
How We Got from Twinkies to Tofu - helloworld
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/books/review/hippie-food-jonathan-kauffman.html
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danans
One thing that Pollan (the reviewer) doesn't discuss here is the degree to
which food culture and food habits intersect with regional and class identity
formation and tribalism.

Food habits and trends seem to work both for and against those tendencies. On
the one hand, foods once associated with hippies like tofu or almond milk can
be bought anywhere there is a major grocery store. Even the taste for
spicy/piquant food has become quite normalized and not anymore uniquely
characteristic of particular ethnic communities.

On the other hand, the kind of places you actually buy your food are highly
tribalized, with some socioeconomic classes preferring local and uniquely
branded food and groceries, while others prefer chain type fast food and more
"common" grocery stores.

It's fascinating that food has both the power to bring people together and
also to polarize and separate them.

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spodek
The book's author was interviewed on the Bite podcast:
[https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/01/thank-hippies-
for-t...](https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/01/thank-hippies-for-
these-6-food-trends).

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phnofive
Perhaps this has been discussed in the past, but it would it be reasonable to
mark reviews/promotions as such? It’s certainly clear once landing on the
page, but I still went in expecting a discussion of the title, rather than a
nudge to read a new book.

~~~
msrpotus
It’s a book review: the article is a discussion of a new book. That’s not the
same as an ad. No one paid the NYTimes to publish this and it could have just
as easily been a negative review.

~~~
Alex3917
> No one paid the NYTimes to publish this and it could have just as easily
> been a negative review.

NYTimes is primarily ad supported, of course they were paid to publish it.

~~~
randomdrake
> NYTimes is primarily ad supported, of course they were paid to publish it.

This is not true.

"The company said on Thursday that it added 157,000 net digital-only
subscriptions in the fourth quarter of the year, pushing overall subscription
revenue to more than $1 billion for the year. Subscription revenue now
accounts for 60 percent of the company’s total revenue."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/new-york-
times-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/new-york-times-
company-earnings.html)

~~~
Alex3917
I mean maybe not for last quarter specifically, but look at the last fifty
years overall.

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spenrose
My personal account:

[http://www.sampenrose.net/sprouts/](http://www.sampenrose.net/sprouts/)

which I deliberately paralleled with Free Software:

[http://www.sampenrose.net/tools/](http://www.sampenrose.net/tools/)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_Why does a busy software engineer cook dinner for his children on a weekday
instead of purchasing affordable ready-to-eat meals the way most sensible
parents do?_

In my case, it's because it really doesn't take that long to put together a
simple meal, and living in a rural area far from good grocery stores &
restaurants, I don't have many good eating-out choices anyway.

Maybe it's also because I learned to cook at an early age and I'm trying to
encourage my sons' interest in cooking by showing them it's not this
complicated, time-consuming task it's often made out to be.

I like good food. I raise chickens, the beef I eat is raised by a relative of
a friend, I have a garden in summer, but I'm not a foodie. I like basic,
peasant food.

But I think that above all, it's because I really just want a simple, relaxed
life. Cooking the meals myself is both a means to that end and a way to keep
my family happy and fed.

~~~
spenrose
That all makes sense. One of the themes of my piece is how things look when
you stand outside of your own perspective and ask how _people like you_ came
to behave in the ways _characteristic of their culture_.

