Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

To start, "What happens when, for the first time in history, adult human beings are free to have all the sex and food they want?"

This is only true for a subset of the people, but it's always been true for a subset of the people. When I read about the nobility of the 1600s, I see that there was a whole lot of sex going on, and surely they had enough food for themselves.

The 1960s/1970s era of free love, after the pill and before HIV/AIDS and drug resistant venereal diseases was also, I think, more free than now. The author writes that HIV/AIDS is "manageable", for those with access to good medical care, but doesn't dismiss the point that it's not true that adults now are freer in their ways than (again, a subpopulation of) adults in the 1960s.

"let us imagine some broad features of the world seen through two different sets of eyes: a hypothetical 30-year-old housewife from 1958 named Betty, and her hypothetical granddaughter Jennifer, of the same age, today."

Home deep freezers weren't really available until after the Second World War, so that description of a 1958 era is one of food plenty, not food deficit, and that description is only true for a couple of decades.

"If there is anything “fresh” on the plate, it is likely a potato."

That's just not true. I've seen the pictures of the farmers in the late 1800s/early 1900s coming into town with their produce on wagons. There's more than just potatoes during the growing season.

For a real-world example, see http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html , and quoting from Barbara Hubbard, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20, 1956: "This is a treat for them, especially when they are served hamburgers, fruit salad, carrot sticks, and an ice cream bar for dessert. They consider this menu a real party and what could be easier for Mother. When the children finish their supper they usually go upstairs to watch Daddy shave and tell him about their day. Then he reads them a story and tucks them into bed. This gives me time to broil a steak, mix the green salad, and dress the baked potatoes with sour cream and chives."

So, the children have fruit salad and carrot sticks, and in addition to potato, the adults have a green salad.

On the same link, a menu from Family Circle, August 1957, includes corn, salad, and honeydew melon, and from Women's Day 1959 has tomatoes, vegetable salad, and a fruit basket. Both have more than just potatoes.

"Wavering in and out of vegetarianism"

As was recently pointed out to me, C.S. Lewis in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", written in the 1950s, ridicules vegetarianism as being faddish.

It's easy to believe that the author created examples specifically to illustrate a point, rather than to describe real cultural trends.

What I see, when I look at the same events, is a move away from a conformist culture to a diverse culture. The moral strictures of church, class, race, gender, etc. are less binding.

Remember too the author writes for the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank. As such, works from them are more likely to be aligned with conservative views, and not, say, rail against patriarchy.

You say your memories of the 1950s are in agreement with it. I point out multiple examples from that era which show it isn't the case. I trust copies of literature from that era better than I do memories of childhood. I know how distorted my own memories of childhood were compared to the reality of the 1970s.

Here's another: http://calorielab.com/news/2005/08/25/family-dinners-school-... - "Dinners consisted of meat, potatoes, a green vegetable, dinner rolls, salad. and dessert." Or look at the image of a Swanson's TV dinner from the 1950s , http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the... , with potato and peas.

You say your mom wasn't shopping at a farmer's market. I never mentioned that - my reference was to 50 years previous. Fruit and vegetables are available at the supermarket. Here are pictures of a 1950s supermarket. http://fl4projects.tumblr.com/post/16150521363 . See the produce section? Same for http://www.pinterest.com/pin/27021666487620537/ .

You say that "food woo" is rampant now. I pointed out that C.S. Lewis against vegetarianism of the 1950s. Or I can point you to http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243 and how "From the 1930s through the '60s, Americans were convinced you had to have a certain kind of bowl to make a proper green salad: a plain, unvarnished wooden bowl which could never be washed." Or I could point out the radium craze of the early 1900s, when it seems you could get just about anything with a bit of radium added to it, for good health.

Here's a better description of my point, at http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article10.htm :

> Why do so many people think American families are facing worse problems now than in the past? Partly it's because we compare the complex and diverse families of the 1900s with the seemingly more standard-issue ones of the 1950s, a unique decade when every long-term trend of the 20th century was temporarily reversed. In the 1950s, for the first time in 100 years, the divorce rate fell while marriage and fertility rates soared, creating a boom in nuclear-family living. The percentage of foreign-born individuals in the country decreased. And the debates over social and cultural issues that had divided Americans for 150 years were silenced, suggesting a national consensus on family values and norms. ...

> But much nostalgia for the 1950s is a result of selective amnesia-the same process that makes childhood memories of summer vacations grow sunnier with each passing year. The superficial sameness Of 1950s family life was achieved through censorship, coercion and discrimination. People with unconventional beliefs faced governmental investigation and arbitrary firings. African Americans and Mexican Americans were prevented from voting in some states by literacy tests that were not administered to whites. Individuals who didn't follow the rigid gender and sexual rules of the day were ostracized.

The 1950s also had the "curse of capitalism". All of the new processed food companies want to get in on the action, after the rationing of the war. Look at http://thehairpin.com/2013/10/lets-eat-some-weird-shi and see just how many ways the free market was trying to convince people in the 1950s to add a bit of their branded processed food to a recipe. "Fill the center of the peaches with Miracle Whip." "Split frankfurter buns in half and spread with Kraft Mayonnaise. Fill with good thick strips of Velveeta and brush the tops of the buns with melted butter or Parkay Margarine.", etc.

I don't see any awareness of these issues in that essay, which makes it very frustrating to read. It comes across like a specific, typically conservative viewpoint which emphasizes a certain hierarchical conformist culture.

> I trust copies of literature from that era better than I do memories of childhood.

You're doing it wrong! :)

Really. "Literature" that specifies what people should eat is likely pulp (a class of literature). You can't gain any information about my diet--or even the average diet--by flipping through the magazine racks at the grocery store checkout--not in this decade or decades past.

The food guilt thing is a product of marketing. Visit a Whole Foods and look at the displays.

Sex guilt is back. (For straight people only.) It's not clear why. In the US, it's not due to religion; the religious right peaked in the last century. There are whole new areas of guilt since the 1980s, from sexual harassment to an expanded definition of rape. Not only are abortions harder to get, even birth control pills are harder to get. Women's clothing is more conservative, too.