When Ideas Taste Better Than Food

Trapped in a culture that tells us bad food is good

Sometimes, the food I eat slips out of focus, even as it's in my mouth. What I thought it would taste like and what it actually tastes like blur. If it's heavily advertised and produced in massive quantities, it probably doesn't taste as good as I hoped.

Last month, my 9-year-old son became fascinated with a junk mail ad for the Wendy's Baconator on a pretzel bun. He taped the shiny paper to the side of my refrigerator and often mentioned how good it sounded. The idea for sale was the Perfect Burger, luscious, vibrant, and tantalizing. Lettuce greener than green, tomato redder than red. I restrained myself from going on a tirade about advertising, airbrushing, and capitalism. When he got the burger, it didn’t live up to the hype. He only ate half, voicing disappointment. The idea tasted better than reality.

I'm reading Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power, and the Past by Sidney W. Mintz (1996), who writes, "Nourishment, a basic biological need, becomes something else because we humans transform it symbolically into a system of meaning for much more than itself." If an ad for a product or restaurant tells me the food they're selling will solve all my problems, the idea might be enough to feel satisfied at first.

On Tuesday, my kids and I met a friend at Hayden Flour Mills to pick up Barrio Bread's exquisite olive sourdough and seeded baguette and lunch from Sonoran Pasta Co. This week, there was also Anita’s AREA Farms Arizona tent with local vegetables, eggs, dates, beans, mushrooms, and seeds. Talking with Brent Kille of Sonoran Pasta Co. as I placed my order, he said that the special was a tomato sandwich using "Focaccia from there [pointing to Barrio Bread's table] and tomatoes from there [pointing to the vegetable stand]." I hadn't even tasted it yet, and I was already turning this sandwich into a symbol of the beauty of a local food system in action. Mintz writes, "In one sense, the symbolic investment of meaning in food has little to do with the food itself." But in this case, the sandwich really was that damn good.

The sandwich in question

In The Taste of America by John L Hess and Karen Hess (1977), they get off to a no-holds-barred start: "The truth is that good food in America is little more than a memory, and a hope. … Since everybody is born with a palate, this ought to be self-evident. But Americans have been mouth-washed by generations of bad food and brain-washed by generations of bad advice about food, culminating in the gourmet plague. So if we are to recapture the joy of good eating, we must free our palates from their daily glop, and our minds from entrenched myths." The daily glop! How much food sold in the US could fall into that category? And how much money is being made off said glop?

I want to note I've only read the introduction of this book, and will report back when I finish it. But the point they make about the "entrenched myths" around food in the US was too good to pass on sharing today. What is an entrenched myth? What about the idea that everyone is entitled to eat hamburgers whenever they want? And every time it must be the pinnacle of hamburger experience?

I return again to Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro (1986). Shapiro writes about how a group of women who were active in the food reform scene in Boston "invited a Wellesley graduate to conduct a series of experiments in the comparative cost of home-cooked and ready-made foods, hoping to prove by the superiority of the latter that it was already time for ‘conservative homemakers’ to accept the inevitable course of industry." The studies proved the opposite of their goal. People preferred the taste of the homemade food and it cost less to make. And yet, the women who set out to have the studies done, and a whole host of others, were undeterred by the results. "...These progressives stood firm in their belief that manufactured and pre-cooked foods were the way of the future."

Instead of acknowledging that homemade bread was, in fact, better, they said the people's preference for it came from not having a "common and accepted 'standard' of what really good bread is." They believed a standard would be agreed upon and then industrial baking would rise to meet it. What we've actually seen happen is a general lowering of the standards to accept factory-made bread, hinging on the point that we've become increasingly convinced that we don't have the time to make bread. Shapiro writes, "The truly prophetic aspect of this experiment was the ease with which the Boston group glided over questions of taste, freshness, and quality." 

Food's symbolism having little to do with the food itself can be a beautiful thing: People can gather over meager (in every sense of the word) provisions and still feel warmth, connection, and satisfaction. But the powerful systems that control food in the US and globally have noticed this and how it can be used to make money off food that is low quality and nutritionally poor. Just because humans can infuse a fast food burger with meaning doesn't mean there aren't consequences. A human survival tactic is co-opted to make some people rich, to lower the general standard for what 'good food' means, and to put the blame back on individuals: "You liked that Baconator—if it's so bad for you, then eat something else." But that response is misleading and obscures the truth that health has much more to do with access (or lack thereof) to resources.

I never shame people who eat ultra-processed food or fast food—clearly, my family eats it—but that sometimes leads to a certain silence or stymies conversations that do need to happen. To be clear, conversations about what good food is and the barriers to eating it should happen, and governments, businesses, and entities profiting from people eating bad food (and paying for care for correlating health issues) should be shamed. 

Everything in the media tells us that hamburgers are our birthright as US citizens and that we have no time or energy to make them. Who's there to provide us with burgers? Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, and so many more, as they make billions. These companies are truly having it their way because their pockets are lined with all the money people spend on their mediocre burgers. And why do we, collectively, love these mediocre burgers so much? Why have these companies grown so big on the back of mediocrity? Because food is entangled with ideas. If I'm convinced a burger from Burger King will be delicious and is just the reward I deserve, it will taste pretty delicious to me—especially if I'm tired, stressed, or distracted. I probably am all of those things and more because I live in the US, where the whole system works really hard to keep everyone feeling shitty. More feeling bad, more purchasing food that promises to fix problems, more cycles of disillusionment. We, the people, suffer as these companies keep eating us up—and they find us delicious.

Want to starve them? Eat local vegetables and beans. Make soup and share it with your neighbors. Remember what good food really tastes like, and remain convinced that it does matter and everyone deserves to eat it.

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The Good Enough Weekly comes out every Friday, alternating an essay (like today) with Of the Week. This time last year I wrote: “What is the sum of sustainability?” I also take on freelance editing and writing projects. Reach out if you’re looking for help in those departments — I’ve worked on everything from zines to textbooks. More info here.