“Once upon a time, food was about where you came from. Now, for many of us, it is about where we want to go—about who we want to be, how we choose to live.”
Food obsession getting out of hand is not a new topic for John Lanchester. His novel The Debt to Pleasure (1992) is a parody of 90s food culture in which the murderer is a creative but snobbish foodie. But in this really good article in the New Yorker he talks about his own experiences of food and rejection of foodie self-righteousness.
“Not so long ago, food was food… That’s not true anymore. Food is now politics and ethics as much as it is sustenance. People feel pressure to shop and eat responsibly, healthfully, sustainably. ” (Though of course ‘people’ in this case means a specific class of people who have time and money to pay huge amounts of attention to what they and their children eat.)
You can read the full article here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/shut-eat
