Foodie culture is one of the most complex ways of appreciating good food. What are the different aspects of being a foodie? As many of us know, a foodie is “a person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet”. So what is this particular interest? To the general audience it may seem like a foodie is a person who just likes to eat and cook. But in reality it is much more than that. Foodies are a distinct set of people who are more adept at examining and enjoying food than normal people. They develop certain interests which include the food industry, wineries and wine tasting, breweries and beer sampling, food science, following restaurant openings and closings, food distribution, food fads, health and nutrition, and restaurant management. As you can see, it is an immense field and takes up much of a foodie’s time. But being a foodie has become extremely difficult in the past ten years due to various reasons.
There are many ways by which people can develop an interest in food and learn to appreciate food. For example restaurant reviews, cooking shows and cookbooks. As easy as it sounds there exists a huge obstacle in the way – money - . The high cost of food is a big topic in today’s world. There are plenty of reasons as to why that is the case. Overpopulation is one factor. Since the demand for food is rapidly rising so is the corresponding price for it. The cost for transportation and marketing has gone up due to the increase in demand which was relatively less ten years back.
Bad weather and failure of crop production go hand in hand. Crop failure occurs when soil erosion due to rain washes away the fertile parts of the soil, hence inhibiting proper crop growth. Droughts and famines also contribute to large scale crop failure. This time drought is a consequence of less rain. For example the “Dust Bowl” of the nineteen thirties is known for being the period for severe drought across many states in the United States. One might ask how crop failure is related to high food prices. Actually the relation is quite direct. As the availability of a particular food goes down, the price of that particular food goes up due to its scarcity. We can say that the the availability of food is inversely proportional to the price of that food.
High energy costs are also affecting the food industry and the market. As mentioned earlier the demand for food has gone up considerably and therefore the energy requirements have also gone up. When you put all this together, we get a substantial increase in food prices which sometimes goes unnoticed but accumulates in the long term. It definitely provides the manufacturing and marketing companies with a huge profit. This is a paragraph from the “Rising Costs of Food” article of the Time magazine which depicts exactly what I am talking about–
“All but the wealthiest readers will have noticed by now that food costs have risen this year. In May grocery prices were 4.4% higher than they were the previous May. If 4.4% doesn't sound like much--you spend $104.40 now for a cartful that was $100 a year ago--it's a huge deal to food producers and to budget shoppers, who are making lots of casseroles. The Department of Agriculture anticipates that grocery prices won't significantly fall before January; if the USDA is right, you would have to go back to 1990 to find a bigger single-year increase.” -.
Basically the point being made here is that a 0.4 percent rise in costs doesn’t look like much but overall it is a huge income for food companies and a gradual loss for customers.
Another reason for food prices being higher is that the ingredients required for cooking in the United States come largely from foreign countries. Few examples are wines from Europe, California, and South America, Moroccan harissa and Thai fish sauce, South African guava juice, and pistachios from Turkey and Iran. The best smoked salmon arrives on the banks of the Hudson from distant Scotland, not nearby Nova Scotia. Now due to the Dollar currency weakening and the commodity prices rising, foodies are spending far less than before.
Now let’s turn our attention to a revelation. Background research has shown that lower socioeconomic groups purchase foods that are less consistent with dietary recommendations. The price and availability of foods are thought to be important mediating factors between socioeconomic position and food purchasing. This can be depicted from a passage in an online article from the following link http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18910830 which says -
“Using a face-to-face interview, a random sample of Brisbane residents (n = 812) were asked about their food purchasing choices in 2000. They were also asked about their perceptions of the price and availability of 'recommended' foods (i.e. choices lower in fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt or higher in fiber) in the supermarkets where they usually shopped. Audits measuring the actual availability and price of identical foods were conducted in the same supermarkets. Lower socioeconomic groups were less likely to make food purchasing choices consistent with dietary guideline recommendations.”-.
Objective availability and price differences were not associated with purchasing choices, nor did they contribute to socioeconomic inequalities in food purchasing choices. Perceived availability and price differences were associated with the purchase of recommended foods. Perceived availability made a small contribution to inequalities in food purchasing, however perceived price differences did not. Socioeconomic inequalities in food purchasing are not mediated by differential availability of recommended foods and differences in price between recommended and regular foods in supermarkets, or by perceptions of their relative price. However, differential perceptions of the availability of recommended foods may play a small role in food purchasing inequalities.
I have been discussing a few causes for high food prices but as many might notice that is not a major concern for everyone. The wealthy are barely affected by the rising food prices. This brings me to my next point. Even though money is not a problem for most wealthy people, not many foodies are wealthy. This makes it challenging for them to have access to fine dining and expensive restaurants. Therefore the most famous food critics are the rich ones. To support my stance, I would like to bring up the life of Ruth Reichl during her time at the New York Times as a restaurant critic. Ruth Reichl was the restaurant critic at the Los Angeles Times but received an offer from the New York Times. The New York Times is known as the world’s best and busiest newspaper. Ruth Reichl was aware of this fact and also aware of the fact that she would be under intense scrutiny as her job is susceptible to may hostile remarks. Therefore she had to plan all of her actions in advance and watch her step all the time. For her the margin for error was extremely minute. To tackle this situation, she decided to disguise herself and hide her identity as a food critic.
There are two things to be noticed here. First she manages to get a disguise very frequently as the old one becomes obsolete due to recognition from the restaurant staff. How does she have so much money to spend on the disguises which range from wigs, dresses and shoes to various make ups. Also as a food critic she has to visit a particular restaurant several times before analytical and precise review of the restaurant. Hence she is spending a lot as she is visiting restaurants so frequently.
Secondly she visits particularly those restaurants which are luxurious French cuisine restaurants which are accessible by very few rich people. She tries to deviate from this path and review few ethnic Korean restaurants but the responses turn out to be harsh. Hence she continues to cover only the high end restaurants.
We can safely say that she is a foodie as her world revolves around food and restaurants. So the question is how rich do you have to be to be foodie? In the above example involving Ruth Reichl, there are two ways to look at a foodie. I have concluded that she is a foodie and her budget is above normal. Next let’s take a look at the intended audience she is wrote the reviews for. Since she covered mainly expensive restaurants the intended audience must largely comprise wealthy people. Hence only the rich people get to put her reviews to use and visit the restaurants. This explains the gap between the rich and the relatively ordinary foodie with respect to access to restaurants and food reviews. Considering the fact that only the rich people have proper access to food material, it is easy to see the difficulty facing the ordinary foodies in enjoying the complete extent of food resources.
When it comes to TV shows and cookbooks, the availability and the price is not as out of reach for the ordinary foodie as expensive restaurants or food items. We can pretty much assume that almost every foodie has a television at their home. Out of my own experience, shows such as Julia Child are perfect shows for people who like any topic regarding food because in the show she not only shows how to cook and eat but also examines the food before she cooks it. I think it is a perfect show for foodies. As compared to Julia Child, Iron Chef is grander and has an epic feel to it. It is helpful to foodies in a different kind of way. It is a competition between the Iron Chefs and other world renowned chefs. The show talks about various chefs and their journey to become a famous chef at famous restaurants around the world. The third show I have watched recently is without a doubt the most entertaining out of the three. It is called Hell’s Kitchen. There is one main chef who administers the cooking of two groups – one male group and the other female -. The two groups have intense competition between themselves and engage in various types of events such as food tasting, cooking etc. They also have to prepare courses for customers to the restaurant under the guidance of the extremely strict head chef. My point is that these shows provide a variety of different experiences for foodies and are available relatively cheaper and easier.
Cookbooks are probably the simplest article for a foodie. These are easily available in any library and I don’t think that the price of a cookbook is such a big concern. As I mentioned, cookbooks are simple but in rare cases they contain unique information about food and their origin which certain foodies might be interested in.
As we come towards the conclusion let’s take a final look at the socioeconomic difference again. Wealthy people spend money carelessly on food items not necessarily for nourishment but just for the taste of it. Due to this fact the prices in the local stores and groceries go up which affects the ordinary people. This has probably been one of the most common observations over the years. Through our efforts the situation can be changed even though it would take a few or more years. Our primary objective should be to bridge the gap not only between the rich and the ordinary but also the high costs of food. To conclude I want to state that even though the concern of high food prices is an important one, there is still hope for the ordinary foodie.
References:
- Newsweek - "The price of good taste"
- Time - "The rising costs of food"
- http://cat.inist.fr
- Youtube - Julia Child, Iron Chef, Hell's Kitchen
- Library cookbooks
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