How History Matters to Contemporary Food Debates
That’s the subtitle of a new anthology, Food Fights, edited by Charles C. Ludington and Matthew Morse Booker.
The food movement, represented in the media by writers such Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman and in academia by the scholars from the humanities and social sciences who work in food studies, “is old enough, mature enough, serious enough, and powerful enough to deserve . . . critical attention . . . premissed on the importance of historical perspective,” say the editors.
The food movement’s lack of historical perspective leads to its “unrelentingly negative view of our current food system” which without historical perspective is easily seen as unprecedentedly disastrous nutritionally, morally, and environmentally. This limits the movement’s effectiveness.
First, failure to understand why people eat as they do “implicitly condemns the eating habits of middle-class and poor Americans (and thus most Americans), the very people whom critics of the food system want to help. Yet telling people that they need to change their habits, even when accompanied by the caveat that such habits are not their own fault, is rarely a recipe for success.”
Second, the negative view fails to recognize that many of today’s problems are the unintended consequences of solutions to earlier problems. Thus it fails to acknowledge that many earlier problems have in fact been solved (my examples might be widespread intestinal diseases and deficiency diseases).
Moreover, because it does not realize that proposed solutions to today’s problems are likely to have their own unintended consequences, this lack of historical perspective leads to a naive belief in a simple once-and-for-all “fix.”
To try to move the debate forward, the editors want to encourage a middle way between unrelenting negativity and a blind belief that everything is hunky-dory.
Their five sections offer opposing, historically informed perspectives on farming, science (GMOs), and activism; on how seeming neutral judgements about “good taste” “good nutrition” can embody hidden assumptions about, for example, class or race; on what part government has and should play in regulating and guaranteeing the food supply; on gender and the feeding of families, including babies; and on food and the good life.
Unusually for an anthology, all authors were encouraged to incorporate comments on fellow contributors. I think anyone interested in the context of the food movement of the past couple of decades would find much to ponder here. And if I were still teaching, I would certainly use it.
Please realize, though, that I am not an entirely neutral reviewer. My “Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love Fast, Modern, Processed Food,” is among the articles included. I added a postscript in which I argue that the food fights are not simply about matters of fact. Like all such contentious political issues, they are underlain by very different political/philosophical beliefs about society, about our bodies, and about the physical world we live in. I have a first stab at a schema of four such belief systems and at where the different papers fit on that spectrum.
Rachel, Will be reading your viewpoint here soon? Sounds vey provocative! I agree that history does matter. I know that from 50.yrs in Greece. Greeks have a very well developed sense their diet, a word hich incidentally originally meant a way of living in ancient Greek. Hope to hear more
Yes, it’ll be coming over the next few weeks.
Excellent argument, Rachel. Much, maybe most, of the “food movement” consists of folks who are members of the more general “grievance movement,” who seem to take it to be their job to dis-establish all that’s established, simply because–in their view– all that’s established is tainted to the core with bad will, bad politics, and oppression by the powers that be. These people have the misbegotten mind-set of last generation’s post-modernist “science wars.” Which is to say, deeply flawed because totally a-historical, as you so clearly note. It is far time for a strong corrective to these harpies, and it sounds like you and your fellow authors have provided the first of the needed in-course corrections. Thank you.
Thanks for the encouragement George. By the way, do you know Chad Ludington. He has a fine book on wine in eighteenth century Britain and is about to produce another on the Irish wine merchants in Bordeaux. You share many ideas about taste.