Food Politics

I think it's pretty apparent that agribusiness is a massive problem, that processes like pasteurization and homogeneization (which had localized benefits, sure) are proving detrimental in the long run, that starving nations exporting food is a problem, and so on. Global food politics, on the very largest and the very smallest scales, are fucked up.

But let's not talk about all that. Let's in fact assume, overall, that no deep changes need be made to our assumptions or our thinking. There's no reason we can't have baskets of fresh tomatoes every day of the year, we still need "realistic" and "economically feasible" competitive prices for our staples, let's not have relationships with or proximity to the animals we eat, let's continue to think of calories as nuisances, that refined sugar and processed foods are just fine, etc.

So instead let's talk about bobo organic consumers, the types who go to the $30/entree Slow Food-endorsed restaurants in their bohemian chic neighborhoods, the ones who won't let Junior eat sugar or red meat, the ones who love "ethnic cuisine" and are likely vegan, vegetarian, macrobiotic, or in any case finicky. (They won't sit down and eat a Big Mac, fercryinoutloud.) They like yoga or pilates and vote Democrat or Green though they also probably have a lot of money if they can afford all that organic, locally-grown produce. So from here on out let's filter all discussion of food politics (and opposition to the many harms and shortcomings of food industries) through the opinions and experiences of this small privileged subset of food consumers. Let's telescope onto the entirety of food politics the concerns, the opinions—and also the foibles, the shortsightedness!—of this class of people.

Let's basically discuss generic opposition to the giant problems in the food we eat, how we grow it and process it and ship it, how we relate to it, in terms of these trendy foodie bobos.