{"id":24,"date":"2008-10-12T10:32:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T10:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html"},"modified":"2008-10-12T10:32:31","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T10:32:31","slug":"mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html","title":{"rendered":"Mark Bittman &#8212; Food Culture is Progressing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Bittman&#8211;author of t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.howtocookeverything.tv\/htce\/Home\/index.html\">he most essential cookbook<\/a>\u00a0ever (I open it just about every single week)&#8211;offers cautious hope about the state of our food culture in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/10\/12\/magazine\/12wwln-lede-t.html?ref=magazine\">this weekend&#8217;s NY Times Magazine<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>[F]ood continues to be fetishized; organic food has been commodified; the federal government subsidizes almost all of the wrong kinds of food production; supermarkets peddle way too much nonreal food (&#8220;junk food&#8221; or, to use my mother&#8217;s word, &#8220;dreck&#8221;); and weight-loss diets still discourage common-sense eating.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>But questions like &#8220;Would you prefer a mass-produced organic grape from Chile or a nonorganic one from a backyard vine in Upstate New York?&#8221; are more common in conversation, and the dialogue about food routinely includes words like locavore, vegetarian, sustainable and flexitarian.\u00a0\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>The real issues &#8212; how do we grow and raise, distribute and sell, prepare and eat food? And how do our patterns of doing these things affect the rest of the world (and vice versa)? &#8212; are simply too big to ignore.<br \/>\nAnd if we are obsessing about where our food is from and how it&#8217;s grown rather than whether our fries are cooked in beef fat or &#8220;cholesterol-free oil&#8221; (or, even worse, whether our gold-leaf-topped foie gras is good for us), this is progress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Bittman&#8211;author of the most essential cookbook\u00a0ever (I open it just about every single week)&#8211;offers cautious hope about the state of our food culture in this weekend&#8217;s NY Times Magazine:\u00a0 [F]ood continues to be fetishized; organic food has been commodified; the federal government subsidizes almost all of the wrong kinds of food production; supermarkets peddle&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","category-food"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mark Bittman - Food Culture is Progressing - Text Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mark Bittman - Food Culture is Progressing - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mark Bittman&#8211;author of the most essential cookbook\u00a0ever (I open it just about every single week)&#8211;offers cautious hope about the state of our food culture in this weekend&#8217;s NY Times Magazine:\u00a0 [F]ood continues to be fetishized; organic food has been commodified; the federal government subsidizes almost all of the wrong kinds of food production; supermarkets peddle&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-12T10:32:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mark Bittman - Food Culture is Progressing - Text Messages","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mark Bittman - Food Culture is Progressing - Text Messages","og_description":"Mark Bittman&#8211;author of the most essential cookbook\u00a0ever (I open it just about every single week)&#8211;offers cautious hope about the state of our food culture in this weekend&#8217;s NY Times Magazine:\u00a0 [F]ood continues to be fetishized; organic food has been commodified; the federal government subsidizes almost all of the wrong kinds of food production; supermarkets peddle&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html","og_site_name":"Text Messages","article_published_time":"2008-10-12T10:32:31+00:00","author":"Patton Dodd","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html","name":"Mark Bittman - Food Culture is Progressing - Text Messages","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-12T10:32:31+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-12T10:32:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/mark-bittman-food-culture-is-p.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Mark Bittman &#8212; 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