Giant food

We’re under siege. Run for cover. Giant food is out to destroy society. I’m not kidding. A giant burger is going to walk through your door and smack you square on the cakehole. OK, I’m being hysterical, but can I be blamed? Slouched, I was aimlessly flicking through a plethora of seemingly infinite Sky channels and, after pausing on a food channel of sorts, I began watching Man Vs. Food and Dinners, Drive-ins and Dives as finger fatigue prevented me from voyaging deeper into the abyss of mediocre programming.

I was appalled by what the shows were: glorifications of eating competitions, gluttony and overeating. I couldn’t fathom why, at a time when obesity is rife in the western world and developing countries are more poverty stricken than ever, the presenters didn’t have anything better to do with their lives. Seriously, I thought they were corrosive, insecure people who maintained disrespect for food.

Days later – to add to my dismay – I saw a photo of a person trying complete, ‘The Subway Challenge’ on Facebook. That second act of food waste broadened my growing concerns about how the ubiquity of food, in the west, breeds a concurrent disrespect for its purpose. Knowingly or unknowingly, people are too comfortable with trivial food waste and unconcerned about sharing it with those whom need it critically.

Celebrity chefs, including Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall et al, have already made progress toward raising the awareness of conscious, ethical and sustainable food sourcing and healthy eating, which both foster an indirect respect for food and its core purpose: sustenance; however, their plights induced transient changes in public attitude, at best, and their post-campaign legacies are far from entrenched in our day-to-day routines. After all, we are creatures of habit and real change only takes place once we’re enabled to make it effortlessly.

I welcome initiatives like Go Halfsies, which encourage portion control and responsible eating, but more needs to be done to increase the respect people have for food and discourage trivial waste. First, I believe the directors of food TV need to frame cooking and eating creatively yet responsibility by taking items such as ‘The Omelette Challenge’ on Saturday Kitchen, eating competitions and giant food features completely off air. Secondly, supermarkets and restaurants need to start educating the public about calorie equivalents close to points of sale and simultaneously become change makers e.g. providing menus listing not just food, but the cost of sending equivalent calories to a deprived parts of the world, and then providing the opportunity to do it at the end of a meal—instead of merely requesting tips.

Of course, insensitivity toward food waste seems to be greater in the US where increased food choice has heightened expectations of uniform quality – at detrimental costs – and quantity. One can only hope it’s a culture that’s vehemently curtailed as opposed to primed for export.

(photo props)