Given that my last two posts might position me as something of a foodie, a skeptical step back might be in order.

For some people food is a truly important aspect of their lives. For people who garden and eat seasonal foods, I imagine their involvement with food is something akin to the cyclical ceremonial calendars of the religions. Only instead of serving to reify the connection to the sky gods of the major religions, the rituals of food serve to root people to the biorhythms of the Earth. And it probably occupies a similar psychological function, connecting a person to a larger story, cordoning off a ritual time separate from the monotony of the world (in this case the timeless homogeneity of the globalized food supply chain), demonstrating and reaffirming principles by which a community lives (e.g. vegetarians).

While this may be the case for a minority of us, for most foodies it’s the exact opposite: it’s just another commodity fetish.