Why Can’t I Eat Refined Food and Plain Food?
That’s the question Liz Williams of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum asked me. Well, lot’s the time that’s exact what we do. For breakfast we have milk and cornflakes. Plain food by any standard since cornflakes like most cereals was invented by a plain food enthusiast, in this case Kellogg. Then for dinner we have upadated refined food, lasagne say, and a cake for dessert. Lots of refined white flour, creamy sauces, sugar, and butter.
Which just shows how we have forgotten that both kinds of food had their moral underpinnings. In the past, those who advocated refined food would not have considered plain food for breakfast: that would have undone the moral good of the evening before and brought them back to the level of the barbarians and beasts. Those who advocated plain food would have shunned refined food for dinner as filling their bodies with the poisons of an over-civilized society, indulging in luxury and extravagance, and contributing to social injustice.
But is this really just in the past? Consider those who inveigh against processed food: the cause of obesity, the abandonment of the pure and natural. Or conversely those who pride themselves on fine dining: no whole wheat crackers, here, but a highly refined consommé made from scratch. The fervor remains, the moral considerations still lurk beneath the surface, or so it seems to me.
