Food 'n' Class

J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
A pretty interesting article in the Guardian today on Jamie Oliver, food and class:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/01/foodanddrink.oliver

One point I query (a side point, really):

"Mrs Beeton spread the idealised habit to the burgeoning middle classes, who were keen to copy the rich and differentiate themselves in their new wealth from the poor."

This "rich differentiate themselves from the poor" line is quite a common one. See also here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810/editors-choice

The idea comes from Pierre Bourdieu, I believe. I'm not really sure it makes sense though. Do people who can afford to eat steak, eat steak, because people who can't consume hamburgers? I feel not. On the other hand, there are certainly weird symbolic politics involved in these kinds of issue.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think the vast majority of people who eat nice food do so because it's nice. It's also not that expensive if you're prepared to put in a (little) bit of effort and time to cook for yourself.

The whole issue is very confused and there is some truly stupifying reverse snobbery about it. I remember an editorial by Janet Street-Porter a year or two ago in which she basically presented the thesis that "if you eat good food it's because you despise poor people". She went on to talk about a recent programme about "Britain's fattest teenager", whose poor mother apparently has no choice but to feed him on crisps, chips and chocolate bars because "not everyone can afford £3 punnets of organic pomegranate seeds from M&S" (this is the actual example she used). Obviously no-has ever alerted Ms. Street-Porter to the existence of apples, bananas, carrots, pasta or rice. What a fucking idiot.

Natasha feeds her two children takeaways most nights. Aged five and two, they have never eaten a meal that has been properly cooked at home. Instead, they sit on the floor - no table, no cutlery - and eat shavings of doner kebabs or chips with processed cheese from polystyrene boxes with their fingers. Even instant noodles have to be negotiated without forks. The bottom drawers of Natasha's fridge are stuffed full of sweets and chocolate bars. "This is where all my money goes," she admitted. About £70 out of a weekly benefits cheque of just £80 on fast food and junk. Five-year-old Kiya has already had to go to the dentist twice to have rotten teeth removed. Natasha can see the life of obesity and illness ahead of them; it's not that she doesn't share the middle-class fantasy of sitting down to a cosy communal table each night, but despite her eight-hob gas cooker and the countless cookery shows on her flatscreen TV, she doesn't seem to know what to do.
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Jesus, that's depressing. LEARN TO MAKE SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE YOU FUCKING MUPPET, IT'S NOT. FUCKING. DIFFICULT.
 
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swears

swears

preppy-kei
...it's not that she doesn't share the middle-class fantasy of sitting down to a cosy communal table each night...
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Wow, sitting down a table for half an hour to eat dinner together, a "fantasy". Fucking hell.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Mr. Tea said:
Jesus, that's depressing. LEARN TO MAKE SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE YOU FUCKING MUPPET, IT'S NOT. FUCKING. DIFFICULT.
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It's not difficult for you, maybe.

It might be more difficult if you were at the bottom of the pile, had never been taught to cook anything, were always knackered, had kids to look after and basically had your desire/confidence/ability to do new things completely sucked out of you.
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
There is clearly a misplaced and weird reverse snobbery on this topic. I remember reading a while back one confused blogger saying that he "felt a touch of class pride" in reference to the incident - alluded to in this article - of mothers pushing burgers through school gates as part of an (ultimately successful!) effort to overthrow Jamie Oliver's healthy school menus regimen, which the game TV cook established during his last foray into Rotherham.

But this article does make a good point on this score, when it notes that:

"When you are on a low income you buy the kind of food that fills you up most cheaply. What may seem ignorant choices to others are in fact quite rational. Lobstein has calculated the cost of 100 calories of food energy from different types of food. The cheapest way to get your 100 calories is to buy fats, processed starches and sugars. A hundred calories of broccoli costs 51p, but 100 calories of frozen chips only cost 2p. Good-quality sausages that are high in meat but low in fat cost 22p per 100 calories, but "value" fatty ones are only 4p per 100 calories. Poor quality-fish fingers are 12p per 100 calories compared with 29p for ones made with fish fillet that are higher in nutrients. Fresh orange juice costs 38p per 100 calories, while the same dose of energy from sugary orange squash costs 5p."

And then there is also the further "cultural capital" point (which this piece also notes) that many of the people in question here don't know how to cook, or even read.

But I agree that the the idea that the middle class people can't eat good food without thereby despising the working class people (if that is indeed what they are) who don't, or can't is absurd and... frankly, pretty odd, in its traction. Are they not just simply indifferent?
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
josef k. said:
"Mrs Beeton spread the idealised habit to the burgeoning middle classes, who were keen to copy the rich and differentiate themselves in their new wealth from the poor."

This "rich differentiate themselves from the poor" line is quite a common one. See also here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810/editors-choice

The idea comes from Pierre Bourdieu, I believe. I'm not really sure it makes sense though. Do people who can afford to eat steak, eat steak, because people who can't consume hamburgers? I feel not. On the other hand, there are certainly weird symbolic politics involved in these kinds of issue.
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I've not read the piece but what they are talking about is classic middle class stuff in the UK, isn't it?

Someone might have a slightly larger income than their neighbours but will choose to spend it on ostentatiously different things. Like I dunno, cooking curry or lasagna in the 1970s rather than meat and two veg.

Meanwhile the very rich are eating whateve they like - pheasant, caviar, meat and two veg, curry, lasagne. Tho they are probably having it cooked by someone whose wages they are paying.

I think it is a separate issue from healthy food. Indeed you can bit middle class and live off raw food you have grown in your allotment or garden and increase your cultural capital that way. Similarly you can (and many do) cook decent food on very little money.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There's a hell of a lot more to nutrition than calories. You can eat all the calories in the world but you still won't have any energy to do anything if you're not eating the vitamins and minerals you need to metabolise them properly. You need iron to avoid anaemia, fibre to avoid constipation, calcium for healthy bones, the list goes on.

Anyway, isn't obesity generally correlated with being in the lower socio-economic groups? The problem is clearly not that people have to eat shitty food to avoid starving to death. We need to stop ignoring the fact that kebabs and takeaways are actually a pretty expensive way to eat. No-one in Britain - homeless people possibly excepted - is *that* poor. It's a combination of ignorance and wildly misplaced priorities.
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
john eden said:
I think it is a separate issue from healthy food. Indeed you can be middle class and live off raw food you have grown in your allotment or garden and increase your cultural capital that way. Similarly you can (and many do) cook decent food on very little money.
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I agree its a different issue... and think the conflation is between the two is always an error... I also think that you're on to something in suggesting that the "cultural capital" argument is internal to the middle classes, rather than cutting across class lines. Its really a high-faluting term for the narcissism of petty differences, no? In that people only look to differentiate themselves from people who, in most other respects, are essentially like them. The middle-class Smiths keep up with the middle-class Joneses, not with the working-class garbage men, with whom they have a more distant and fractious relationship...
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Mr. Tea said:
It's a combination of ignorance and wildly misplaced priorities.
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But this is itself an effect of the class system, no?

And I think the point about cheap food "filling" people-up doesn't imply that it also provides them with the most efficient use of energy.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
john eden said:
It's not difficult for you, maybe.

It might be more difficult if you were at the bottom of the pile, had never been taught to cook anything,
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Fair point, Natasha probably had a similar upbringing herself - but this inability (or refusal) to cook must have started somewhere along the line. People didn't live on pot noodles and kebabs a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago. And if you want to learn, there's never been more opportunities to find out how.

were always knackered,
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From her job that she doesn't have?

had kids to look after and basically had your desire/confidence/ability to do new things completely sucked out of you.
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That's the key thing, right there. It's not a question of money or opportunity, it's a psychological barrier.

Look, I may be coming across a bit harsh here, but I'm not trying to make out that this woman is a terrible person or a bad mother. I'm sure she wants to be a good mother. What I'm saying is, there's nothing stopping her from feeding herself and her kids decent, healthy food while probably spending less than she is at present on junk. Or rather, whatever is stopping her is something she's internalised.
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
josef k. said:
There is clearly a misplaced and weird reverse snobbery on this topic. I remember reading a while back one confused blogger saying that he "felt a touch of class pride" in reference to the incident - alluded to in this article - of mothers pushing burgers through school gates as part of an (ultimately successful!) effort to overthrow Jamie Oliver's healthy school menus regimen, which the game TV cook established during his last foray into Rotherham.

QUOTE]

This was k-punk. As a middle-class person who was brought up on fairly awful food I find this whole debate rather tricky.
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john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Mr. Tea said:
That's the key thing, right there. It's not a question of money or opportunity, it's a psychological barrier.

Look, I may be coming across a bit harsh here, but I'm not trying to make out that this woman is a terrible person or a bad mother. I'm sure she wants to be a good mother. What I'm saying is, there's nothing stopping her from feeding herself and her kids decent, healthy food while probably spending less than she is at present on junk. Or rather, whatever is stopping her is something she's internalised.
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So basically she should just pull herself together?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
josef k. said:
But this is itself an effect of the class system, no?
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But working-class people didn't eat like this a few generations back, when everyone doffed their cap to the squire and knew their place. I'm not denying that class still exists, but isn't it far less rigidly defined than it was in the past?

And whatever happened to aspiration? Do people revel in being 'chavs'? I dunno, maybe some of the do...
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
john eden said:
So basically she should just pull herself together?
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Well what would you suggest: simply accept that a large part of the population is going to be permanently overweight, unhealthy and unhappy? Appoint regional Food Czars to send Nutrition Officers around to people's houses and stand over them while they eat their five portions? Or have the audacity to expect people to take some measure of responsibility over their own lives and those of their kids?

I think it's a general feature of the human condition that the more you try and do for people, the less they become capable of doing for themselves.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Mr. Tea said:
But working-class people didn't eat like this a few generations back, when everyone doffed their cap to the squire and knew their place. I'm not denying that class still exists, but it's far less rigidly defined than it was in the past?

And whatever happened to aspiration? Do people revel in being 'chavs'? I dunno, maybe some of the do...
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A few generations back you didn't have the situation where vast swathes of people didn't work, were possibly never going to work and had parents in the same situation.

Additionally there wasn't an abundance of very cheap processed food for people to buy.

Perhaps the class lines are less rigid in some ways but you said yourself upthread that obesity is generally concentrated in lower income people.

Of course everyone has aspirations, but another which has changed over the last few generations is that class mobility has ground to a virtual standstill.
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Mr. Tea said:
What I'm saying is, there's nothing stopping her from feeding herself and her kids decent, healthy food while probably spending less than she is at present on junk. Or rather, whatever is stopping her is something she's internalised.
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I think that there both are, and aren't things stopping her. Her current situation - which includes her poor literacy, her lack of understanding about nutrition - is obviously an effect of her position in the current class system, her class background, and so on. I'm not really sure if it would be accurate to describe this as a "working class" background; she seems more subaltern than that... but that's another matter. Now, in theory she clearly could overcome her various disadvantages... many people do, after all. But I'm not sure it's easy as you're making out here... especially if you look at things from a wider, more sociological perspective. Individuals redeem themselves, but the circle of shit goes on.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Mr. Tea said:
Well what would you suggest: simply accept that a large part of the population is going to be permanently overweight, unhealthy and unhappy? Appoint regional Food Czars to send Nutrition Officers around to people's houses and stand over them while they eat their five portions? Or have the audacity to expect people to take some measure of responsibility over their own lives and those of their kids?

I think it's a general feature of the human condition that the more you try and do for people, the less they become capable of doing for themselves.
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You can knock it if you like but I think the best approach is to get kids excited about healthy eating and exercise at school. This has not happened for a long time until recently.

I'm not quite sure how their parents can be helped but if nothing is done then we are looking at a colossal explosion of fatsoes draining the resources of the NHS in a few years.
 
T

Tomas

Active member
josef k. said:
But this is itself an effect of the class system, no?

And I think the point about cheap food "filling" people-up doesn't imply that it also provides them with the most efficient use of energy.
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precisely...of course from the outsiede it looks like sheer ignorance/laziness but you have to look beyond that, i.e. from the proximate cause to the ultimate cause: why are they ignorant about food preparation and nutrition? why does this mother lack the motivation to find out how to cook properly? in her case the answer, it would seem, is at least partly depression, which of course is probably also linked to her diet, and social position. (an aside: there was an astonishing study cited in matt ridley's book 'genome' which found that incidence of heart disease is more closely correlated to social position than any other single factor - diet and smoking included. why that's not more widely publicised is, i suppose, pretty obvious...)

on the calories v nutrition thing: the fact that calorific value does not equate to nutritional value undermines the argument made in the guardian article, in that buying cheap and nutritionally-low high-calory foods is not a 'perfectly rational' choice, as it's not in any sense the best value for money. it's arguably an understandable choice, though, given the points about cultural capital made above...

what oliver is doing is of course well-intentioned and it may help some individuals to improve their diet (which it goes without saying is a Good Thing), but the systematic causes of poverty and malnutrition are what really need to be addressed. that said, the article is right to suggest that the ministry of food series could be valuable if it raises awareness of the level of deprivation among the working class.

(posting under a new moniker, and didn't post here often under that, so, hi)
 
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
john eden said:
I think the best approach is to get kids excited about healthy eating and exercise at school.
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This is surely correct... With the corollary point being that the situation is obviously not helped by the idea that some foods are working class, other foods are middle class, and so on, so that working class pride = happily eating shit.
 
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