I’m interrupting TLT’s “It Takes a Village to Pack a Lunch” series to tell you about a debate over family dinner that’s erupted in the blogosphere — and why just about everyone involved is ticking me off.
The scuffle began last week when Amanda Marcotte of Slate‘s XX Factor blog wrote “Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner,” a post that went viral and also prompted a heated rebuttal from Joel Salatin, writing for Mother Earth News. (Salatin, for those unfamiliar with him, is a farmer, writer and speaker who promotes sustainable farming and was extensively profiled in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.) But although Salatin turned his ire on Marcotte, her post did little more than recap a new article by three North Carolina State University sociologists entitled “The Joy of Cooking?” So let’s go right to the source of the controversy.
The upshot of “The Joy of Cooking?” is that we’ve all been fed an overly-romanticized view of home cooking by people like Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, but this “emerging standard is a tasty illusion, one that is moralistic, and rather elitist.” In the real world, according to the authors, mothers who cook family dinner are uniformly beleaguered and exhausted, challenged by lack of time, high food costs, ungrateful family members, picky children and, in some cases, the lack of cooking facilities.
As a five-night-a-week slinger-of-the-family-hash, I can certainly relate to many of the complaints relayed by the women interviewed for the article, and I also agree that sometimes the experts urging us to cook conveniently gloss over some of the drudgery involved. For example, back in 2011 I was annoyed when Jamie Oliver “demonstrated” to a family on his television show that cooking a meal at home is quicker than going out for fast food. That’s true, up to a point, but Oliver omitted the considerable time it takes to go through recipes, write up a shopping list, buy all of the groceries (we won’t even count the inevitable second trip to the store for that one forgotten but critical ingredient) and then clean up after the meal. When you add up all of that time, the allure of a trip to Pizza Hut is far more understandable.
But even though I thought “The Joy of Cooking?” made some fair points along these lines, it’s abundantly clear that the researchers went into this project with an agenda — and it wasn’t just finding out what home cooking is like for many American women. Rather, they seem hell-bent on painting people like Pollan and Bittman as snobby, out-of-touch elitists, illustrated by the fact that they snarkily refer to Pollan not as a “journalist” or “writer,” but instead as “America’s most influential ‘foodie-intellectual.” In fact, “foodie” is used throughout the piece (which is rather jarring in a supposedly academic work) to describe those who promote family dinner, implying that their view stems from self-indulgent “food hobbyism” instead of reasoned analysis about how widespread home cooking might affect our food system. The article is also illustrated with lots of 1950s homemakers in their gleaming kitchens — a device I, too, once used to poke fun at elitist thinking applied to real world problems.
But the real evidence of the authors’ agenda is their definition of “family dinner,” which completely stacks the deck in favor of the grim conclusions they reached, conclusions which are then used to supposedly knock experts like Pollan and Bittman off their pedestals. They write:
“[t]hough the mothers we met were squeezed for time, they were still expected to produce elaborate meals cooked from scratch.” [Emphasis mine.]
In another instance they write:
“being poor makes it nearly impossible to enact the foodie version of a home-cooked meal. The ingredients that go into meals considered to be healthy—fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats—are expensive.” [Emphasis mine.]
But who says family dinner must be “elaborate,” “from scratch” and/or a “foodie-version of a home-cooked meal?” Are we to believe that when the researchers asked their “150 black, white, and Latina mothers from all walks of life” about “family dinner,” all of them — right down to the woman living with three other people in a flea- and roach-infested, kitchen-less motel room — were thinking “Martha-Stewart-worthy meal,” instead of, say, a humble box of spaghetti and jar of sauce? Or did the researchers first plant the notions of “from scratch,” “elaborate,” “fresh” and “whole grain” into their conversations, subtly or overtly, and then predictably find that many women find it hard to prepare meals reaching that high bar? Given that the authors (1) don’t share their questioning methodology; (2) offer us only a few choice anecdotes instead of hard data; and (3) have a clear anti-“foodie” agenda, I have no choice but to be skeptical of their sweeping conclusions about women’s dislike of cooking.
But now let’s turn to Salatin. After getting so riled up by “The Joy of Cooking?,” I was just itching for his rebuttal — but I wasn’t expecting Salatin to get on such a high horse to deliver it that it’s a miracle we can hear him from up there.
Salatin kicks things off by positing that “the average American” is “probably far more interested and knowledgeable about the latest belly-button piercing in Hollywood celebrity culture than what will become flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone at 6 p.m.” whereas “In the circles I run in and market to, the home-cooked meal is revered as the ultimate expression of food integrity.”
In the circles I run in, snootily bashing the very people you’re trying to educate is not such a great tactic. But I digress.
Salatin goes on to weigh down the poor family dinner with such profound significance that it would break the average dinner plate:
The home-cooked meal indicates a reverence for our bodies’ fuel, a respect for biology, and a committed remedial spirit toward all the shenanigans in our industrial, pathogen-laden, nutrient-deficient food-and-farming system.
All kidding aside, I don’t disagree with Salatin here, but if the NC State researchers’ offended me with their anti-elitist bias, it’s almost perfectly mirrored by Salatin’s scathing antipathy for middle America in his piece:
Why doesn’t Marcotte, rather than whining about unappreciated women, write instead about families who seem to think sports leagues and biggest-screen TVs are more important than health? . . . .
Here’s the question I would like to ask these families: “Are you spending time or money on anything unnecessary?” Cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, soft drinks, lottery tickets, PeopleMagazine, TV, cell phone, soccer games, potato chips . . . ? Show me the household devoid of any of these luxuries, then let’s talk. . . .
Soccer moms driving their kiddos half a day one way to a tournament, stopping at the drive-by for “chicken” nuggets, and then dismissing the kitchen as “too stressful” is an upside-down value system. And how many of the men whining about not liking what they’re being fed spend their Saturdays on the riding mower managing a monoculture, fertilized ecological-dead-zone of a suburban lawn, rather than using their resources to grow something nutritious for their families and wholesome for the planet? When do we start talking about them? Hmmmmm?
Isn’t there a way to say that families short on time or money for cooking might find those resources if they rejiggered their priorities, without letting your obvious contempt for those priorities virtually drip off the page? Meanwhile, someone really needs to tell Salatin that asking Americans to trade in their cell phones for anything is a guaranteed lost cause.
So if the NC State researchers and Salatin both annoyed me in this debate, who comes out smelling like a rose?
That would be Megan McArdle, a Bloomberg opinion columnist who has her own issues with “The Joy of Cooking?” and takes them on with terrific writing, a lot of humor — even a few recipe ideas. I hadn’t heard of McArdle before Michael Pollan tweeted her piece over the weekend, but I might just have a new girl crush.
Check out McArdle’s “Feminism Starts in the Kitchen” and see what you think.
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Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2014 Bettina Elias Siegel
Donna says
Go Bettina!!
CrunchyMama says
Why I’m ticked off: when do these articles address MEN’S role in family meals? I think I’ve seen a single mention, only in passing. Maybe we’re going after the wrong culprit(s) here…. *wink*
Casey says
I can think of many things that I do for my family’s benefit that are a PIA. Want to help me with a study to show how doing laundry is elitist and unappreciated by family members?
Gillian says
Well said, Bettina. Will the smug judgment of others ever end?
Grace @eatdinner says
Thank you Bettina for a great rebuttal. My eyes rolled a bit when I saw these sweeping conclusions were based on only 150 interviews , but reading the original source, I am pretty outraged. The authors seem to set up home-cooked family dinner as an impossible ideal, and low and behold, they find out they are right. My research and literature reviews (with far bigger Ns) show that, though planning and preparing meals takes time and effort, people report feeling happier and eating healthier when they share meals. But my advice is always: skip the guilt and the pressure! Family meals work better when the focus is on being together, not re-creating some impossible ideal.
Aviva says
Bettina, once again, you saw all the things I wish I could articulate so beautifully and thoughtfully. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, humor and perspective with us.
Dina Rose says
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, Bettina. But I do agree that cooking family dinner gets held up to enormously high standards, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write about, tweet about, or FB about their plain old spaghetti and jarred sauce dinner. On the contrary, whenever someone is brave enough to talk about frozen dinners and other short cuts they use, it seems like people blast them. I’m not sure that’s elitist, but it certainly isn’t welcoming. And I cook dinner almost every night.
Kerry Eady says
For the past 2.5 years I’ve been a single mum with 3 kids at home, My kitchen is a hotplate, toaster, and slow cooker, we wash dishes in the bathroom sink. I have had cold storage in the basement and just two weeks ago got a bar fridge from a friend, and I work from 8:30am to 5:30 pm. Our household income is below the poverty line. I take my bread batter to work and bake it there on friday afternoons. Now, I don’t live in a food desert and have the ability to volunteer weekends etc on farms in exchange for some of our food but we have a home cooked dinner 5 nights out of 7, hot breakfasts at least 3 times a week and my kids lunches are all basic whole foods. There are no artfully cut up fruits and veggies they are just happy I wash their carrots for them! It is a priority of mine, I have a supportive community and school too. I just wish people would admit it simply isn’t important to them and as consumers start demanding whole food, healthy food packaged convenience foods (which are available in Europe – why not here?). I can’t find that at a price point I can afford so I have to make it all. AND I LIVE IN A PLACE WITH ZERO PUBLIC TRANSIT AND I DON’T DRIVE!!! i COOK WHAT I HAVE IN THE HOUSE EACH WEEK – no running to the store for missing ingredients – I improvise and have a set of standard dishes I make without needing to look up recipes. – sometimes it’s a lot of cabbages and kale and potatoes and eggs all week and that’s just fine.
Dana says
Just read your post and wanted to say you sound like a really great mom who is setting a good example for your family
Robin Poe says
The concept that cooking from scratch is something poor people can’t afford is nonsense. I developed certain allergies to certain food additives (grain and soy derivatives), so I am forced to cook from scratch, and from much more expensive ingredients. Even with expensive ingredients, I found my food bill went down about 30%. Why? because the biggest markup in food is the processing and packaging. Buying in bulk and cooking from scratch will reduce your food costs, and reduce the waste added to the landfill. So break out the old Betty Crocker cookbook and save money.
Sandy says
I assigned each of my two sons a night a week to plan and prepare a meal. Yes it was hard. Yes it was more work. Yes I was tired. But now I have two sons who are both great cooks. And they cook nutritious meals because I sat them down and read labels with them. And became a vegetarian when they did. And became vegan when they did – and we all learned a lot. What do you learn with you go to Pizza Hut? Nada.
Janet Nezon says
Bettina, once again you’ve nailed it. Savvy, eloquent and exactly the kind of response that this issue needed. Heartfelt thanks to you.
(p.s. thanks for the link to Megan’s article – she’s awesome!)
Sharon Badian says
Amen! Why does everyone insist on heaping all these conditions onto home cooking? Given how awful the vast majority of processed and fast food is, you’d think it would be easy to improve our diets with some simple home cooking tips. But, no, we get hung up on a whole lot of other things. The saying goes “Perfect is the enemy of good.” Let’s stop arguing about perfect.
I teach college students to cook. Basic cooking. Nothing fancy. It’s done fast and it’s fairly cheap. Is it perfect? No. But, it’s way better than Ramen or Taco Bell, two primary college foods in my college town (where I might add, an awful lot of residents are obsessed with perfect). I also volunteer with Cooking Matters (www.cookingmatters.org) and they do the same thing – teaching people eligible for SNAP benefits how to cook real, nutritious food at home for their families. Not hard. Takes some work. The students are interested and happy for the direction. There’s a need out there but we sit around and argue about elitism.
And I agree with you on that Jamie Oliver segment in the 1st Food Revolution series. I think he’s learned a few things since then, thank goodness, and is a much better spokesperson for home cooking because of it.