Food Snobbery

[Stone]

the only cheese i have is wrapped in plastic.  i live in rural georgia.  what are my options?

The Supreme Court long ago recognized that all American citizens have a fundamental right to travel and move from state to state.

[tommy]

not guilty.  but then again, i'm just great.

You've revised your views on New Jersey pancake houses and huevos rancheros, then?

uhhh, no. unlike the other idiots on food boards, i know what's good. i also don't hold it against them. what's the deal?

regards,

smug quasi-foodie bastard.

[researchgal]

smug quasi-foodie bastard.

uhm, do I detect a new signature in-the-making???

[stellabella]

the only cheese i have is wrapped in plastic.  i live in rural georgia.  what are my options?

The Supreme Court long ago recognized that all American citizens have a fundamental right to travel and move from state to state.

thank you for making me

i really needed to

*clink*--that's the sound of my toast to yins

[heyjude]

I think snobbery is thinking whatever you have, eat, think, wear, work at

etc. is better than what someone else has, eats, thinks, wears, or works at. By that definition, we are all either snobs or victims of snobbery. But I like those pumpkin colored, dried out, phony banana flavored, peanut shaped marshmallows that they sell in cellophane bags on a rack at Quiki-mart, so what do I know?

[Lady T]

I'd have said, a moment ago, that I certainly am NOT a food snob. Then I thought about my last trip to the local supermart:

Beeline, straight from the front door, to the organic produce. Heirloom tomatoes. Michigan white peaches, so aromatic they could be smelled out on the street. Greens, couple different kinds. Bunches/packets of six different fresh herbs. Berries, last of the season but still great for cereal and baking. Nice fresh crimini mushrooms; half pound? Pound? Can't decide. Pound's better.

Half a pound of Kona coffee, in the bean, at the deli section.

Over to the bakery shelves: Fresh white boule, baked that day if I believed the label (which I do: tastes like it).

On to the dairy sections: Organic half-and-half, wedge of Roquefort, plain yogurt.

Straight past the canned sections, nose in the air, looking neither left nor right.

Straight past the big frozen food arrays, with a contemptuous sniff.

Ever onward to the meat stand (Eberly's organic chicken -- all goldang-fool $9.47 worth of it! -- for roasting) and the wines (low-budget this trip, no exotica: 2000 Beringer Chardonnay, 2001 Jadot Beaujolais, two bottles each).

Checkout. Big ouch on the Visa card. I'm gone.

Gulp. No plastic, no Frankenfood, nothing pre-prepared, nothing preserved with ingredients I can't spell. Dang. Sorry. By all standard assumptions about the middle-middle-class American diet, I'm a snob, for that trip anyway.

[malarkey]

By that standard I don't consider very many people on this site to be food snobs. Certainly there are a few, but to describe most of us we need a better word.

what would that word be?! I have no idea.

I would charge myself as guilty re: food snobbery. While I don't say anything, or convey these feelings to others, I do think them.

I'm quietly horrified by what people will and will not eat. People who eat the cafeteria pizza daily at work. That stuff is VILE. People who are picky eaters. "Oh, I don't like pepper..." (I saw that person send something back in a restaurant because it had black pepper in it) Meanwhile, I have visions of Big Night dancing in my head and how the chef(s) are reacting to someone sending a dish back because it has black pepper in it.

[Bux]

I'd have said, a moment ago, that I certainly am NOT a food snob.  Then I thought about my last trip to the local supermart:

Supermarket?

Hey, I'm just kidding. I've been to some of the super markets in the suburbs and the heartland. I'm not a snob and then I thought:

Suburbs?

Heartland?

[torakris]

I don't consider myself a snob, but I often check out people's shopping carts while waiting in the checkout lines. Occasionally thinking not very nice thoughts about the state of their internal organs and the reliance they have on frozen meals, pre-packaged and overly processed foods.

[Suzanne F]

I am not a snob; I just have better taste than everyone around me. (Present company excepted )

[rslux]

*blush*

I like some of the Newman's Own salad dressings.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

Snob? Moi?

No, merely pretentious.

[Peter B Wolf]

.........The most relevant definition of snob in Merriam-Webster seems to be: "one who has an offensive air of superiority in matters of knowledge or taste." By that standard I don't consider very many people on this site to be food snobs. Certainly there are a few, but to describe most of us we need a better word.

" PROTZ" ????

[spqr]

Speaking of food snobbery, I just recently found the paperback edition of the Hess' A Taste of America under a pile of books on my "to read next" table. I pulled it out and began rereading. Now HERE is a lesson in food snobbery, albeit one that is learned, erudite and passionate.

To wit:

How shall we tell our fellow Americans that our palates have been ravaged, that our food is awful, and that our most respected authorities on cookery are poseurs?

Granted, that was written in the early 1970s, and while I think much has improved since then, it still rings awfully true today to me.

[stefanyb]

How shall we tell our fellow Americans that our palates have been ravaged, that our food is awful, and that our most respected authorities on cookery are poseurs?

Granted, that was written in the early 1970s, and while I think much has improved since then, it still rings awfully true today to me.

Name your poseurs

[Lord Michael Lewis]

To my mind, snobbery stems from the belief that there are answers to questions of taste.

[stefanyb]

To my mind, snobbery stems from the belief that there are answers to questions of taste.

Thats because, in many instances, there are.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

To my mind, snobbery stems from the belief that there are answers to questions of taste.

Thats because, in many instances, there are.

Then you must, by my definition, be a snob.

[LaNiña]

LML, by your definition, I'm most definitely a snob. And most definitely happy about it.

[Dana]

I prefer to think of myself as having a discriminating palate, although my law-school daughter says I have made she and her brother food snobs. I knew I was going to be laid up for foot surgery this week, so I stocked up on a few "prepared" items - namely Marie Callanders' pot pies and some Hot pocket thingys. I baked them this morning, and they were AWFUL. Are there people out there who feed this stuff to their families on a daily basis? I am aghast. My son, who was eating a pot pie with me, said this frozen stuff always tastes like this, and that the cheeseslime in the pockets thingys is particularly bad. I used to keep this sort of thing on hand for him, but no more. If more people were less lazy and put just a little effort into what they eat, the world would be a better place.

[stefanyb]

As I see it, the alternative to snob as LML sees it, is total relativist or non-discriminator or living with blinders or being growth averse (psychologically speaking)or just plain unconscious.

Saying there is no such thing as taste is, conversely, the same as saying that there are absolute heirarchical distinctions in everything. Neither extreme describes the human experience.

[spqr]

Name your poseurs

No effing way! You think I want to get bounced from this board?

But seriously, folks...I don't take seriously most of the things I read about food by people in the food writers club. I suspect, but I have no proof at this moment, that many are shills for one or more industry special interests, or that they are cheerleaders for this or that trendy new thing.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

As I see it, the alternative to snob as LML sees it, is total relativist or non-discriminator or living with blinders or being growth averse (psychologically speaking)or just plain unconscious.

Taste, like sexuality, is personal thing. Snobbery is thinking that a third party can be privy to the knowledge that one taste is superior to another and accepting that opinion.

[spqr]

You go Lord Mike!

[stefanyb]

QUOTE]

Taste, like sexuality, is personal thing. Snobbery is thinking that a third party can be privy to the knowledge that one taste is superior to another and accepting that opinion.

It all depends upon whom the third party is.

Someone with widespread exposure to and education (not necessarily schooling) in a particular area may very well be more readily relied upon to exhibit superior taste than someone without those characteristics. And, moreover, accepting their opinion is, many times but not always, a valid practice.