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Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

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Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

slapshot wrote: post #17
sowhatquestion wrote: post #11

These 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…

> It seems like evil simple carbs today, but it was initially popular precisely because

...it was the first bread sold to consumers presliced, and that (and before it was preslicing, its quality for slicing) was heavily and effectively marketed.

Ironically, Wonder and other cheap white bread -- and other mass produced foodstuffs of the same period of mass industrialization of food supply -- and their popularity contributed several of the deficiency-related diseases you refer to as evidence of food being dangerous (later, they were enriched specifically to address the deficiencies that diets heavy in the them produced.)

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#82

Post by daveloyall »

dalke wrote: post #72
daveloyall wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get all the way through your post because I fundamentally disagreed with it. > 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 grocer…

I have an autobiographical essay by someone written in around 2001. It says X about something that happened in the 1960s. I have a paper written by the same person in 1964. It says not X. That's evidence that people's memory fades or changes over time. Of course that's well known. For example, "Not only are our memories faulty (anyone who has uncovered old diaries knows that), but more importantly Schiller says our m…

You can't tell a person older than you that they are wrong about their own life during a period that happened before you were born. Especially not with with pulp sources.

This is not an internet points game and it is not wikipedia. This is a conversation between more or less like-minded people. Personal insight is to be valued.

If you want to actually prove your point, get the 1950/1960 US Census data, average them, analyze the income and employment numbers, and tell me how the center of the bell curve could afford a three course meal on the daily. Don't forget that 36% of the country wasn't employed at all (in 1950, includes children), but still needed to eat (includes children!).

In short, yes, you can trump personal memory with hard numbers (and you should!)--but not with a mere large volume of citations.

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#83

Post by GuiA »

vbezhenar wrote: post #65
GuiA wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree or not with you, but I don't think France is the best example because it has such a strong food culture. I'm a French person who's been living in the US for about 5 years now. My main realization regarding the way food is treated in each country is that in France, the relationship with food is conditioned culturally very strongly since the moment you're born. When you grow up as a French perso…

It probably because France never had problems with food itself (because of good climate and good earth). So people had to develop food culture. In russia, where climate is hard, earth is not very fertile and one unsuccessful harvest could mean country-scaled global hunger, food culture is more about eating while you can, conservate food while it's fresh. With current excess of food there are many fat men and women ou…

France probably never had problems with food to the extent Russia did, but all of France was on food stamps during the nazi occupation for example.

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#84

Post by sgentle »

Sometimes I want to explain to someone what "begging the question" means in its original definition as a conclusion that relies on itself as a premise. I've often wished there was a perfect example of question-begging I could point to as a demonstration. Well, now I have one.

The most important - really, the only - point that this waffling diatribe offers is that food and sex are moral equivalents. Except it doesn't ever prove that point. Rather, it sort of wafts it in the air ("is food the new sex?"), assumes they are connected ("The question before us today is not whether the two appetites are closely connected") then throws out random just-so assertions ("Both [...] can prove ruinous not only to oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself")

The next thousand lines of condescending feigned surprise basically amount to "oh, how strange it is that although sex and food are very similar, we treat them differently". Yes, that would be surprising if they were very similar. But what if they're not very similar and you just made that up because it would be convenient for your worldview?

When your conclusion is your premise, anything is possible. I present here my new essay: Is Sex the New Eugenics? Sex and eugenics are inextricably linked. At various times laws have been made and wars have been fought over both sex and eugenics. We previously thought eugenics was a good idea but we now see it as morally bankrupt. We previously thought sex was morally bankrupt but we now see it as a good idea. But since they're the same, that's wrong. Sex and Eugenics are the same. Nietzsche.

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#85

Post by ctchocula »

hrktb wrote: post #56
pdeuchler wrote: post #34

Earlier 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. ... >> 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. There's no need to politicize the article and then make subjective judgements based on your aff…

I read the whole thing, and am also quite disturbed. I also had the feeling that while there is a some discussion surrounding food, an awful lot of small jabs are made at people's sexual views. There is a repeated point driven accros that people of this area are morally depleted, in difference to previous generations. It's summed up in the introduction statement: > * things we might signal by shorthand as mindful eat…

I agree with your opinion of the article. It reminded me of that Asimov essay [1] that talks about the English Lit student who wrote him a letter quoted Socrates to him, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing" and implied that there is no advancement in our knowledge when we thought the Earth was flat and we were wrong, and our modern understanding that the Earth is round and we are wrong (since it's not perfectly round). The upshot was that Asimov was foolish in thinking he knew something. The author of this essay seems to imply a similar idea.

By passing off the moralities as a fad, the author seems utterly clueless of the fact that when more people have pre-marital sex, no one is harmed, but when people raise millions of animals to be eaten, there is a victim (the animal).

[1] http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#86

Post by hrktb »

pdeuchler wrote: post #61
hrktb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the whole thing, and am also quite disturbed. I also had the feeling that while there is a some discussion surrounding food, an awful lot of small jabs are made at people's sexual views. There is a repeated point driven accros that people of this area are morally depleted, in difference to previous generations. It's summed up in the introduction statement: > * things we might signal by shorthand as mindful eat…

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the article, why would you assume either way? I think she's got some very interesting points but I'm more inclined to think the phenomenon she addresses has more to do with humanity's newfound ability to work their way up Maslow's hierarchy, and the issues we encounter while society evolves away from trying to reduce risks (i.e. stockpile this food so we have something to eat duri…

Personally I don't really care if she is conservative or not (I'm not even in the US and am not sure to really understand the party system).

What bothers me the most is that the article wants to tackle sex, and eventually food, but the claims on both subjects are peculiar, unrealistic and mainly unfounded.

People aren't less moral than they were centuries ago, be it towards sex or anything else. Different people can now openly have different moralities, different POV have come to be tolerated and the law and society has changed in its view of sexual orientation and marriage. But these sexual behaviors or way of thinking didn't just become a thing now that they are legal or accepted, people were just doing them behind closed doors, were openly seen as exceptions, or got banned from society/killed/deported.

Arguing that morality has gone south in two centuries is just an other way of saying "Society as a whole should have a single moral compass, the one of two centuries ago, let's bash any different moralities".

And sadly the same goes for the food argument. There is so much "junk" food now because people produce and actually consume it. Arguying that we've become more morally concerned about food when literally thousands of tons of generic food is produced and eaten everyday is also delusional. Some peope care a lot more about what they it, of course, just as centuries ago rich people would also care about who makes their bread, what is their meat, if it's poisoned, and if it's nutritionous and tasty. There's no way a bourgeois would eat the same food as a farmer, and with choice comes educated behaviors, preferences and opinions. People didn't just judge with the same criteria, and it would be misleading to say that prefering organic vegetables to sanglier meat is a more moral choice.

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#87

Post by dalke »

daveloyall wrote: post #82
dalke wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an autobiographical essay by someone written in around 2001. It says X about something that happened in the 1960s. I have a paper written by the same person in 1964. It says not X. That's evidence that people's memory fades or changes over time. Of course that's well known. For example, "Not only are our memories faulty (anyone who has uncovered old diaries knows that), but more importantly Schiller says our m…

You can't tell a person older than you that they are wrong about their own life during a period that happened before you were born. Especially not with with pulp sources. This is not an internet points game and it is not wikipedia. This is a conversation between more or less like-minded people. Personal insight is to be valued . If you want to actually prove your point, get the 1950/1960 US Census data, average them,…

What you ask, regarding the analysis of census data, is completely besides the point because it doesn't even fit the example in the essay.

You make a statement about the bell curve. Jennifer, the modern vegetarian, is not in the bell curve.

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/article/vegetarianism-in-amer... suggests that 10 percent of U.S., adults, or 22.8 million people, say they largely follow a vegetarian-inclined diet.

Even if it's 20%, that's still not near the center of the modern US diet. So already the essay isn't a strong match to modern culture.

I sure can say that someone is wrong about their memory, but in this case I'm saying that the OP's recollections don't fit the data. Even if true for the OP, it appears to be atypical.

You complain that I mention pulp sources. I've also mentioned diary entries. Every single entry is a "personal insight."

See http://diaries.markbartlett.net/diary58.html for another example. "We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, date nut bread and coffee for dinner." and "Mrs. Colburn gave us sack of green beans and Mrs. Burnett more green beans, onions and beets." (Some of that would have been canned, but some certainly eaten fresh.) "Mr. and Mrs. Kluckman and baby here tonight – brought green beans and cabbage."

Or http://melissa-ellison.tripod.com/id25.html from 1933, "July 9 We were all alone today. No one came. Very warm. We had string beans for dinner today." (They picked and canned the string beans the day before, so these were fresh beans.) "Sept 26 Very warm and sultry. We are again to have boiled bacon and swisschard for dinner today." "Nov 14 Cloudy and snowflurries. We had spare ribs and carrotts cooked together for dinner."

https://www.ashleighbrilliant.com/Diary%201951.%20America.ht... which is about a British man visiting the US in 1951: "For dinner I had fruit and soup and bread and broccoli & 2 huge lamb chops & Pepsi Cola & chocolate cake & milk.", "We had a fine lunch of meat, potatoes, vegetables, apple juice, raspberries & ice-cream." (It's entirely possible that the vegetables were canned or frozen. At some point though I don't think it makes a difference. Most of my vegetables now are frozen too.)

I'll make my point again. The author of the essay sets up a hypothetical "Betty" from 1958 in a situation which does not appear to be characteristic of the larger society. The OP - the one who linked to the essay - finds the description to be characteristic of the OP's own history. That doesn't mean that that OP's memory is a true reflection of the time.

You want me, I believe, to demonstrate somehow that the OP must not be correct. I am trying instead to show that the hypothetical Betty is likely not characteristic of the era, and given the well-known problems with human memory, I want something stronger than a childhood memory when the available "pulp" evidence so strongly shows a much wider variety of food dishes for that era.

This was absolutely the era before the War on Poverty, and before the Civil Rights era. The essay seems to exclude immigrant foods (fresh bok choi for Chinese dishes), regional foods (like Southern dishes with collard greens), etc. That's why I argue that it isn't representative of the 1950s, but only representative perhaps of the most culturally influential social groups of that era .. and the OP may also be a member of that group.

Re: Is Food the New Sex? (2009)

#88

Post by Animats »

humanrebar wrote: post #55
Animats wrote: post #10

We know what happens when humans are free to have all the food we want. They get fat. Next question. 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 harassmen…

even birth control pills are harder to get How is that true? Some birth control is now available over the counter and, with exceptions, health care plans are covering birth control these days. And anyone can walk into any number of places and grab all the condoms they want for free. Am I missing something?

Am I missing something? Yes. See: "http://reproductiverights.org/en/project/contraceptive-acces...
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