It’s time for people who care about food to quit navel-gazing.Photo: Jared WongThe food movement has a case of multiple-personality disorder.
One of its personalities is the foodie, who approaches the movement as a vehicle to increase sensual-aesthetic pleasure. Another of its personalities is the localizer, who views the movement through the lens of the foodshed radius and food miles. Another is small-is-beautiful — small farms, small artisan processors, small distributors. Two more of its personalities are the food-justice advocate and the broadener, who want the movement to expand to a robust, durable, fair, and deeply embedded system that really challenges the stranglehold that the industrial food system has on us.
If you look at the literature, the news media, the blogosphere, Twitterdom, and Facebookland, you’ll find that foodie-ism, local-ism, and small-ism are the dominant personalities, with a smattering of food justice and broad-ism here and there. You’ll find plenty of foodies slobbering over whipped Mangalitsa lard, braised pork snouts, and sliver-thin raw beef’s liver. You’ll find plenty of localists commit... Read more
