Why moralism spoils the appetite

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/12154/

"A few years ago, I found myself eating alfresco in a back garden in Stockwell, London with chef Fergus Henderson, co-founder of the fabulous restaurant cum shrine to meat eating, St John. Henderson, whose first cookbook Nose to Tail Eating sums up his philosophy on food, was asked who he thought was currently the best writer on food. Quick as a flash, he named Adam Gopnik, then a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine.


Gopnik is now an established columnist and writer. In his latest book, The Table Comes First: Family, France and the Meaning of Food, he repays Henderson’s compliment. The title of the book is borrowed from a conversation he had with Henderson, who said: ‘I don’t understand how a young couple can begin life by buying a sofa or a television. Don’t they know the table comes first?’"
...
"Eating should be seen as pleasure and not penance; something that brings happiness and joy rather than anxiety. Gopnik has made a strong case for eating to be a solely gustatory experience. I’ll have a slice of that."

as they say, read the whole thing it is short

As long as middle-class folks drink coke & eat McDonald's we don't have to worry about moralism spoiling the appetite.

Please Note: I do consume coke & approximately 3 times a year, while in an airport, I eat McDonald's apple pie( although not this last 12 months, but that's another story) & I still miss the original McDonald Land Cookies shaped like Ronald & Company.

Our attitude towards food in this country has a long history, and hasn't changed in over a century. In David McCullough's book The Greater Journey, which is about Americans going to France in the early 19th century, he quotes one American as observing:

"The French dine to gratify, we to appease appetite," observed John Sanderson. "We demolish dinner, they eat it."

Jonah

Gopnik is a *very* smart guy. He has intelligent things to say about a wide range of topics. He asks intelligent questions and seeks out smart people to search for answers. Gopnik's views on life in France, especially food, are perceptive and, IMHO, correct. Comments that he's made about the French health care system are bang on. But when he talks about wine, he suddenly becomes not just juvenile, but puerile. His argument is that the only actual reason to drink alcoholic beverages is to become intoxicated. Hence, all other discussions about possible roles for, e.g., wine, are otiose in his view.

Methinks he has let his own very personal autobiographical events severely constrain his intellectual horizons. Just because his formative exposure to wine was SAQ-sanctioned kosher wines served during Seder doesn't mean that others of us might not have a different, and more positively wide-ranging, experience than his.

Geo

I'm not familiar with Gopnik's take on wine, but as restated by Geo, I couldn't agree more with Geo's response.
As far as "moralism" goes, I do think that there's certainly a lot of silly, "Portlandia"-style eating by narcissistic people going on. But, I don't think that simply making deliberate, informed choices about what and how to eat necessarily constitutes "moralism," across the board.
Example: Personally, I think that inhumane, drug-riddled industrial-style meat production is a bad thing for animals, consumers, and the entire eco-system. For myself, I try to find alternatives. I don't harangue diners at neighboring tables about it, I'm not tattooed with messages about it, I don't picket McDonald's. But it's a choice. I think it's a "moral" one, but not a "moralistic" one. (Just as eating kosher or halal may be a religious choice without necessarily being a narcissistic display of religiosity.) And the result, for me, is that I get more, not less pleasure out of eating.