Category Archives: Contemporary Food Culture

The Influence of “Terroir” in Bourbon Production

17 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

bourbon barrelsI’ve been doing some research on bourbon recently for a writing project I was hired to do. One question I wanted to answer was whether the idea of terroir (or some similar concept related to the “taste” of a place) plays a role in quality differences. My conclusion is that location does play an important role although it differs significantly from the role terroir plays in wine.

Basically there are five factors that influence the flavor of bourbon: water, the grain recipe, fermentation, distillation, and maturation in oak.

By law bourbon must be made from at least 51% corn and typically includes some rye, barley or wheat as well. The precise ratio of grains (called the mashbill) matters a great deal but I doubt it matters where the grain was grown as long as the plants were healthy. This is the main difference between wine and whiskey with regard to terroir. For bourbon, the main ingredient could be grown anywhere.

Water however is often mentioned in Bourbon lore. Kentucky distillers insist water resting on the limestone soils of Eastern Kentucky are ideal for making Bourbon. But as far as I can tell, they are inflating its importance. What matters is that the water used to make the mash be mineral rich, alkaline (i.e. high PH) and low in iron. There are countless places around the world that would satisfy those criteria. In any case you could add calcium carbonate to the water to elevate the PH. Water is important but I doubt it is water from a specific location that matters. Famed Kentucky producer Brown-Foreman uses treated municipal water for their celebrated Old Forester bourbon.

The strain of yeast used influences the flavor of bourbon. Although many producers use commercial yeast, some cultivate their own strains and take great pains to make sure it is consistent from year to year. But that is not quite the same as using whatever ambient yeast happens to be around in the environment as  some natural winemakers do. As it is with wine, this is an under-explored dimension of terroir. But again it isn’t obvious that location is the variable here.

The distillation process differs from distillery to distillery and differences in equipment can make a substantial difference. But this has nothing to do with location.

That brings us to the most important dimension of bourbon-making—the aging process. Depending on who you ask, 50-80 percent of the flavor of Bourbon comes from the barrel. By law, Bourbon must be aged in 100% charred, new oak barrels. The minimum aging requirement is two years for a spirit to be called straight bourbon.  In addition to the degree of char, the type and quality of the wood matters a great deal and bourbon producers are careful about where they source their wood. Thus, I suppose you could argue the terroir of the wood is a factor in bourbon quality.

But the source of the wood is not the most important factor in the aging process. The most important differentiator among styles of Bourbon has to do with the location of the warehouse as well as the location of the barrels inside the warehouse. Bourbon is almost always aged in warehouses without much temperature control. Thus, the ambient temperature influences how the bourbon ages. Barrels subject to more heat will have more oak character because heat advances the chemical reactions going on in the barrel. Whiskey aged in cooler areas will age more slowly and can be aged for a longer time. Hot, dry conditions will increase evaporation thus increasing the proof of the alcohol, cool or humid conditions will inhibit evaporation keeping the alcohol levels more moderate. This applies not only to the region of the country where the aging takes place but the location in the warehouse as well. The top floors are typically warmer than the bottom floors. Many producers have a “favorite floor” where they expect to get their best whiskeys. Of course, most bourbons are blends of many barrels, a process that would diminish the influence of warehouse location. (Perhaps that is an argument for more single barrel bottlings.)

This is a clear case where location matters, not because of soil characteristics but because of ambient temperatures during aging.

Advertisements

Now I Know Why I Stopped Drinking Beer

19 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

no to beerI drank beer back in the day when the only decision was Bud or Miller. Then I discovered wine, and beer became only an occasional thirst quencher. Then craft beer came along and beer became interesting again. Artisan, local producers. Fierce arguments over purity and authenticity. Total dedication to craft. Insurgent brewers railing against Big Beer. There was a lot there for a wine lover to like.

But my interest in it again waned—to many IPA’s, too little differentiation, nothing to hold my interest.

This article in Imbibe Magazine explains what’s going on in the beer industry today, and it’s not a pretty sight. No wonder I lost interest.

Angry rhetoric has since faded like foam on an hour-old beer. Where lines were once drawn in the sand, crossed at peril to a brewery’s reputation, the sand’s now been shoveled into a snow globe and shaken willy-nilly. Forget tradition. Brewers are serving fruited goses through slushy machines and packing imperial stouts with peanut butter cups, as well as taking tea and seltzer on a hard turn.

Ownership lines are also blurring. In an era of heightened competition, with more than 7,000 breweries in America and climbing, independent breweries are teaming up to better weather the economic storm. Victory, Southern Tier and Sixpoint now comprise Artisanal Brewing Ventures, while in May, The Boston Beer Company—the makers of Samuel Adams beer—merged with Dogfish Head in a $300-million deal. It’s tempting to deem this a new beer landscape, but that’s too mild. A cultural and economic earthquake is rattling the industry’s foundation, with no certainty of how things will settle, or crumble beyond recognition.

“Teaming up to better weather the economic storm” is a polite way of saying industry consolidation. Big brewers swallowing up the little guy; the little guy trying to become a big guy so they can swallow up the little guys that are left.

As the article points out, there never was much of a commitment to localism on the part of the beer consumer. There is a good reason for that. Unlike wine, location makes little difference in beer production. It makes little difference where you get your hops or grains as long as the quality is there. Aside from the moral imperative to support your local business, there isn’t much of an argument for beer localism.

And it’s no longer about making good beer—it’s about finding a gimmick.

Breweries are entering a permissive era that’s formally blessed by the Brewers Association, which last year eliminated the requirement that a brewery’s production be mainly beer. Most prominently, boozy sparkling water has bubbled up, headlined by Boston Beer’s Truly Hard Seltzer….Branching beyond beer lets breweries flex their muscles, utilizing infrastructure and fermentation know-how to fashion newfangled beverages. …Golden Road now offers the Spiked Agua Fresca in flavors such as cucumber-lime, while 10 Barrel makes canned cocktails and the LQD Creative Liquids line, including green tea and coconut water gone hard.…It behooves breweries to create compelling experiential draws, which brings this story to the slushy machine. Breweries from Boston’s Trillium to Los Angeles Ale Works have loaded the churning contraptions with fruity sour beers and more, served frozen and sometimes topped with tiny umbrellas. “We’ve had people come in that don’t drink beer and have really gravitated toward the slushies,” …

No thanks.  These are desperation moves, flailing like a fish out of water. And it will happen to wine if industry consolidation continues. Once you lose what makes you distinctive, it’s a race to the bottom.

The Art of the Lobster Roll

16 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

coreaThe art of the lobster roll is a lot like the art of winemaking—don’t do anything to screw it up. It’s all about fresh lobster that came off the boat that morning.

I’ve been on the east coast of Nova Scotia and Maine for the past few weeks so I’ve become an expert.

Here’s a few guidelines for a righteous lobster roll.

1. You must have the proper roll. Not a hot dog bun, please no hamburger buns. The roll must have flat sides that are generously buttered and then toasted so each bite has a buttery hint. its lobster; there must be butter.

2. The lobster must be exceedingly fresh and cooked to the perfect temperature making the meat firm but never tough or mealy.

3. The lobster should be lightly dressed in just a bit of mayonnaise, to add moisture and fat. My preference is for a few thin slices of celery in the mayo for crunch and sprinkled with a few chives, but neither are necessary. Please do not put a piece of lettuce in the bun. And don’t sprinkle it with old bay seasoning. That’s just a distraction.

4. The bun should overflow with lobster. Ideally there should be a mix of claw meat and tail meat.

5.  Where you eat matters. This is the most important rule. A lobster roll must be eaten in sight of where the lobster was brought to shore, preferably in a beat up old shack on an ocean pier surrounded by lobster boats, with a briny smell in the air, seagulls on the attack and a waitress who says “labstah”.

6. There is one acceptable variation. In Connecticut they eat lobster rolls with the meat warmed and bathed in drawn butter. This is really, really good. But sadly they no longer harvest many lobsters in Connecticut due to the waters becoming too warm and so are in violation of (5). If you find this style in the proper environment you hit the jackpot.

side-streetWhere does one find this perfect lobster roll?

This mammoth sandwich at Side Street in Bar Harbor Maine had the proper mix of claw and tail meat, but they put old bay seasoning on it (why?), there was too much mayo, and it wasn’t quite as fresh as others I tasted. And the restaurant is in town elbow to elbow with hordes from the cruise ships.daves-at-halifax

At Halifax, Nova Scotia on the boardwalk downtown I had a singular taste experience. A lobster roll, one half dressed in traditional mayo with celery and one half warmed in butter. Almost perfect, but alas, it was consumed at a food court accompanied by a reggae band (who were quite good but one needs jerk chicken with ackee and saltfish when listening to reggae)

It was at Corea wharf north of Bar Harbor near the Schoodic Peninsula, where Lobster Roll satisfaction is to be found. A modestly sized sandwich of perfectly cooked, stunningly fresh claw and tail meat, perfectly dressed, overlooking the harbor pictured above—(1)-(5) satisfied well enough.coreas

Rappie Pie: An Acadian Delight

29 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Food History, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

20190828_112558We’re in Halifax, Nova Scotia which of course is known for lobster, lobster and more lobster. But you can get fresh lobster almost anywhere.  The unique, distinctive cuisine in Nova Scotia is Acadian cooking.

The Acadians are descendants of French colonists who settled in Canada’s maritime provinces in the 17th and 18th centuries. When Britain went to war with France in 1756 they were expelled by the British (some made their way to Louisiana and became known as “Cajuns”. ) After the hostilities ended some returned to New Brunswick, parts of Quebec, and Nova Scotia and today they maintain a vibrant, minority culture here, especially in the southern part of the province.

20190828_120026When researching the food ways here, the one Acadian dish I especially wanted to try was Rappie Pie. But the only restaurant I could find that serves this labor intensive dish, Cafe l’Acadie, made it only on Sunday and we were planning on heading south midweek. So I thought I would have to settle for Chicken Fricot or fishcakes. Happily, when I asked the owner about their rappie pie, he just happened to have a prized corner piece left over from the weekend so I had my rappie pie plus an impromptu lesson on how to make it.

What is rappie pie? Well it isn’t pie. Its basically a potato cake mixed with broth and baked for four hours. You start by making homemade chicken broth seasoned with summer savory, reserving the chicken meat when it is cooked. (or you can roast the chicken separately). Meanwhile you grate your potatoes, soak them in cold water to remove starch, and then put them in a towel and squeeze the crap out of them until all the water is removed. (Key point: reserve the water and measure it so you know how much was removed.) Then mix the potatoes with hot chicken stock, replacing 3/4’s of the volume of the water that was removed forming a thick paste. Then take an aluminum pan and put a layer of potato mixture on the bottom, then a layer of sliced chicken, then another layer of potatoes on top of the chicken. Then top the whole thing with a layer of salt pork strips. Put it in the oven at 425 degrees and bake for 4 hours.

The result is an intensely flavored cake, soft, creamy and fatty on the inside, with a deliciously crisp crust on the outside. Rustic and decadent.20190828_112831

They also know how to make a seafood chowder in these parts—just a touch of cream, not that heavy, gloupy stomach bomb that passes for chowder in most of the U.S.

Peameal Bacon: “Meh” to Toronto’s Signature Dish

14 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

,

pea bacon sandwichOne of my pastimes when traveling is tracking down foods unique to the area in which I’m staying—foods that I’m unlikely to find anywhere else. Hawaii has its poi, Nebraska its runzas, the upper Midwest its pasties, and Wisconsin has booyah.

You’ve never heard of, let alone tasted, these local delicacies? In this age of global cuisine and instant communication, there is a reason why they haven’t escaped the confines of local food traditions—they’re not very good. You would find them appealing only if you grew up with them—the taste of home always tastes good. I realize I just made myself a boatload of enemies but truth be told these dishes weren’t worth the effort to track them down.

carousel bakeryBut nevertheless I persist. We were in Toronto last week, a great food town which I’ll post more on later. Toronto’s signature dish is the peameal bacon sandwich and so that was #1 on the list of dishes I had to have. The version at Carousel Bakery, housed inside a bustling downtown market, even had Anthony Bourdain’s imprimatur, and it appears in the book 1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die. I was sure this one would beat the odds and would be worth an Uber fare to track it down.

So what is peameal bacon? It’s unsmoked pork loin, cured in a brine of salt and sugar, trimmed of fat, and rolled in cornmeal to create a thin crust. Then it’s fried on the griddle, slapped on a soft bun and served with a variety of condiments. Carousel’s version had three generous slabs on each sandwich. It’s meaty and very tender but fans of what’s called bacon in the U.S. will find it bland. It lacks the crave-able smoky, fatty, salty, caramelized intensity of it’s cousin taken from the belly. It’s just very “porky”. The version at Carousel also had very little cornmeal on it. A crunchy crust would have vastly improved the sandwich. (Peameal bacon by the way is not Canadian bacon, which is smoked and not really Canadian at all. The name “peameal” comes from the ground yellow peas that were ground into a meal and used as a coating on the meat to preserve it in the 19th Century.)

So this goes on my list of regional foods that aren’t quite worthy of their hype although I must say it beats poi, runzas, pasties or booyah by a considerable distance. I might order it again but wouldn’t spend $25 on an Uber ride to find it.

Visiting Juneau

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

IMG_3544No, as far as I know, they don’t make wine in Juneau. But the food is good, the culture is interesting, and the natural resources breathtaking. My excuse for going was the International Food Blogger’s Conference, which highlighted Juneau’s burgeoning food scene. But you don’t need an excuse to go; it has a singular charm worth experiencing.

IMG_3560Juneau is an old mining and fishing village accessible only by boat or plane. It’s firmly attached to the mainland but the steep mountains and treacherous weather make road building inordinately difficult and expensive. Nevertheless, somehow, it became Alaska’s capitol. The gold mines shut down years ago but the protected harbor was ideal for cruise ships exploring the stunning Alaska coastline. Today it’s fishing, government, and tourism that keep this city of around 30,000 permanent residents afloat. Everything not grown or manufactured on a narrow strip of flat land between the mountains and the water must be flown or shipped in, which means everything is expensive here.

IMG_3355The cruise ships, 3 or 4 towering, floating hotels, arrive each morning and the area around the harbor gradually fills with people throughout the day. Jewelry and Native American curio shops line the streets with aggressive sales people who hound you as you stroll about. I found nothing of interest here and one restaurant I sampled, called Wicked Fish, was wicked dreadful—think Red Lobster at twice the price.

juneau 2The one exception in the immediate vicinity of the cruise ships was Tracy’s Crab Shack. Justly famous—an episode of Top Chef’s “Quick Fire” was filmed here—they serve delicious, melt in your mouth, fresh King Crab. Don’t miss it. You won’t find better.

To experience the real Juneau you have to head further into town although still within walking distance of the port. Coffee shops, breweries, distilleries, and quality shops abound. But the real attraction for me of course was the food scene. With an abundance of fresh seafood harvested right out their front door and a steady stream of tourists seeking an alternative to cruise ship fare, Juneau has been able to attract and support talented chefs with a knack for creative dishes.

James Beard Rising Star semifinalist Beau Schooler’s plate of Alaskan Salmon Chorizo, with brussels sprouts and chili lime accompanied by Alaska Spot Prawn Escabeche with rhubarb and ginger was the highlight of the conference reception. His restaurant, Boca al Lupo, serving Italian-inspired cuisine with seasonal, nightly seafood specials was the best restaurant meal we had during our visit.

For something quite different try V’s Cellar Door—a Korean/Mexican fusion restaurant serving casual dishes like fusion nachos with Korean cabbage slaw and Bulgogi steak. For regional specialty items The Salmon Shoppe is a must visit—where else in the world will you find Reindeer sausage or Kelp Salsa?

For an overview of the food scene, I highly recommend the tours by Juneau Food Tours.

IMG_3402But don’t spend all your time eating. The eagles, bears, whales, and sea lions will be disappointed if they don’t have the opportunity to entertain you. The whale watching is usually successful. The whales follow regular feeding routes and the naturalists on board know where to find juneau-bearthem. Eagles in some places are as common as sparrows—that is only a bit of exaggeration. And I found that encountering a bear when you’re out walking is not out of the question.

Viewing a real, live glacier is also an experience worth having. The Mendenhall glacier is easily accessible via bus, tour company or rental car. You can actually reach the glacier via a long hike. But the shorter trails near the visitor’s center get you close to it.  But don’t wait too long. It is receding.

The people in Juneau can be a hoot. They are very much aware of their isolation and independence and wear it like a badge. This is a unique city. There is no place like it in the U.S.IMG_3481

Juneau: Cruise Ships, Midnight Twilight, Ubiquitous Seafood

21 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

juneau-`

From the hotel at 10:00 P.M.

Dusk is usually fleeting. Light and dark briefly touch and then pull away as if feeling discomfort in each other’s presence. But here, in June, the sun never really sets. Light and dark linger as if unsure of their aim. Dusk happens between midnight and 2:00 A.M. after which morning breaks immediately. A world without night is a world without mystery. It’s unsettling.

juneau 4This year we decided to forego the wine blogger’s conference in Australia and attend the food blogger’s conference held this year in Juneau. The conference itself is mostly about social media marketing—a topic about which I care little. But conferences are seldom about the theme of the conference and more about the culture that provides the venue. And Juneau is as fascinating as it is beautiful. It’s really on old mining town and fishing village that’s been blessed with 1.2 million tourists each year pouring out of cruise ships to sample the local cuisine and shop.

The city is crammed into a sliver of flat land between the ocean and precipitous mountain slopes that make road building prohibitively expensive.  Thus there are no roads that connect Juneau to the rest of the American continent. It’s accessible only by boat and plane. Their food is foraged from the ocean; about 60% of the fresh seafood caught in the U.S. each year comes from Alaskan waters and fish farming here is illegal.

There may be no better place in the world to eat fresh fish, and Juneau has developed a thriving food scene. Thanks to Midgie at Juneau Food Tours for a wonderfully informative tour.

juneau 2Highlights from this day of exploring Juneau’s food culture include crab cakes from Tracy’s Crab Shack, this utterly strange blue tea made from dried blueberries and devil’s club, a locally foraged herb, found at Harbor Tea and Spice, and a salsa made from dried kelp, sampled at The Salmon Shop.juneau3

Under the Umbrian Sun

06 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

IMG_3092Tuscany gets all the attention from vacationers heading to Italy. Go there if you like tour buses, hordes of curio shoppers, and high prices. If something about that doesn’t appeal to you, Umbria is right next door—undiscovered, relatively inexpensive and simply gorgeous.

We arrived at the villa we are sharing with friends on Saturday after the usual travel frustrations, which were quickly forgotten, erased by the charm of this hilltop estate located a half hour from Perugia.

IMG_3103Umbria is a region of steeply sloping hills thickly carpeted with oak and olive trees, vineyards, and bursts of color from the wildflowers encouraged by the late spring rains that are now receding in favor of brilliant, sunny mornings,  warm, hazy afternoons, and breezy, chill evenings.  The forests hum with life, the air permeated with the fragrance of rosemary and the scent of assorted blossoms, and birdsong drowned out only by the sound of your own footsteps. This is a different kind of travel for us—rooted in one place rather than dashing about, seeking repose rather than revelation.IMG_3095

After a day of rest and recovery my first activity was preparing a welcome meal in the Italian style—a multi-course dinner for six that unfolded over several hours and which included a variety of antipasti—roasted eggplant salad, salmon foam served over radicchio, and a bean spread and truffle-topped bruschetta—mushroom risotto, pork braised in milk with roasted potatoes, and creamy gelato drizzled with limoncello. Wine stars included a lovely Fiano di Avellino and a Taurasi,  both from Feudi  De San Gregorio secured by Adam and Joey on their brief tour of southern Italy.

But20190603_173506 this part of Umbria is known for its Sagrantino. My introduction to this little known varietal was a 2006 Della Cima from Villa Mongalli. Age had softened the notoriously tough tannins and this wine made a favorable first impression—it’s Chianti on steroids, cherry and earth but with muscle and concentration. The winery that figures out how to tame the tannins when young will put this varietal on the international stage.

Day three included a truffle hunt. It’s early June, several months away from prime truffle season. But in this part of Italy they harvest summer truffles—a less expensive, less flavorful version of the Burgundy black truffle which will not be available until September. IMG_3121

Female pigs were traditionally used to hunt truffles because they have a good sense of smell and respond to a male sex hormone which is part of the chemical make up of truffles. But the use of pigs here is outlawed because they destroy the truffle beds which must be preserved if the beds are to be productive in subsequent years. Thus, dogs trained to lay down when they smell the truffle are used instead.

I expected an arduous and likely unsuccessful trek through wilderness in order to find the truffles. But truffle hunter Massimo knew the general location where truffles are likely to be found and Yuma the truffle dog dutifully followed his commands, successfully discovering several truffles in the first half hour of our hunt. Yuma received a treat after each success but the dog seemed to need little encouragement, plunging into the hunt with tail-wagging enthusiasm whenever Maximo pointed at the happy hunting grounds.IMG_3124

Alas, despite the successful hunt and stimulating hike, the results were a bit disappointing. Summer truffles are not nearly as aromatic or flavorful as autumn truffles—they have a faint nut-like flavor and subtle earthy aroma but lack the explosive pungency of the black or still more powerful white truffles.

IMG_3127The culinary discovery of the day was actually the wild asparagus that Massimo harvested for us.

Some Good News for Millennials and Bad News for All of Us

01 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Wine Culture

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

millenial incomeWe’ve heard a lot about how millennials have reduced spending power, thanks to the 2008 recession, and are slow to enter the market for premium wine. So this graph caught my eye. Statistical results depend on how you gather the data and this is only one data point so take it with a grain of salt. But Kevin Drum at Mother Jones usually does a good job with statistical analysis.

Millennial incomes are no lower than previous generations. Nor, generally speaking, are millennials more in debt, less likely to own a home, or less likely to spend money. You can pick out a few small differences depending on how you cherry pick years and which generations you compare to, but millennials right now are roughly as well off as young people in previous generations and their spending habits are pretty similar too.

I can hear the wine industry breathing a sigh of relief, although if this is true that removes one explanation for why millennials aren’t buying as much wine as expected.

The bad news for all of us is that we live in a world where we have to endure the thought of more products like this one:

strawberry-red-wine-cremeI do know people who occasionally drink wine for breakfast. But who wants wine in their yoghurt? This is from the Aussie-inspired Wallaby brand. They do like Vegemite down under so maybe this shouldn’t surprise us. But I would assume they’ve done market research and concluded this is worth a try.

Why Do Proponents of Mindful Eating Ignore Pleasure?

01 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, The Ethics of Eating

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

mindful eatingMindful eating is healthful for lots of reasons. To my mind, it’s important because only by thinking about food can we maximize the pleasure we get from it. When we eat distractedly we miss out on pleasure because we’re not focused. But “mindful eating” means something quite different to most of its proponents. Taking their cue from Buddhist meditation,  this article from the NY Times is typical of most commentary on mindful eating:

In the eyes of some experts, what seems like the simplest of acts — eating slowly and genuinely relishing each bite — could be the remedy for a fast-paced Paula Dean Nation in which an endless parade of new diets never seems to slow a stampede toward obesity…Could a discipline pioneered by Buddhist monks and nuns help teach us how to get healthy, relieve stress and shed many of the neuroses that we’ve come to associate with food?…

Mindful eating is meant to nudge us beyond what we’re craving so that we wake up to why we’re craving it and what factors might be stoking the habit of belly-stuffing.

Notice that the purpose of mindful eating is not to get more enjoyment from food. It is to improve our health. The pursuit of pleasure is not sufficient reason to be thoughtful about food—it must contribute to a devotional practice or inhibit our tendency to overeat.

Healthy eating is, of course, a good thing and if mindful eating encourages it then all the better. The oddity is not the doctors and nutritionists that, for good reason, advocate it but the fact that the public seems receptive to the message only if it will improve health outcomes. Enhancing the quality of pleasure isn’t on the table.

This reminds me of a peculiar post a few years ago by evolutionary psychologist David Barash who extols the virtues of the Costa Rican diet that consists mainly of rice, beans, and fruit often eaten three times a day. The Nepalese diet consisting mostly of lentils comes in for some praise as well.

Barash wonders, in light of our unhealthy fast food diet, why we don’t have a similar healthy, inexpensive but one-dimensional diet.

And I can’t help noting that it’s unfortunate—maybe even tragic—that the United States, for example, doesn’t have an equivalent of rice and beans or dal bhat: a basic, healthy, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare default meal. Instead, we have “Happy Meals” that are nutritionally miserable, or variants on Coca Cola, Doritos, and cheeseburgers: high in salt, fat, sugar and, ironically, cost as well.

This is a bizarre suggestion. Why is boring good? The problem with the American fast food/packaged food diet is not that it contains too much diversity. It is not as if the choice between Burger King and Wendy’s is a real choice. The problem is we don’t take the time to distinguish and focus on genuine quality. We approach food as if it were fuel—an assumption that underlies both linked articles.

Unlike Costa Rica, we are a nation of immigrants. If we wish to avoid the sugar/salt/fat-laden American diet, we have a wealth of healthy, inexpensive options to choose from including rice and beans from Latin America, lentil-based dishes from India, the various healthy cuisines from the Mediterranean, and stir-fries from Asia.

The many food choices we have in the U.S. are a good thing. But that virtue is undermined by the seemingly inexhaustible search for convenience and indifference to the quality of pleasure, both of which are encouraged by the idea that food is merely fuel rather than one everyday focal point for leading a life of excellence, which must include pleasure.