Political Aftertaste

Have you heard of the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn? It’s become the ultimate example of the trendy, PC grocery store. It’s more than one of those stores where most every product is labeled as environmentally safe or free range — it’s a place where the members recently held a vote on whether to boycott Israeli food products. In short, it makes Whole Foods sound like Walmart; in fact, some Park Slope residents have been up in arms because a Whole Foods is moving into town. Some parents in Park Slope have even made it known that they’d like to ban ice cream trucks from the local park.
 

Even The Daily Show thinks this co-op is over the top.

Most of us can laugh from a distance at the self-serious PSFC shoppers and their need to politicize every bite they eat. But unfortunately I think their mentality of food-buying-as-activism is creeping ever closer to the cultural mainstream.

Starbucks has gone all-in to support of same-sex marriage. In response, the National Organization for Marriage has started a “Dump Starbucks” campaign. Starbucks is following in the path of Ben & Jerry’s, which has used its ice cream containers to promote a number of lefty causes, including gay marriage. Meanwhile, Chick-Fil-A has unintentionally become embroiled in the SSM debate, as I’ve mentioned.

I don’t drink coffee, but if I did, I wouldn’t want to feel like I was taking sides in a heated cultural debate by ordering a Starbucks latte. And while I’m sympathetic to the general religious outlook of Chick-Fil-A, I eat there because I like the food, not because I’m trying to make a point or support a certain cause. I don't agree with Greece's economic philosophy, but I'm not going to stop eating Greek yogurt (a lot of which is made in the States, I know). I'm not amused by Miracle Whip's apparently serious use of socialist iconography but it's the taste that really keeps me from spreading it on my sandwich. It’s about the product, not the politics. Have we been brainwashed into thinking that we must only patronize businesses we fully agree with?

I give Time.com blogger Josh Ozersky credit for saying that although he doesn’t agree with Chick-Fil-A’s pro-traditional-marriage stance, he won’t let that stop him from eating there. “[B]usinesses should be judged on what they do — to their customers, their employees, their suppliers and their chickens — and not on what they do with their profits. That’s part of living in a free society too,” he writes, perhaps not realizing that leftist protesters don’t actually want a free society.

Of course, we’re not only judged by our choice of chicken restaurants; we have to get constant grief for eating beef.  The self-righteousness of the vegetarian movement may not be new but we’re increasingly being fed the idea that meat-eaters are enemies of the environment.

These thought trends are leading some people to judge others more by the content of their diet than their character. And the politicization of food can lead eventually to its regulation.  

What’s saddest is that people used to talk about “breaking bread” as way to get to know others. Food can be a great way to experience another culture. Food should be the one remaining thing that people can unite around but instead it’s becoming yet another way to divide us.

(Updated 4/10/12)