(no subject)

[naath]

A thing that has been really annoying me about the horsemeat scandal reporting but is actually only tangentially related.

So, some people came over all "well don't eat this nasty crap then" so some other people came over all "but it's cheap and easy and delicious". Now, I don't dispute "easy"; it certainly is a lot easier to buy a microwave lasagne than to prepare your own. I'm not sure about "cheap"; I've never really thought about it, but certainly compared to other low-effort food options (for instance going out for food). And anyway there whole layers of stuff to do with lack of access to cooking skills, equipment, etc.

But really what's pissing me off is the "delicious" part. It's not that I dispute that some people find this type of food tasty; clearly they do. But I've seen a number of people writing about how these foods are "carefully engineered" to be exactly the sort of thing that most appeals to humans. A view that basically "these foods are super addictive; it is only through sheer willpower that anyone resists them" (and often goes on to insist that people ought to, well, have more willpower - which is a shitty thing to insist; but anyway).

Personally I think this is utter utter bullshit. What these companies have done is not a triumph of food science. It is a triumph of advertising. Of getting into people's heads and saying "this is what food should be"; especially getting to people young.

The thing is that in part because my parents were seriously strict about not having this sort of food; and in part because my current lifestyle is fairly well insulated from a lot of advertising crap; and in HUGE part because I've never lacked money to the point that I've been fretting about the cost of using the oven... well; I've never accustomed myself to eating these types of food, and essentially as a consequence of that I think most of them are simply disgusting. I genuinely would prefer to eat rice and beans. I know most people wouldn't.

I think that the people who write things like "OMG McDonalds makes addictive food we must stop them somehow!" are PART OF THE PROBLEM - they are participating in the advertising campaign that says "this food is addictively delicious".

I think that if "we" want to change the way "people in general" eat the answer has to involve teaching people that the "better" food is delicious, is "normal", etc. etc. And I think we need to get them young. Personally I'm not particularly interested in telling people what they "should" eat; but I would welcome attempts to make healthier food cheaper, and more available so that more people have more actual choice about what they eat, rather than being forced into making the cheapest choice.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Objectively, a lot of the cheap food actually isn't all that tasty either. However, because people are told it is, and addictive too, then they expect it to be and thus it is... sense of taste being rather subjective after all.

For that matter, it's not cheaper either. I make my own burgers, it costs me £3 for a pound of meat, which logically I can get four quarter pounders from. Bread is £1 for 6 white scufflers [large buns]. So pricing it out, that's 92 pence per burger.

Pretty sure that's a lot cheaper than McD's.

[happydork]

Oh, absolutely -- if McDonalds had some magic universal taste that appealled to pretty much all humans, why would it vary its recipes from country to country? That's certainly not the same thing as saying that people can stop finding McDonalds tasty, but I think you're right that this sort of rhetoric is just doing part of McD's advertising for them.

Over here across the pond…

[franklanguage]

there's a misconception that "Vegan food is sooo expensive!" It's not. There's a book called Eat Vegan On $4 a Day (that's about £2, right?)

I eat vegan, and not having to deal with meat and dairy at all is amazing. I don't microwave anything either, because microwaving—for one thing—destroys nutrients, so is counterproductive.

[gerald_duck]

Have you read Fast Food Nation?

It appears that many people (including detractors) find a lot of fast food pretty tasty. Certainly tastier than anything they could have concocted themselves out of the same ingredients.

So you have £5, or perhaps just £1. You can either spend it on cheap ingredients cunningly combined by a megacorp that makes a huge profit, or you can try to stretch to nicer ingredients to make a tastier meal. The latter will almost certainly be more wholesome, but will it actually taste nicer?

You say yes. You also say you've been conditioned from birth to like "proper" food. I fear there might be a smidgen of snobbishness on your part, there? Certainly, though I appreciate fine foods, I still hanker once in a while after those heavily artificial "cheese and onion" and "salt and vinegar" flavours crisps used to have in my childhood. If you'd been raised on cheap burgers, your tastes might now be very different.

I'm not so sure it's objective.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

When I first heard about the fuss, I was confused; personally, I think horse tastes better than cow anyway, why the fuss? Then I found out about the fact that the horses could have had odd drugs in them, so that made sense. Microwave food is generally junk ingredients but lets not add more poison, at least.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

"these foods are super addictive; it is only through sheer willpower that anyone resists them"

People who might hold such a view, for reasons other than just thinking it true.

1) Smug oh-so-authentic people who like to look down on "sheeple".
2) People who think that Capitalism Is Evil (with the capital letters, ie going far beyond rejecting free-market fundamentalism), and anything showing too many signs of being too closely associated with a certain sort of economy is highly likely to be a form of mind control, or otherwise destructive to free will. To be fair, possibly this is to counter the people on the right who say that capitalism is all about freedom and you shouldn't take that freedom away.

That said, you can think of "addictive" as being different from "nice" - there's a certain sort of food which is "moreish" which isn't just tasty, it's a certain sort of tasty. The sort that creates cravings?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think craving foods that are meaty, fatty and salty is a function of how scared you are that everything is going to be taken away from you without warning. When I am feeling secure and happy I will happily eat rice and beans. When I was unemployed and being threatened by Jobcentre Plus if I didn't turn up at the right time/prove I wasn't having sex with my ex despite washing his socks to fill up the washing machine which is obviously the same thing as being in a relationship/tick the right incomprehensible boxes, I was all about the grease and chips. (And when College were making me homeless every 8 weeks.) When I was at school I could happily have eaten McDonalds every day. (In one temp job between school and university I did. Turns out it makes you feel a bit weird.)

So, I reckon the fast food industry do kind of take advantage of people's biological inability to choose what they crave, but I think people who come from the willpower side of the argument should try being genuinely at risk of sleeping on the street and then see how they argue against their stomach hormones.

[passage.livejournal.com]

I think you're onto something with the theory that people who say junk food is so addictive we must stop it are part of the problem.

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

Also, lasagne is the classic example of a dish you don't make for yourself because it's too much faff. So it's unfair to compare the cost/ effort of microwave lasagne with a homemade lasagne.