Mods: could use a (2009) tag.
Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#42I don't agree with the first paragraph, that social mores exist to limit the danger of uninhibited indulgence in sex. I think most if not all (other than disease) downsides of sexual indulgence are because it violates customs. The author has that completely backwards.
So you think "customs" are totally arbitrary? Not following the logic.
No, they're mostly designed to keep a few Italian men in white hats in charge of 16th century Europe. We should probably take a long hard look at them.
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#43These issues are simpler to explain than the author realizes--and without any special invocation of Kant. Simply put, technology has made sex a lot safer at the same time as it has made food a lot more dangerous . Sex is safer (in the sense of creating fewer risks and uncertainties), as we all know, thanks to developments like condoms, STD testing, contraception, and legalized abortion. Meanwhile, food is a lot more…
Whether or not an organic diet (whatever that may be exactly) ultimately proves to be healthier, it's wrong to describe the movement to eat such food as a "ridiculous cargo cult". It's clear what people are worried about (dangerous pesticides, environmental pollutants) and the expectation that food labeled as organic is better in this respect is not unreasonable. Whether or not labeling food "certified organic" makes…
My wife has a friend who is very into organic. She says that all those pesticides are not good for us, and she's probably right, at least to some degree.
But the thing is, famine is really not good for you. If pesticides prevent that (and, arguably, they have done pretty well at doing so), then they're better than the alternative of not using them.
Of course, the best alternative is "neither"...
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#44These issues are simpler to explain than the author realizes--and without any special invocation of Kant. Simply put, technology has made sex a lot safer at the same time as it has made food a lot more dangerous . Sex is safer (in the sense of creating fewer risks and uncertainties), as we all know, thanks to developments like condoms, STD testing, contraception, and legalized abortion. Meanwhile, food is a lot more…
> made food a lot more dangerous You are almost certainly too young to remember it in the United States, but it wasn't that long ago that food was terribly dangerous. Start at non-sterile meat, bad canning practices (botulism killed 2,000+ per year in the United States until around WWII, down to a handful today) and go all the way to pellagra (an easily-solved Vitamin B deficiency that still killed 7500 people per ye…
Yes, this is an excellent point, although it doesn't contradict anything I said. In fact, it might help explain the demographic trends: older generations might be more likely to see food innovations as benevolent, because these innovations formerly played a legitimate role in increasing the supply of food that wouldn't make you sick.
Schoen's comment below makes an excellent, related point: older generations might have a lower, or at least different standard of what constitutes "dangerous" food. It used to be that dangerous food would immediately give you an infectious disease; whereas today, dangerous food very slowly gives you a chronic non-communicable diease.
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#45How much of this is more easily explained in that Betty is conservative and her granddaughter Jennifer is liberal?
Jonathan Haidt's TED talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives touches on sex and food (see time index 7:09): http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind
If there is a shift in the decades in common cultural attitudes, it might be explained by a general pendulum swing back and forth between conservative attitudes versus liberal attitudes holding more common sway in any particular decade.
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found it difficult to read the entire essay, so I didn't. I had problems with a lot of the characterizations. 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…
You're really picking at surface issues in the first few paragraphs that are wholly unimportant to the message of the article (which wasn't overly conservative or political at all). It's worth a read if you can manage to look past your biases.
Can you then please summarize in just a few sentences what you think the message of the article is? I'm interested in what you personally found in it. It looked to me that the article starts from the wrong premises and then slowly develops... what actually? I don't know. To me, what I've read just doesn't have sense. So I'm genuinely curious:
What is the thesis posited in the article?
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#47Holy PsyOps Batman.
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#48I find this whole article rather suspect. For example, people have always had premarital sex. (http://books.google.com/books?id=knN9HzkY1pEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA...)
And the author simply asserts, without any proof, that children from divorced families do worse. Really? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for...
I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican, and lo and behold, she's with the Hoover Institute. Thought-provoking article, but given the assumptions made and how they clash with the facts as I know them, I don't buy any of it.
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whether or not an organic diet (whatever that may be exactly) ultimately proves to be healthier, it's wrong to describe the movement to eat such food as a "ridiculous cargo cult". It's clear what people are worried about (dangerous pesticides, environmental pollutants) and the expectation that food labeled as organic is better in this respect is not unreasonable. Whether or not labeling food "certified organic" makes…
My wife has a friend who is very into organic. She says that all those pesticides are not good for us, and she's probably right, at least to some degree. But the thing is, famine is really not good for you. If pesticides prevent that (and, arguably, they have done pretty well at doing so), then they're better than the alternative of not using them. Of course, the best alternative is "neither"...
some people are not old enough to remember the regular famines in India and Pakistan - obviated by engineered strains of rice
Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)
#50I find this whole article rather suspect. For example, people have always had premarital sex. ( http://books.google.com/books?id=knN9HzkY1pEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA... ) And the author simply asserts, without any proof, that children from divorced families do worse. Really? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for... I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican, and…
>I stopped reading halfway through on the assumption that the author was a Republican
I am impressed by the open-mindedness you display.