The author, Lisa Miller, is trying to make a point on how food has become the new marker to social class. But she kind of loses me when she starts the article out this way.
For breakfast, I usually have a cappuccino—espresso made in an Alessi pot and mixed with organic milk, which has been gently heated and hand-fluffed by my husband. I eat two slices of imported cheese—Dutch Parrano, the label says, “the hippest cheese in New York” (no joke)—on homemade bread with butter. I am what you might call a food snob. My nutritionist neighbor drinks a protein shake while her 5-year-old son eats quinoa porridge sweetened with applesauce and laced with kale flakes. She is what you might call a health nut. On a recent morning, my neighbor’s friend Alexandra Ferguson sipped politically correct Nicaraguan coffee in her comfy kitchen while her two young boys chose from among an assortment of organic cereals. As we sat, the six chickens Ferguson and her husband, Dave, keep for eggs in a backyard coop peered indoors from the stoop. The Fergusons are known as locavores.
Do I really care about what kind of pot you made your coffee in? I don't even have a coffee pot in my house! (Not necessarily because we can't afford one, but because it would take up counter space and we tend to be tea drinkers, mostly) Telling me what kind of a pot you make your coffee in goes beyond food snobbery. It's just plain snob.
From later in the article:
And so the conversation turns to the difficulty of sharing their interpretation of the Pollan doctrine (ed. note: The Omnivore's Dilemmaby Michael Pollan) with the uninitiated. When they visit Dave’s family in Tennessee, tensions erupt over food choices. One time, Alexandra remembers, she irked her mother-in-law by purchasing a bag of organic apples, even though her mother-in-law had already bought the nonorganic kind at the grocery store. The old apples were perfectly good, her mother-in-law said. Why waste money—and apples?
The Fergusons recall Dave’s mother saying something along these lines: “When we come to your place, we don’t complain about your food. Why do you complain about ours? It’s not like our food is poison.”
This just strikes me as rude. You're telling your host that what they cook isn't "good enough." You don't make any converts to your cause this way. We tolerate it because we are in your home. If you want to be stupid enough to pay $5 for a carton of eggs just because they say "free range," be my guest. But when you are facing an economy where people are trying to save money in any way possible, expensive apples don't come across as being "healthy" or "smart."
Miller tends to think this gulf between lower vs. upper class is now divided by food. To me, the food issue is more of an issue of politics. If I get anything that's labeled "organic," it's usually because by some miracle it might be cheaper than the regular stuff. You won't see much "organic" or "free trade" items in my pantry for the simple fact that 1) it's more expensive on average, and 2) it's not necessarily healthier just because the word "organic" is on the label. If you have an entire cupboard of organic food, I'm going to assume you're a lefty.
If Miller really wanted to make a difference in the chasm, she would donate some of that overpriced food to a food pantry.
