
Is Food the New Sex? - robg
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/38245724.html
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kurtosis
Moralizing over food preparation nothing new - I have a hard time believing
that it is a substitute for moralizing over sexual behavior. Doesn't anyone
remember the four food groups? Three square meals? (even though they were
marketing ploys to get people to eat more food, they still tapped into this
good/bad for you moralizing) Going back even further we can come up with
endless examples of food preparation being moralized, two of the most
elaborate systems are the kosher or halal laws.

The evolutionary psychologists have proposed that elaborate rituals and taboos
about food preparation - or the seemingly arbitrary tastes and revulsions
people have (e.g. I can't stand marshmallows) are built into humanity to keep
people from fraternising with foreign tribes. I'm not sure if I believe this
theory, but the fact that the psychologists felt it needed an explanation,
suggests that food morality is close to a human universal.

Sexual morality has also been observed to wax and wane over generations. Never
has the cost of sex been so low because of effective birth control, but there
were still times in earlier history where sexual mores were a lot looser than
the 1950's USA.

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mattmaroon
"What happens when... adult human beings are more or less free to have all the
sex and food they want?"

Well, I read Motley Crue's biography, and the answer is nothing good.

------
hendler
No.

My relationship with food has changed a lot in my lifetime, from frozen
dinners of steak Salisbury to vegan/raw/organic experimentation.

Speaking from opinion, I do think food awareness is rising for some, but
falling for most. Very small percent of "first world" folks are agricultural
and there is less understanding of where food comes from.

Post AIDS sex certainly doesn't seem like food to me.

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tptacek
I got a few grafs in, and then I read:

"Both, if pursued without regard to consequence, can prove ruinous not only to
oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself."

and for "both" I substituted "food" and "sex":

Sex, if pursued without regard to consequence, can prove ruinous not only to
oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself.

Food, if pursued without regard to consequence, can prove ruinous not only to
oneself, but also to other people, and even to society itself.

And, seeing that neither substitution yielded a true statement, I stopped
reading.

Just thought you'd like to know.

~~~
mattmaroon
The food part certainly is a true statement. It's pretty clear both how it can
ruin you, and how it (in the form of the processed food diet) has ruined the
American health system. Even people like me, who eat pretty healthily, end up
subsidizing the lifestyle diseases of the rest of the population that doesn't.

~~~
tptacek
You will have a hard time backing up the argument that American eating habits
have proven "ruinous" to society.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Our eating habits are causing serious and pervasive health problems. For
instance, life expectancy is several years lower than other rich countries.
Increased demand for medicine due to overeating-induced disease is straining
our economy, and is a serious point of political contention.

"Ruinous" may be an exaggeration, depending on how you interpret the word. But
it's fair to say that overeating is a serious problem for society and the
individual.

~~~
tptacek
Increased demand for medicine, straining medicare budgets, is a side effect of
the increased availability of life-prolonging medications that weren't
available to our parents; for instance, one of the largest pharmaceutical
blockbusters of the last decade has been Lipitor, the market substitute for
which was simply death.

It's a particularly lame, superficial argument to point out that overeating
(or, in my opinion, the saturation of our diet with high fructose corn syrup
and partially hydrogenated fats) causes health problems. Of course it does.
Despite that, our life expectancy continues to increase.

Where's your evidence that it's lack of personal responsibility that is
straining the health care system? From my vantage point, the problems we face
are structural; we have a uniquely fragile and inefficient health care system,
and --- what a coincidence --- a uniquely corporatized system of private
health insurance funded by employers.

~~~
mattmaroon
Our life expectancy, as you mean it, has not significantly increased in a very
long time. Overall life expectancy appears to have increased because it's
generally expressed as from birth, meaning that small reductions in infant
mortality have large effects.

The life expectancy of an 18 year old now is barely less than it was before
even antibiotics. The last really large jump came with the advent of indoor
plumbing.

If you want more about the effects of diet on health, read In Defense of Food
by Michael Pollan.

~~~
tptacek
I concede nothing in my core argument --- I read through this writer's
previous work at the Turbo-Conservative Hoover Institution, and I'm convinced
she's a culture warrior, and that the subtext of this article is that if we
fail to oversee the compliance of our neighbors sex lives to her standards,
we'll all die of Super AIDS --- but the bit about life expectancy vs. infant
mortality was new to me, and thanks.

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noonespecial
The ancient Hebrews did some serious moralizing over food as well. Kosher is
as kosher does.

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ojbyrne
I was so hoping this was the J. Edgar Hoover Institute, it would have been so
much more fun: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Sexuality>

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th0ma5
I'm not sure, but I do know that when I read most food blogs, to me at least,
it seems like a fetish, and it grosses me out.

