What is the potential in a climate of personality before everything that we, in the food movement, return to the love of food?
Food is sacred, information, sustenance, pleasure, vice, addiction, healing, cleansing, building, an escape, its art, creativity, a universal means of communication.
In this social media driven world, in this time of endless information, what better tool of communication than food? In food we find history and culture. We find a story of a people and their experiences on this planet. We find location. There is creative expression in food. Food can be a manifesto; one’s life’s work. Food is paramount and is something that touches everyone in one way or another. There is sacrifice and there is effort.
Where we see food culture now and where it has been driven is into glorifying the personality behind the food, rather than celebrating the food itself and Nature that has provided. In that dangerous environment, there has been the advent of foodstuffs and food-like substances, extreme consumption, desecration of the earth and a new school of cooks who do it not for the love, but for the likes. What happens to a food system when the purveyors of food culture don’t love food? When those same food professionals don't know food. When those with rudimentary business knowledge are attempting to capitalize on the current trend? How do we maintain integrity in our food system? How do we maintain the art and the ritual? How do we ensure that that information that food provides for us and the messages therein convey clearly? What are we really being influenced into?