I meant to post on this about two weeks ago, but I got really sick, and am only now getting my appetite back. The Columbia Journalism Review featured an essay a few weeks ago on the new food writing:
I had a lot more notes on this, but that pretty much sums it up. If I have anything to say about it, this kind of writing will take over, but it'll be interesting to see what the backlash is. I plan on looking up that Nation edition. The author of the essay mentions an article in The Economist critical of the local food movement, arguing that the switch to organic "would require several times as much land as currently cultivated. There wouldn't be must room left for the rain forest." There are so many things wrong with that statement, I can't even start. If asked, I will rant.
The essay makes a great overall point that the local food movement can't just be treated like "a trend that can just be tacked on to the American way of life, Kobe beef or a low-carb diet or, for that matter, food grown without pesticide. In fact, it's a radical reimaging of that way of life."
The Guardian UK's food section logo. I like it.
In the past few years a raft of reporters and writers have stepped forward with him to answer those twinned queries in all their anthropologically thick complexity. Their work draws together issues of taste, ethics, and politics, bridging the gap between James Beard and Rachel Carson. Much of their writing has an activist tone: last September, The Nation brought together several environmentally conscious writers under the umbrella of a “Food Issue.” But mainstream newspapers, too, now know that their readers expect them to report on the political and ethical implications of food–and to track trends generated, in part, by the new food writers.
I had a lot more notes on this, but that pretty much sums it up. If I have anything to say about it, this kind of writing will take over, but it'll be interesting to see what the backlash is. I plan on looking up that Nation edition. The author of the essay mentions an article in The Economist critical of the local food movement, arguing that the switch to organic "would require several times as much land as currently cultivated. There wouldn't be must room left for the rain forest." There are so many things wrong with that statement, I can't even start. If asked, I will rant.
The essay makes a great overall point that the local food movement can't just be treated like "a trend that can just be tacked on to the American way of life, Kobe beef or a low-carb diet or, for that matter, food grown without pesticide. In fact, it's a radical reimaging of that way of life."
The Guardian UK's food section logo. I like it.
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