If Americans came with user-care manuals, the section on feeding would be reduced to a sidebar… 1) Open mouth; 2) Shovel in crap. Heck, my friends spend more time, money and consideration feeding their dog than it seems most parents do packing their kids’ lunches. Even a bulldog would turn tail from Kraft Yackables.
Of course, the reason our palates are now as desensitized as once were SuperMasochist Bob Flanagan’s genitals may well be because we’ve stopped thinking of food as a bounty and rather as a commodity. Thus, ordering chemically-laden, market-designed approximations of sustenance — such as the McRib Sandwich replete with molded “bones”! — is as natural as refueling the Escalade so one can drive the ten blocks to work daily. Even if these practices are as SICK as driving nails through one’s penis for sexual pleasure, corporate interests have successfully reframed Nutrition as a matter of personal choice and objective taste. (Dammit, it’s my right to eat like an uneducated pig!) Sorry, folks, Nutrition is a science. It may be inexact, but I can guarantee you studies prove Mexi-fries are as much an affront to your digestive tract as to Mexicans. (I’m pretty sure Pancho Villa wasn’t filling up on deformed tater-tots no matter how revolutionary either may have been.)
This summer, the encyclopedic documentary, FOOD, INC. catalogued some of the most common and grievous absurdities of America’s industrialized food fixation. Recently, I joined KUOW’s chip-craving interlocutor Jeannie Yandel, for a conversation about what other films about food are fit for our consumption. Click here to hear our talk and to download a bonus list of other devourable features.
(*I must add that KING CORN should appear on this list as well, but does not… because I forget things? Thanks to David Ward for reminding me about this provocative doc which should be ranked as high as… an elephant’s eye.*)
And, click here for The Warren Report’s podcast with Elise Pearlstein, producer of FOOD, INC. Or, here, for my talk with Michael Pollan.
Bon appetit!
Warren
Comments
October 4, 2009
So you begin your tirade with a rail against Americans specifically, and then add a picture of a product available only to the British? I call hack.
October 4, 2009
Saying all Americans eat crap is like saying there's gourmet food in England. Where do you get off telling me we eat garbage? I can assure you that I can cook you under a table any day. Face it, the Brits aren't exactly known for gourmet food!! Get the 'F' over yourself!!
October 4, 2009
Dear Mr. Difficult and Dennis,
I am sorry you did not read my post in the spirit intended. I can be flip, yet earnest simultaneously. Naturally, I do not believe that ALL Americans eat crap. In no literal way could that be true. It is a generalization and, I believe, that obesity stats and fast food sales would confirm the rather obvious suspicion that the majority of folks are neither preparing their own meals nor assessing the nutritional value of what they're ingesting. Would you really argue otherwise?
As for the photo, initially, I had selected a shot of a McRib Sandwich. Perhaps I should have stuck with that. I just thought the Double Meat Beast was amusing. And, while it may not be served in the States, the Whopper is... as are any number of gluttonous abominations. Pick your own favorite.
As for cooking, Dennis, I'll take your word for your superiority in the kitchen, but was there anything in my message that indicates a challenge? I am not Bobby Flay and this is not a smackdown. I do not reference my own culinary skills AND if you listen to the radio broadcast it is clear that I chastise myself for my own failure/s to question what I eat.
My post was not intended as any sort of personal attack. How could it be? However, I am saddened that your responses are. Stick to the merits or flaws of the content of the piece and I will happily continue the conversation and beg forgiveness if and when proven to be at fault.
Take luck,
Warren
October 5, 2009
Hack.
October 5, 2009
Dude... this signs in europe. You fat europeians