(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing Friday: Foodieism as Gluttony [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-24 Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well. I am not a foodie because I cannot afford the specialty ingredients, even though my local Asian supermarket is chock full of supply-chain, higher-priced exotic goods. It is neoliberal in that globalist markets are important for one aspect of eating well, even as localism should be the dominant model to delimit fast food and to promote vegetarianism and/or veganism. The mediated version of such gluttony derive not simply from Julia Child but from shows like the original Iron Chef which were fascinating for its ethnocentrism and covert co-prosperity sphere approach to food hegemony. Are you not entertained with gladiatorial cooking competitions, dictated in the US context by the same actor who played villain “Wo Fat” in the Hawai’l-Five-O reboot. Whoa, fat. The 20th season of Top Chef begins next month. That and Project Runway are my few cable-TV programming vices beyond BattleBots. The reality TV spin-offs just make us hungry for the advertisers’ wares. And worse are the memes that result from the other kayfabe reality programming of networks like Bravo and NBC, which did bring us crap like The Previous Guy. Because Survivor is not like sustainability. The original reality cooking competition premiered in 1993 in Japan, hosted by the flamboyant chairman Takeshi Kaga. It was briefly revived in 2012, but was discontinued just a year later. The American iteration of the show, slated as a “Battle of the Masters,” premiered in 2005 and ran until 2014. Martial artist Mark Dacascos served as the “Chairman,” or host, while Alton Brown provided commentary. The show featured heated kitchen competitions between Masaharu Morimoto and Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali and Hiroyuki Sakai, and Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse. The show has had many incarnations around the world: A British version of the show lasted for only one season in 2010. Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Israel all have their own Iron Chef shows. Indonesia's version premiered in 2003, two years before it would find success in America. www.yahoo.com/... foodie-ism is often “orientalist and neocolonial in its language of ‘discovery,” Foodie-ism and the narrow emphasis on eating organic/local/artisan food was not an act of protest or activism. In fact, it was pretty conservative. Foodieism reinforced and replicated systems of food injustice. Eat expensive grass-fed beef in your LEED-certified ivory tower and you might as well be dining on Chilean sea bass at the CPAC with Rush Limbaugh. This is why I am not a foodie and why you shouldn't be one either. [...] This restaurant gentrification shows that racist-classist power dynamics are at play. When we say the only entities that get people excited about sustainable food systems are the ones that attract 30-year-old bankers, we are just replicating the racism/classism our food systems already holds strong. [...] Foodieism has a misplaced emphasis on value-added quality over community. I wonder how to make the patrons of those restaurants think about and act on this. Our communities, together, are poised to create a true revolution for just and equitable food. If people of privilege want to join in, we just need to shut our mouths, open our eyes, and follow along. www.huffpost.com/… In Futurama, Bender challenges Elzar to a cook-off on the TV show "Iron Cook" (a parody of Iron Chef). The main ingredient used in this cook-off is Soylent Green. Bender prepares terrible looking food, but applies the liquid that Spargel gave him and wins. As the loser, Elzar is forced to wash the dishes. en.wikipedia.org/... For in whatever form it has taken through the centuries…speciesism—or the total organization of material and symbolic human life around the domination and mass killing of other sensitive beings—has throughout history served as the "primordial" substructure or organizing principle of the human project… When food is separated out from its practical function and cultural context and turned into a media property, where foodie-ism appears as “a form of conspicuous consumption that disguises itself as cultural acumen.” When food is separated out from its practical function and cultural context and turned into a media property, foodie-ism is often “orientalist and neocolonial in its language of ‘discovery,’” writer and artist Sukjong Hong said, particularly in its “valuing of authenticity around foods that are not from the dominant culture.” It is how miso and soy sauce, everyday staples in Asian cuisine, become the province of experts. newrepublic.com/... In the new spin-off, previous winners will face off against each other in the Kitchen Stadium. Alton Brown is returning as the show’s host, as will Mark Dacascos. Iron Chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Jose Garces, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Stephanie Izard have all signed on to compete x x YouTube Video For this special edition season, World All-Stars, fans will be able to experience the excitement and droolworthy meals of "Top Chef" internationally with world-leading brands including Anolon Cookware, BMW of North America, Delta Air Lines, Finish Dishwasher Detergent and Additives, Mastercard, Morton Salt, RITZ Crackers, Saratoga(R) Spring Water, Universal Pictures' "Fast X" and Vrbo. From grand prizes to intriguing branded Quickfire and Elimination challenges and interactive social moments, this season's brand partners will elevate the viewing experience for foodies everywhere. premieredate.news/... The viral photo is a mashup of a blonde woman yelling at a confused looking white cat sitting in front of a plate of vegetables. After seeing the meme everywhere, OprahMag.com checked in with titular "woman," Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum Taylor Armstrong, who shared her reaction to the viral meme. www.oprahdaily.com/... A foodie is a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food, and who eats food not only out of hunger but also as a hobby. The related terms "gastronome" and "gourmet" define roughly the same thing, i.e. a person who enjoys food for pleasure. Foodies were initially defined as the children of the Reagan era who considered " food to be an art, on a level with painting or drama. The human half of the meme finds its origins from a 2011 episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where then-cast member Taylor Armstrong found herself in an emotional confrontation with Camille Grammer, as fellow housewife Kyle Richards attempts to calm her down. As for the other half of the meme starring the angry white cat, its origins began on Tumblr, when user deadbefordeath posted a photograph of a white cat with a bewildered expression sitting in a chair in front of a plate of vegetables. The caption back then was: "he no like vegetals” And before you ask—yes, "the cat" has a name: Smudge. And you can follow him on Instagram. But the conventional form of the meme—which features the image of Armstrong and Smudge expressing differing opinions, also known as "object labeling" in the meme lexicon—first took off on Reddit, the breeding ground for meme culture. www.oprahdaily.com/... x "Country Faces an Overpopulation by 1975, with Farms Unable to Feed All, Experts Say" —@nytimes in 1952, fearing that US population would reach 190 million. Today we have 330 million people, and our major food-related problem is eating too much of it.#Catastrophizing pic.twitter.com/GQwRmrlT0D — Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) February 23, 2023 x You know what's crazy. You can go out for dinner every night in England and hardly put on any weight. You go for dinner every night in the US and you become OBESE. The way the food is processed in the States compared to Europe is mind blowing. — Layah Heilpern (@LayahHeilpern) February 14, 2023 x and also lets not act like a conspiracy theorist using europe as a model when ALL other continents have a similar relationship with fast food to america isnt priming for eurocentrism or white supremacy. i dont mean to slip on the slope but i see it coming — start (@thekeyel) February 15, 2023 The bullshit, to use Bertony Faustin’s term, is everywhere. The reason is clear: The basic principle of the food industry is the exchange of cash for edible objects, so its social architecture has been built by the people who have traditionally been the wealthiest. If cooking is a working class profession, dining is the province of the bourgeoisie and fine dining, where cooking as an art reaches its pinnacle, is the dominion of the rich. This structure has implications for food culture as a whole, trickling down to influence what the foodie cooks at home, what she buys at the supermarket, what she posts on her social media account. Perhaps the best example of this trickle-down effect is the Times’s Food section (previously the Dining section), where traditional reviews of fine dining establishments meet a vast database of recipes for the home cook—recipes that are often written by celebrity chefs like Gabrielle Hamilton (Prune and, for a brief controversial period, the Spotted Pig) and David Tanis (formerly of Chez Panisse). Exacerbating matters, the culinary arts are indelibly rooted in French kitchen culture, from knife skills to the way that sommeliers are trained. Though the cuisines of Italy and Japan have since taken their place alongside French cuisine as the primary colors of high-end cooking, French customs, from the barking male chef in the kitchen to the veneration of European tradition, are ingrained in American foodie culture. That Eurocentricity plays out in food criticism, too. The Times splits its dining coverage between it signature high-brow restaurant column and a roving reporter who visits smaller, mostly “ethnic” places for the “Hungry City” section. The Times also regularly runs food articles that gently introduce “ethnic” foods to their readers, for example classifying miso and soy sauce as “expert” level pantry items. When you take into account the way the fine dining industry overlaps with home cooking and food media, the overall effect is of a culture that skews male, white, and wealthy. Foodie-ism, in this country, is largely created by white people for white people. As Korsha Wilson noted in a widely shared Eater piece on dining while black, fancy restaurants are often hospitable only to the white and affluent: “As many black diners know, being in a dining space can often mean choosing between being ignored, interrogated, or assaulted.” newrepublic.com/... Part of gluttony as a deadly sin is that I will have grown old with DK. 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