The Organic/Populist Food Dialectic

Recently I was invited to this potluck called Grub. Grub is a proponent of the S.O.L.E. food movement: Sustainable, Organic, Local and Environmental. The original Grub party is held in Berkley and now there is a Berlin chapter as well. To give you an idea of the rhetoric of the invitation, here are a few snippets:

"Grub is a gathering of diverse people coming together for a delicious meal, good company,
and good conversation; sort of a modern potluck in which everyone will
cook something to share. Grub is also a way to practice the ways in
which buying and cooking with food that is grown locally, organically,
and sustainably both tastes good and can improve our community and the
world. This isn't always possible, but it's a nice goal!"

One of the problems I have with this mission statement is that it has a "United Colors Benetton" mix of naivete and pretension. How diverse do these people really think the crowd will be? The buzz words "sustainable" and "organic" already guarantee that the crowd will be mostly a) white (the crowd is mostly white in Berlin as it is, but I daresay you'd have a hell of a time convincing the culinarily pragmatic Turkish population to take part in this potluck for community improvement) b) more or less affluent--because organic, local, sustainable food is not cheap and eating it exclusively is certainly not for the cost conscious. c) Liberal, educated and boring. I mean, putting together this group of food conscious, environmentally conscious, carbon footprint reducing crowd is going to be so dull. What are we going to talk about? Our favorite yoga positions? The amazing experience we had hiking in Patagonia? Ughhh. I'm cringing just thinking about it.


"Grub is about cooking, but it's also about exploring and where we live
through food. So, if you really don't want to cook, we still want you
to come! As much as we like cheese, we had soooooooooo much cheese
last time that we kindly request you not bring cheese this time.
Berlin is full of interesting food shops with all sorts of local
treats. The local markets listed below are great places for
ingredient/food shopping. Other good places can be found at
http://gridskipper.com/travel/berlin/berlin-goes-bio-317259.php. You
are also welcome to email us for cooking/seasonal ingredient ideas."

This little segment is packed with semiotic bile as well. Explore where you live, but only if it's at these approved fancy food shops. It's like a primer for people that want to be part of the "organic lifestyle" but needed a push from someone more knowledgeable to point them in the right direction. It also implicitly dismisses the bulk of food available in Berlin from major retailers, discount grocers and turkish shops. And the bit about the cheese! Putting a bunch of o's in the word so does not make you seem any less controlling. This whole thing reeks of facism.

"As many of us will be visiting home over the next
month, we want to give you a heads up so you can brainstorm and
possibly bring back ingredients! Your task is to cook something from
home, whatever home means to you: your hometown, your native or
adopted country, your neighborhood, street, or apartment: be creative!
Again, Grub is about cooking with local (to your home/Berlin),
organic, and sustainable ingredients, so try to incorporate this into
your dish."

This was the real nipple twister for me. I'm from Los Angeles and I thought it would be funny to bring diet pills and bottled water to this party because that is, for better or worse, the sort of non-food food I grew up around. It turns out, there is no room for humor in this Grub club. Also, if you happen to be proud of your food heritage and you happened to have grown up in a low-income bulk food buying, wal mart shopping family--well too bad! You'll just have to shun that side of yourself in favor of organic whole wheat pasta and Kombucha tea. Which is a real shame because the Hawaiian snack food which consists of a grilled piece of spam rolled up with hoisin sauce, white rice and wrapped in seaweed is one of the most transporting food experiences I've ever had and if they made organic spam, I think everyone at this party would agree with me.

The girl who is throwing this shindig went to the only other American Gastronomy Master's program. I went to the other one. I remember feeling this compulsion in school to refuse the simplistic "organic is better" model of food culture we were being fed. The day I forget how good a Cheeto is, is the day I give up the dream. I resent the idea that by eating organic, local, sustainable food you are in some way protecting yourself from contamination. American Spirits are still carriers of carcinogens, and Annie's mac and cheese is still mac and cheese from a box. It's not good for you. And if you decide to keep a raw food diet, then you stopped being a participant in the wide messy arena of food and I feel sorry for you.

There's also this competitive strain that bothers me with SOLE food types. It's like this pissing contest where one person's supermarket organic butter is not as good as their friend's small production locally purchased in a cutesy shop variety, which can still be trumped by some assholes that brought a stick of butter they themselves hand churned that very weekend. They even know the cow's name. So nah!

The point is we are entering an age of food pretension so absolute in its construction that we're driving a huge wedge between classes, cultures and our personal culinary pasts. And the ironic part is that most of the people that are the worst perpetrators of this food elitism really believe that they're not snobs, that they are responsible food friends to the whole world. But if you can't eat what most of the world eats, then how much fun are you going to be at their potlucks? Do you have any organic ketchup for this cheeseburger? OH PLEASE!