It's just food people

This article formed part of a debate with Masterchef's Matt Preston published in the Herald Sun in April 2010
It was also published in the Canberra Times in February 2010

I swear, if one more person drops the words 'prepping' or 'plating up' around me, I am going to stuff their chef's hat right up their backenoff.

When I was a kid, my standard school lunch was a sandwich of luncheon meat and tomato sauce. So it was quite a shock the other day to read an article on back-to-school lunches. Offer your child one of two simple and appetising choices, they suggested – the garden turkey sandwich with lemon mayonnaise or the quesadilla with smashed avocado. I must have had it wrong; I thought we were trying to keep our six year olds fed and watered for the day, not trying to create a generation of precocious snobs.

'Oh, I am such a foodie', people will tell you in tones of smug self-righteousness. Calling yourself a foodie would seem to imply that you have a more advanced and complex love of food than me. Apparently it qualifies you to criticise any morsel put in front of you and it slyly lets your friends know that you can – and will happily – fork out $3.00 per gram of truffle.

Channel Seven's answer to Masterchef, My Kitchen Rules, and ABC's Poh's Kitchen both debuted this week. Over the past months, the best-seller lists have been full of exponentially larger and more expensive food porn. It would seem, disappointingly for those of us who haven't been love-struck by Matt Preston, that 'gourmet culture' is still very much on the ascendency.

No longer mere necessity, food has become a lifestyle and a status symbol. Cookbooks are our art, tv shows our theatre, chefs our heroes and no sophisticated person's week is complete without a trip to the farmer's market on Saturday morning.

During economically uncertain times, it is amazing that the gourmet food industry has succeeded in convincing people to waste their time and money trying to recreate something that they will probably never master. Think you're ever really going to make a croquembouche? What a crock of shit! The anti-climax of failing to reproduce a recipe as per the picture, the mumbled apologies to dinner party guests because it didn't quite turn out as expected, is something that almost all of us will relate to.

It is said that for every cookbook we purchase, we will try an average of two recipes. Why then do we keep buying into this gigantic scam? Sure glossy cookbooks look good on a coffee table but what's the point if they are nothing more than an aspirational goal, a reminder of what we haven't achieved and how we have failed our families?

To be worthy of anything other than derision, food nowadays must be organic, seasonal, locally produced, slow cooked, difficult to prepare, hard to source and – crucially – expensive. Nutrition, ease of preparation and tastiness hardly rate a mention. A friend's child the other day turned down my offer of a sandwich because we didn't have any Edam cheese. Rather than admonish the child, his parents tousled his hair and gave us a superior smile. It was clear, they had never been more proud.

The worst of foodie culture though surely takes place in restaurants. It used to be that grabbing a bite to eat was what you did before you went out. Now the meal itself has become the event as we participate in a pointless game of one-upmanship: Who has been where? Which restaurant has the longer waiting list? Which place is the more swanky? (Some of us would argue that maybe you should consider dropping the 's' off that last question.)

Restaurant conversations have become cringe-worthy with adjectives like tantalising, ambrosial and divine thrown around with unselfconscious abandon while we try and convince each other that it is actually worth all that money. Ah, we tell ourselves, but we have to eat and drink. Surely it's not that much of an extravagance if it also keeps us alive.

It's not that I think we shouldn't be talking about food or asking questions; it's just that I think we are asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking 'Did that Roquefort cheese really come from France?' we should be questioning how ethically the food was grown, its environmental cost and the health ramifications. And of course, there is that most difficult of questions always looming in the background: how can I justify spending $200 on a single meal when 36 million people die of starvation or starvation-related illnesses every year. Yes, I know – such figures are difficult to comprehend and just wash over us – but it just seems that they wash over us all the more easily when we are gorging on duck confit or a chocolate souffle.

Original text at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/hey-its-just-food-people-no-need-to-make-a-meal-of-it/story-e6frfhqf-1225852461758