Tag Archives: nourriture et culture

Individualism, Freedom, and Food

A surprisingly superficial podcast episode on what could have been a very deep subject.

Open Source » Blog Archive » The End of Free Will?

start a conversation about manipulation, persuasion and freedom from choice

To summarize the main issue of that episode: is marketing and "upselling" by restaurant chains undermining the individual freedom to choose quality food? Apparently simple a question, but billed as much more than that.

Maybe they refrained from delving deeper into any of those issues because philosophical discussions, perhaps aesthetic ones especially, are off limits in "polite company" in U.S. media. Too bad.

Actually, I’m genuinely disappointed. Not necessarily because restaurant chains are very important an issue for me (in Montreal, they don’t seem to have the exact same type of impact and I love to cook). But because the show’s participants all came very close to saying very important things about individualism, food, and freedom. The first two are too rarely discussed, IMHO, and the third could have been the "hook" to discuss the other two.

Ah, well…

If you want to know more about my thoughts on this podcast episode, check out some of the tags below.

Bouffe et culture aux États-Unis dans les années 1950

Le dernier épisode de la balado-diffusion EatFeed, Dinner From the Oven, contient une entrevue avec Laura Shapiro, auteure d’un livre sur la cuisine au four dans les années 1950 aux États-Unis. Le livre lui-même semble assez intéressant et l’entrevue donne un résumé de certaines notions importantes, entre autres sur l’influence de l’industrie de l’alimentation et les réticences des ménagères à utiliser des mélanges préparés à l’avance. Bien que ce soit surtout une approche historiciste, ç’en dit beaucoup sur la société américaine, sur les rapports femmes-hommes, sur la perception de la nourriture, etc.