The Ethical Turn in Food Writing

[TAPrice]

In "New Grub Street" the Columbia Journalism Review looks at the rise of ethics in contemporary food writing:

“What am I eating?” Pollan asks in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “And where in the world did it come from?” Those two questions, and Pollan’s ability to unpack them with an enviable, discursive essay style, have made him into a food writer who can scare ceos and, maybe, move markets. 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.

....

For Pollan, the story of agriculture in the twentieth century is one of a fall from grace. The invention of chemical fertilizer “marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food,” while new hybrid corn species are part Frankenfood, part capitalist boondoggle (because farmers suddenly had to buy new seeds each year). And now the use of fossil-fuel-based fertilizer and pesticides, plus mechanization, means that it takes fifty gallons of oil to grow an acre of corn. That may well be decadent. But Belasco shows that the food debate we’re presently having–What should we eat?–owes something to the increases in productivity that answered another question: Will we have enough to eat?

[Carrot Top]

Mmm. New? Well, maybe. Depends on the time frame being considered and the definitions included in the term "food-writing" perhaps. Is it the category of food "journalism" that is catching the ethical bug and taking their ethical turn on the dance floor at this moment in time?

This, from Molly O'Neill in her introduction to the newly released "American Food Writing" (an anthology covering 250 years of American writings on food):

Culinary reform of one sort or another has a long and continuous history in America, and from early on, Americans have seen food as a window into the wider culture - a sign of our values and our ideals, a measure of our civilization. What is distinctive about American food writing is how constant and close to the surface is its sense of moral struggle. The tussle changes form. If the Puritans if the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for instance, reviled the sin of gluttony (even while managing to eat very well), today's green gourmets denounce eating chemically induced, industrially processed food.

Whether implicit or explicit, the tension between the civilized and the wild is a constant in American food writing. It expresses itself in various binary oppositions: between refined and rough, elite and democratic, professional and amateur, expensive and afforable, foreign and home-grown.

But you did use the term "contemporary" which would seem to infer that the time frame would be the post-MFK Fisher era. After discussing MKFK a bit, Molly has this to say:

Many of her successors see food as an end to itself - and end up producing something like food porn

..................................................

A question: Did Upton Sinclair start "The Jungle" as a journalistic piece for a newspaper? For some reason, I have it in my mind that he did, though I could be wrong. And, would you consider "The Jungle" to be in this category of "food writing" that is being discussed? Or would it be in the genre of food writing at all? I'm curious as to what people think about this question.

[Chris Amirault]

I believe that Sinclair considered that "industrial society writing" and not food writing, but I could be wrong about that. However, it's certainly true that American writing about food -- as Karen and Molly O'Neill point out -- has always involved a kind of moral tussle. Some would argue that even those who have chosen not to make the "ethical turn" have done so as an explicitly defiant gesture against Puritan morals concerning food, bodies, and pleasure.

[Peter B Wolf]

and to quote from the article:

"............Americans are never going to subcontract decisions about what to put in their bodies, or their kids’ bodies, to experts in white coats. .............."

well, maybe not to men in 'white coats', but certainly to 'grey suits', as in CEO of chains like McD's. and others.

[Chris Amirault]

and to quote from the article:

"............Americans are never going to subcontract decisions about what to put in their bodies, or their kids’ bodies, to experts in white coats. .............."

well, maybe not to men in 'white coats', but certainly to 'grey suits', as in CEO of chains like McD's. and others.

←

I guess Atkins wore tweed.

[John Whiting]

There are contemporary writers about food, science and history, such as Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Colin Tudge and Ronald Wright, who realize that what we eat and how we produce it are no longer merely matters of ethics, but relate imminently to human survival. Biofuels now tie food and energy production inseparably together. The collective threats are grimly summarized by Gwynne Dyer in the New Zealand Herald.

In the early stages of this process, higher food prices will help millions of farmers who have been scraping along on very poor returns for their effort because political power lies in the cities.

But later it gets uglier. The price of food relative to average income is heading for levels that have not been seen since the early 19th century, and it will not come down again in our lifetimes.

I've just finished writing a paper about all this, "Eating the Earth", to be presented in September at the Oxford Food Symposium. The collective evidence has proved to be even more frightening than I had anticipated. Edited July 28, 2007 by John Whiting (log)