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Bauer is right on. I was a food writer for five years and finally had to quit because I was, frankly, more than a little ashamed of what I was writing.
It's not that food isn't interesting or delicious or soulful or a beautiful means of connecting with loved ones and culture. It is all of those things. And I admire talented chefs. But the pretension and elitism that fuel the highest levels of foodie culture become tiresome in the way that overexposed celebrities grow tiresome. It's also hard to justify the idolatry when millions make do with very little food at all.
Furthermore, the act of feeding our bodies, even though we do it publicly all the time, is a very intimate thing. Mouths are sensual organs, and I doubt there's a food writer alive who's resisted the lure of easy innuendo. Some of us purposely employ syntactical rhythms that mimic lovemaking. We might use words that sound like more colorful words and are meant to evoke the naughty version in the reader's mind. Eventually the "ick" factor creeps in. For a food writer, detailing, say, the flick of a tongue against a fork or the earthy scent of a truffle feels creepily akin to exhibitionism.
At the end of the day, much of it is blatant pandering, and not in a benign form: I firmly believe that our elevating food to such absurd levels of specialness has fueled eating disorders and obesity in this country. Food, for many of us, is no longer just pleasant bodily fuel -- it's struggle, reward, entertainment, esoterica, spiritual quest, status symbol, invention, art, foreplay, orgasm, and even love -- with all of their attendent neuroses engaged. Many of us are unconsciously feeding voids that have nothing to do with calories.
Bauer wasn't complaining about being spoiled, she was confronting a vortex of emotional conflict. Like her, I enjoyed food more when it was incidental to the task of everyday living, not the star of a media peep show.
