "conservative" and the other "liberal" really explains anything.
- dalke 12y ago
  I don't think it does explain much. It could be that Betty is a poor Lithuanian immigrant living in the slums of NYC in the 1960s, and Jennifer has converted to Buddhism, but doesn't always follow the vegetarianism aspect of the religion. The problem with the example is that "Betty is much like any other American home cook in 1958" hides the diversity of America. Had Betty been living in New Mexico, there would be green chile on the plate. Had Betty been living in Louisiana then the food would be different still. But by given simple hypothetical examples it's all too easy for us to fill in the details with what we think are the right answers.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
My family is conservative and holds more traditional views about sex, family, and religion than most, yet is caught up in the obsession with healthy eating just as much as its liberal counterparts. That's what makes this interesting from my perspective: attitudes about food have changed dramatically across social boundaries and political boundaries, to a greater degree than even our attitudes about sex. You don't have to agree with the author's conclusions (I mostly don't) to be interested in the way food is being treated in recent years as simultaneously a status symbol and the object of moral and political dogma.

Thesaurus 12y ago

Holy PsyOps Batman.

zasz 12y ago

I find this whole article rather suspect. For example, people have always had premarital sex. (http://books.google.com/books?id=knN9HzkY1pEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=premarital+pregnancy+rates+america+nineteenth+century&source=bl&ots=33AKmshrTb&sig=ae-VOz3pg4fbFvzq1Be0TrxtZ-s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y1xuVMb2D5GuogSh0YHgDw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=premarital%20pregnancy%20rates%20america%20nineteenth%20century&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=knN9HzkY1pEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA...) And the author simply asserts, without any proof, that children from divorced families do worse. Really? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for-children/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for... I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican, and lo and behold, she's with the Hoover Institute. Thought-provoking article, but given the assumptions made and how they clash with the facts as I know them, I don't buy any of it.

ANTSANTS 12y ago
>I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican I am impressed by the open-mindedness you display.

Arnor 12y ago

> She also buys “organic” in the belief that it is better both for her and for the animals raised in that way, even though the products are markedly more expensive than those from the local grocery store. Is anyone really eating organic food because of a perceived health benefit anymore? Everyone I know who eats organic (myself included) is doing for the sake of environmental consciousness or animal welfare not personal health.

Arnor 12y ago
If you feel the need to downvote this, I think an explanation is in order... Perhaps your answer to my question is "Yes, I do eat organic food because of a perceived health benefit." If that's the case, a response would be more appropriate...

sgentle 12y ago

Sometimes I want to explain to someone what "begging the question" means in its original definition as a conclusion that relies on itself as a premise. I've often wished there was a perfect example of question-begging I could point to as a demonstration. Well, now I have one. The most important - really, the only - point that this waffling diatribe offers is that food and sex are moral equivalents. Except it doesn't ever prove that point. Rather, it sort of wafts it in the air ("is food the new sex?"), assumes they are connected ("The question before us today is not whether the two appetites are closely connected") then throws out random just-so assertions ("Both [...] can prove ruinous not only to oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself") The next thousand lines of condescending feigned surprise basically amount to "oh, how strange it is that although sex and food are very similar, we treat them differently". Yes, that would be surprising if they were very similar. But what if they're not very similar and you just made that up because it would be convenient for your worldview? When your conclusion is your premise, anything is possible. I present here my new essay: Is Sex the New Eugenics? Sex and eugenics are inextricably linked. At various times laws have been made and wars have been fought over both sex and eugenics. We previously thought eugenics was a good idea but we now see it as morally bankrupt. We previously thought sex was morally bankrupt but we now see it as a good idea. But since they're the same, that's wrong. Sex and Eugenics are the same. Nietzsche.