Yesterday’s post on the inconvenience of convenience food has left me with rambling thoughts. I feel like I unleashed a rather humongous topic that has no real resolution. That said, the need for more people to cook for themselves is important to me and I know this topic will frequent my blog. The issue of home-cooked meals brings forth many issues, some of which are the following:
- household priorities – health, work, family, entertainment, friends, enrichment activities (where does the hierarchy begin?)
- women’s liberation – from the kitchen to the workplace
- male liberation – from the workplace to the kitchen?
- modern amenities – at what cost to do we sacrifice traditional knowledge for instant gratification
- individual health – what are the benefits of home-cooked meals?
For those of you who are intrigued by the issues raised here, I highly recommend you read articles posted by Mark Bittman on his site. After the publication of a magazine article on Jamie Oliver the food blog world got in a huffy over this very issue:
Do we need people to learn how to cook for themselves or do we need fast-food restaurants to use healthier (whole food) ingredients?
As you might imagine, my thoughts lean towards the first perspective. Where do you think the healthy food should come from and who is responsible for bringing it to the masses?
Related posts:
- “Fancy Food”
- The “Hidden Cost” of Convenience (Returns!)
- Edible Portland, Spring 2010
- The “hidden cost” of convenience
- Food Fantasies
Tags: "ethnic food", cooking, Food Politics, Mark Bittman, Nutrition
Some thoughts on this interesting debate:
1) It would be interesting to explore the link between the rise of suburbia and the invention of fast food in America.
2) The cost of living in America: Imagine a country in which families do not have to send both adults to work full time- What if the working week was shortened to twenty five or thirty hours a week like it is in France and Italy (two countries were “slow food” is deeply imbedded in the national culture)? Shortening the work week would also go a long way in boosting employment – but this is another argument for another blog.
3) What Jamie Oliver and Mark Bittman cannot do is perform an ethnography of What People in America Eat: why they eat what they eat? What they tell themselves about what they are eating? Food is a huge vehicle of cultural significance and it seems to me that understanding why people make the choices they do can help educators do their jobs. For instance: Why do people run to the fast food chains in the neighborhood that I work in on the first day of every month after they get their welfare checks? What are the class implications for slow food vs. fast food? What if instead of food stamps, people on welfare were enrolled in CSA’s?
love the blog Jared, onward!
@goodmaneats I think people eat out so much because they can’t/won’t plan ahead. Being stuck at home with no food or groceries is stressful!
via Twitoaster