Catchy title, eh?
Like most catchy titles, it's quite misleading. I have no intention of being yet another to lament the stupid vulgarity of Italy's ag minister, Luca Zaia, who has launched some initiative, with McDonalds, intended to show that Italy gets the modern world of food, or something. All to give young people the world over a genuine taste of Italy.
See, they do amazing things like adding Italian cheeses and such to Mickey D's burgers:
McDonald’s Italia Director Roberto Masi said that the sandwich launched yesterday, which consists of an artichoke spread topped with Asiago cheese, lettuce and, of course, a burger on 100% Italian bread, is already being sold in Switzerland. Next week the sandwich will arrive in France and later it will be sold in Spain, Portugal and Holland.
In three weeks’ time the second McItaly sandwich will go on sale. It will consist of a hamburger garnished with Italian olive oil, grilled onions and smoked pancetta. The McItaly salad contains lettuce, bresaola and parmesan.
You can read the whole article about this laughable program here (in English).
Another depressing thing from Italy that I saw on Twitter the other day: a link to an article that asked if we needed the food word and concept to parallel that of terroir for wine: Foodoir. Yes, my friends, things have gone too far.
Good, that's out of the way.
I would now like to vent about the follies of foodism -- which I define as an excessive preoccupation with food along with the moral judgments that informs it.
In the last 20 years we have seen a baffling number of "health scares" and fashions in food, most of which have served to 1) cast an admonitory finger at those who consumed "bad" foods and 2) elevate the self-perceived moral superiority of the castigators. And, I suspect, not a few of these high-dudgeon scare campaigns have been concocted by the food industry to pave the way for "new and healthier" products.
Off the top of my head:
- Coffee, tea and all beverages containing caffeine
- Oat bran, a miracle food
- Bread is always bad. Empty calories. Makes you fat. Right to the hips! Substitute with oat bran muffins, rolls, breads, cookies
- Cholesterol, especially in its bloody form as "red meat"
- High-fat foods, not only salty snacks but, of course, anything made from the flesh of innocent beasts of the field and air (industrially farmed chicken, oddly enough, wasn't a moral problem until comparatively few years ago -- but chickens aren't mammals). Skip the steaks -- and please don't eat veal, ever -- and if you must kill a creature, make it a fish
- Tuna. Not because we're killing tuna, which is deemed to be good for us, but because we coincidently kill mammals
- Fat-free snacks. Yes, they reduce fat intake. But they contain more sugar than fatty snacks, setting up the poor and ignorant to suffer more obesity (if they could be persuaded to buy such untasty goodies)
- Fish. Forget the tuna, there's too much mercury and so forth in it. Plus we're depleting the oceans! Factory fishing boats of all things; did they never read "Captains Courageous" or at least see the film with that marvelous Spencer Tracy? What do you expect, they're Japanese and Koreans
- Canola oil is acceptable for cooking and dressing salads. Nothing else is, including olive oil (monosaturates or some other word that sounds wicked). Must say "polyunsaturated" somewhere on the bottle
-Coffee can actually be rather beneficial for mental function. Astonishingly, researchers have found that it keeps people more alert and able to process complex tasks
- Tea is terrific if it's some milky mess called "chai" (that would mean "tea" in India) and costs a lot more than a couple of cents per ordinary teabags, which are acceptable for down-home items like ice tea
- OK, you can eat salmon -- it's high in this oil and that -- but not the farmed kind, which pollutes coastlines in pristine parts of the world. Anyway, it's cheaper and doesn't taste as good
- Actually, red meat is acceptable because there is now doubt that a high-carb diet is as good for the human body as one rich in meat protein. Even Kate Moss is an omnivore! Until she throws it up
- Alcohol is fine as long as it's red wine and drunk in medicinal moderation. Any more than 2 glasses a day for a man or 1 for a woman -- well, get yourself to an AA meeting, lush
- Canned and frozen foods are wrong. Everyone should go to a farmer's market and buy fruits and vegetables and $6 loaves of artisanal bread. Or at least to Whole Foods despite the company's dreadful right-wing president
- Sorry, turns out olive oil is very very good for you indeed. Something about monosaturates, which help reduce cholesterol. Part of the Mediterranean diet, which permits you to sneak in some of that old enemy, pasta
- Bread is acceptable if it's made of unmilled flour or something, comes in a strange shape and has lots of kernels or husks or something in it. It seems our neolithic farmer ancestors knew something about the benefits of roughage and avoiding polyps. Besides, it's traditional and organic and so on
- It used to be exciting to eat Chilean sea bass, tilapia, mahi mahi and fruits from all over the southern hemisphere. "Globalization" seemed cool, like the @ in your new electronic mail address on the infobahn. These things are now out of fashion for a very good reason: we got sick of them, AND the carbon footprint to get them to our greedy exploitative maws was discovered to be unacceptably high
- Foams were all the rage until we realized they were very expensive AND didn't fill us up. There's a reason the founder of the craze has closed his resto down for a couple of years. Steakhouses are acceptable again if you are one of the few to have an expense account
- Sweets are unacceptable. Junk food. A prime cause of the obesity epidemic afflicting our children and the unmotivated, slovenly, Palin-loving proletariat. Unless they (the desserts, or as we in the know prefer to call them, "dolci") are made from very fine ingredients and come from a chef with a pedigree. Then they are acceptable
- Cocktails are in. Especially if made from fresh infusions of weird herbs and fruits prepared by a mixologist with obscure, costly brands of artisanal booze
- Wine is more popular than ever especially if it's from some obscure place and made from a grape no one ever heard of. Extra cool points awarded if fermented in a buried clay pot or a disused chicken coop. Floating matter and vile smells enhance its charm and discussability
- One has an obligation to "eat local." It's a moral, planet-saving one that takes, alas, no account of the sufferings of the Chilean farmer who hoed his way out of poverty after living under a brutal dictatorship for about 20 years. In a place like Scotland, this would lead to a year-round diet of haggis and barley soup. In New York City, a diet of park weeds and rats
Clearly, this doctrine requires more analysis and discussion over pad thai and Alsatian gewurztraminer.
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