Food Fundies Ferment Frustration

I was once told that I shouldn't eat a certain prepackaged frozen microwavable dinner because no part of it had ever been touched by human hands. The person scolding me was your typical organic, all natural, vegetarian, self-righteous food fundamentalist who loves to judge other people for their inferior culinary habits. I dated a bunch like him when I was young. It occurred to me much later that if my dinner had been touched by human hands, it would have been the hands of exploited underpaid migrant workers. I couldn't possibly win that conversation.

I'll never forget the argument I had with the woman who would only buy brown eggs. Because they are brown, she opined, they are inherently better than white eggs. I insisted there was no difference except the brown ones cost more. I will concede that in many cases, brown is better than white. Rice and bread, for example. But after consulting with a doctor, a farmer, and a software engineer, we decided that the color of the egg is determined by the breed of the chicken and otherwise is no different.

Like other fundamentalists, food fundies think their's is the only right way and they will endlessly harass everyone else until we are just like them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for ethical and environmentally sustainable food production. I just happen to think that awareness raising can be done without clobbering people over the head with righteousness. I'm not saying all vegetarians, for example, are guilty of such extreme obnoxiousness. But those who are give all the rest a bad name.

Food righteousness is one thing. Food pretentiousness is another.

My family recently gathered for dinner at a very expensive Denver restaurant which simply dripped with self-importance. I won't say what restaurant, but it was in LoDo on Market just off 16th Street. This place's specialty is "molecular gastronomy." The concept is that the food would be prepared scientifically, frozen or heated to extreme temperatures and processed in such a way that our taste buds would squirt with ecstasy. I didn't think it was that good. Some of it was just weird. Why would I want a piece of fruit that had been pulverized into a ribbon swooping the length of my place setting? Just give me the original piece of delicious fresh fruit!

My grandmother mastered cooking the old-fashioned way: with her traditional electric oven and smooth glass stove top. Her cooking was an art form, not science, done by feel with the benefit of decades' experience.

I'm hungry. Maybe there's a mass produced prepackaged dinner in the freezer.