Almost as chestnutty is the “McDonald’s has a classically trained chef” script handed out for “journalists” to dutifully regurgitate. Inevitably, that one winds up quoting some VP for chemistry more than The New Escoffier because, really, what the chain serves is anything but creative cooking, burgers du jour. And I would believe the catapulted propaganda more if just one Pierre Franey or Jacques Pepin ever emerged from those corporate headquarters.
And no wonder the antithesis of the Lump in the Bed has set off a shitstorm by suggesting Americans could maybe eat a little better and move a little more. On each leg of our JetBlue trip, my consort and I sat in an exit row penned in by a guy who probably weighed as much as the two of us put together. (The second offender, interestingly enough, was reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”) Wherever we went in between I had to pull my jaw closed at the sights — a mother so huge she had to ride a cart at Target, a young couple so gigantic their super-sized frozen custards at Kone King disappeared in their ham hands, a slightly older couple in shorts at Wegmans who could have commanded admission in a freak show only 50 years ago. (Judging by the astonishing avoirdupois on display, the chain’s slogan should be: “Where giant people push huge carts.”)
Our last meal was typically Buffalo-excessive, with three ginormous softshell crabs in a super-rich sauce, and my in-law equivalent said the problem was portion sizes. But I had to note that very few of the morbidly obese we had gawked at looked able to afford $27.95 entrées. They gorge on the 99-cent crap with Big Gulps. The saddest sight was of the “little” boy wearing only basketball shorts going in for a fix for his mom at a gas station — he had a gut worthy of a case-of-Bud-a-day drinker and looked to be about 8 but walked like a 70-year-old, his feet and joints strained trying to support his bulk. I was marveling that “that kid is doomed — no way can he ever get that weight off once he grows up” when Big Mama Overfeeder backed her honking-huge truck straight at us. She must have heard me.
I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but one of the best classes I took in high school in Arizona was required: General Business. We learned stuff as simple as how to make change and as daunting as how to “buy” stocks, which involved translating the tables and tracking our paper profits and losses. But one exercise must have helped make me a total cynic: We had to analyze a few advertisements (then only in print) to decipher what the company was and was not telling people. Among the ones I went after was Pop-Tarts, then the cool new breakfast but a total disappointment to my family — my mom baked, and we could tell whatever was sealed in those foil packages was anything but food. I don’t remember the specifics, but I got an A for picking the BS to pieces.
So why am I surprised that “real” media should have gone batshit over the opening of a store promoting the processed crap in Times Square? These are the same people who think any edible grotesquerie is worthy of front-page real estate, that an inventor who calculates chemicals+chemicals=profits is worthy of a cheesy, puffy obit. Thank you, internets, for doing the ultimate mashup: Blog-Google Pop-Tarts and you’ll get something on all trending topics: Homosexual Pop-Tarts Tampon.
Tweeted the other day how odd it is that Americans get so freaked out about recalls of spinach and other produce but are cow-like in their attitude toward shit in the meat (in 37,000 pounds last week alone, as a matter of fact). A couple of followers suggested it’s because we “know” meat is bad for us. But I don’t think that’s it entirely. There’s also the fact that media scaremongers consider filthy meat a dog-bites-man story, one also best avoided because the beef industry, as “Food Inc.” made so clear, defends itself beyond aggressively. So news outlets will continue to blare any outbreak of salmonella/listeria/E. coli in the produce aisle as “attack of the killer tomatoes” and let the ammonia-soaked ground feces walk away clean.
I read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” I know where cornhole comes from. So why was I so surprised on opening up the coupons this week to find one for Heinz vinegar with an ad showing an ear of bright yellow corn? What doesn’t start with corn in this country? How monopolized is the food chain by one heavily subsidized food? Once upon a time a country that grew so dependent on a single vegetable would suffer mightily for it. Now we need new bumper stickers: What would Squanto think?
I don’t know what is more stupid, the LATimes having “Hungry Girl” weigh in on the healthfulness of ballpark food or some company dreaming up “Skinnygirl” margaritas in a bottle. One only knows how to combine as much processed crap as possible to produce the lowest number of calories and of course would be afraid of a fish taco — it doesn’t come from the freezer case and is not made with Splenda. The other must know the awful secret of how some girls do stay skinny: drinking the crack cocaine of alcohol and talking to Ralph on the big white telephone.
Big news in the cheese world is that a huge batch of mozzarella was seized by the cops in Italy after someone noticed it turned blue once the plastic was ripped off. No story I read answered the obvious question: Why is Italy importing mozzarella from Germany? What, China is closed?
In the grand oily scheme of things, it should be hard to get worked up about the small stuff these days. But every morning I flip through the WSJournal’s new New York section and despair over the Lunchbox, which must be copy-edited in Chennai (“New York’s Chelsea”?) Most egregious, I saw paninis, and in a headline, no less. Meanwhile, the NYTimes implies that Uniqlo’s new line must be very tasteful — it has a “softer palate.” Also, too, apparently that traditional Muslin concoction hummus is being given the all-American treatment and will soon be available in chocolate-raspberry-ranch flavor. And remember the Angostura bitters crisis? It was the Helen Thomas/ACORN of food hysteria. Everyone ran with news of the scary shortage without walking down to the corner store and checking to see if it might be available. Mani, near me, had it every day I saw dire warnings online. Mostly, though, inquiring minds would like to know why two such offbeat restaurants as a Brooklyn-born Mexican and a bizarro Asian wound up multiply reviewed on the same day. Funny to think there was once a time when what is now the Etiquette Expert could tear flacks new assholes for not giving her exclusives first. . . .
The most disturbing story I read all week was about the Subway franchise going up with every floor of the new building at the World Trade Center. We’re looking at an extinction-level disaster in the Gulf thanks to human hubris, and someone decided a deli in an elevator was a good idea? Yes, I’m an absurd eco-snob and would have less of a problem if the sandwiches being dispensed from this insanity were made with real ingredients; if something awful happened and a hero happened to be the last meal of a construction worker it might seem less grim on environmental and spiritual levels. But what the hell ever happened to packing a lunch? My dad worked construction on Arizona highways and always took soup in a Thermos. No composting was needed. Tesellating cheese 50 stories off terra firma can’t be what nature intended. Besides, without rats, can it really be fast food?
I was encouraged to see the letters to the editor on salt were smarter than the megaturd that inspired it. Readers get it: The problem is not salt on the table. It’s salt in processed crap. And how do you avoid it? Eat less processed crap. But the media has a really hard time just saying that, without getting the fair and balanced story on Cheez-Its. (Christ on a cracker, does anyone need those? Eat a chunk of really good Cheddar.) And it’s easy to see why. Whether online or in print, newspapers and magazines need Big Food’s ads, these days more than ever. So this is the best of times: They can have their requisite salt freakout and clean up, too, because what’s coming is an onslaught of full-page ads for “new, lower-sodium” junk, just as we saw in the MSG war between rival soup companies. There’s no money in real food and no end to the profits on cheap food.
I’m sure I’ve nattered before about how I’m addicted to the coupon inserts in the Sunday papers (what my in-law equivalent recently informed me are called slingers). I study them at the kitchen counter and just marvel at the disconnect. This is how “real” Americans eat. I never see the stuff at the Food Shitty, but I’ll take advertisers’ word for it. The latest freaky campaign was for $2 off on a T.G.I.Friday’s “complete skillet meal.” It’s hard to even get a grip on how wrong this feels. Of all the reasons to go to a Friday’s, the food had to rank near the bottom. When I think of that sad scene, I certainly don’t associate it with stovetop casseroles. And I understand a huge chunk of the country is too strapped to spring for a $12.99 feast but looking for that chain flair. Still, what could be grimmer than heating up overpriced frozen fajitas? In a bag, at that? I know: Realizing it’s probably what they do in the restaurants.
New rule for processed crap: If it’s nutritionally worthless, it’s got a huge “multi-grain” label on it. The latest is whatever that stuff is that’s packaged in tennis ball tins. If I were a devotee, I’d be annoyed that my junk favorite was being made healthful. No one eats chemicals bound with rice flour for a good reason.
(In other nutrition nuttiness, I liked the study that came out showing industrial sausage is worse for you than plain steak. You think? In other news, water’s wet.)
Given how much ad space soda companies are buying up for all their crap lately, I’m only surprised they have not wangled a neon sign over the Supreme Court’s main door — the one now closed to “we the people” because this land of the fearful seems to want to spend its life in Depends. It would be perfect, given that I am determined to tune out all “Is She or Isn’t She?” coverage until the Coke cans come up.
Encountered my first chip snob the other night: a friend who refused to go near the Tostitos I had grabbed in my rush to get all guacamole ingredients at one corner store when I was late to the Pinetum party. But she’s right. It’s no coincidence that the bag is increasingly cluttered with “whole grains” boasts to distract us from what we’re really eating, starting with genetically modified corn. When your only consolation on the label is “no preservatives,” you know something might not be fit to eat.
Speaking of “food comes from the supermarket,” one of the most impressive feats in food marketing has been the blithe acceptance of beef hot dogs. Untold hordes have been duped into thinking they’re eating something better than pigs’ ears, snouts, anuses, etc. Cows don’t have those nasty bits, do they? But now I’m seeing big ads for “Angus franks” and really have to laugh. I don’t have to try one to know it will certainly not taste like steak. Parts is parts.