WHEN DID FOOD CHOICES BECOME MORALLY RIGHT OR MORALLY WRONG?

Author Mary Eberstadt may really be onto something.  And if you're into the philosophical or practice deep thinking, this might be just the article for you.

The fundamental question posed by Eberstadt is what happens when, for the first time in history, adult human beings are able to have all the sex and food that they want?

Yes, the subject may feel a bit racy for our modest little blog, but the question really deserves some thinking.  In the interviews with Eberstadt posted on Truth in Food, Eberstadt describes two fictional women, Betty and Jennifer.  Betty was 30 years old in 1958 and had a very strict moral code about what was appropriate behavior and what was not regarding sexual activity.  While she may have had similar preferences about her food choices, she didn't feel the need to push those choices onto others quite the same way that she felt morally obligated to share her choices about sex. 

Eberstadt's Jennifer is 30 years old today and her feelings on the two subjects are decidedly opposite Betty's.  She may feel that she has no right to judge other's sexual activity, but is an adament proponent of organic food or vegetarianism or ... fill in the blank.

“I find it really interesting that these two codes, one about food and one about sex, seem to be existing in this inverse relationship, where as one gets stricter the other gets more lenient,” Mary tells Truth in Food interviewer Kevin Murphy. “I think the fallout [over the negative consequences of the post-pill sexual revolution] makes a lot of people uncomfortable, in a way that they’re not even necessarily fully aware of. We live with these major consequences…day in and day out. And I think a lot of people have the sense this has all gone too far, that nobody meant for the party to have gotten so out of hand, and no one knows how to stop it. My supposition is that part of what’s behind these increasingly moralistic attitudes toward food is that people have displaced the kinds of feelings human beings have always had about sex onto food instead,” says Eberstadt.

Eberstadt believes that society is taking feelings we've always had about sexuality and moral codes regarding sexual behavior and placing those same moral codes on food.

After all, thinking of the food "issues" we farmers deal with on a day to day basis ... isn't it odd that food is all of the sudden a moral decision?

Check out Eberstadt's essay and definitely listen to Truth in Food interview with Eberstadt.  I don't think you'll be sorry.

Lindsay Mitchell

ICGA/ICMB Project Coordinator