Gentrifying Your Plate
You ever notice how expensive it is to eat anything nowadays?
Things that we remember being cheap as kids- ground beef, leafy green vegetables, even many canned foods- are now astronomically expensive in many parts of the world. There are food deserts all over the country where fresh foods are almost completely inaccessible altogether- this is an especially large issue in inner-city areas and indigenous reservations.
Part of this is the economic crash created by the pandemic, of course. Corona has impacted every corner of the economy, and every other aspect of our lives. Why wouldn’t it negatively affect food accessibility?
But there’s an additional issue here. Food Gentrification.
“Food gentrification” as an economic term was coined by Mikki Kendall, who wrote an excellent thread in 2014 on the social and economic impact ‘Trendy’ foods have in the grander scale of the Capitalist economic climate.
In the past, the poverty class in society has had to improvise affordable, flavorful food the rich would assume as disgusting. This was a way of developing manufactured food security in colonial eras, as well as the industrial age and onward.. As time went on, the people of the oppressed classes found ways to make the food taste better and better. Seasonings became more available to the common man, cooking techniques evolved.
And as these techniques evolve, the elite become curious. They try the “poor people food” and fall in love with it. And rather than simply sharing the recipes, sharing the knowledge- they drive up the prices of the ingredients to make a profit.
Once this happens, the food typically never becomes affordable again. The production cost doesn’t matter, nothing can stop them from this process in the end.
And most of the foods this happens to, have originated from POC and minority ethnic communities.
Ribs were once considered garbage meat. There’s not a lot of meat on the bone unless the animal is **heavily** fattened ahead of time. But with the right sauces and seasonings, it can be tasty and even filling. Then, wealthy individuals discovered how wonderful ribs could taste and began patronizing barbecue restaurants. Business owners realized they could make far more money marketing ribs as a luxury food than they ever did selling them as an easily affordable dish and drove the price up, pricing out the poverty class that created the dish.
Once upon a time, Brisket was less than a dollar a pound at places like the butcher or meat aisle. You could buy a 20lb slab of good, quality beef for incredibly cheap by buying the briket. Season it well, add a good brown sugar glaze and smoke it for about half a day, and you could have some of the most savory, filling meat for weeks on end. Communities continued to innovate the dish, improving upon the flavors and technique over time.
But then Food Network started showcasing popular methods to prepare Brisket on their shows. Celebrities and wealthy persons developed a taste for it, and the cycle repeated.
I regularly see it for over five dollars a pound in stores now. And while yeah, that might not seem like a lot when you’re talking only a pound or two of meat, brisket is normally sold in ten to twenty pound sizes. It’s become completely unaffordable to the people that made it delicious.
Sushi used to be really cheap, too, until hipsters and popular media made it trendy. Once upon a time, ramen and sushi were street vender foods. Take a good, hard guess as to why you’re now paying twelve dollars for your order of California rolls.
For hundreds of years, lobster was regarded as a sort of insect from the depth of the sea. It had zero appeal as a “luxury food” until wealthy people discovered how simple it was to farm, and how tasty it could be when prepared well. Hell, up until the 1800’s it was considered a prison food, something you fed to convicts and servant classes- those considered less than human. The same was thought of all crustaceans, in fact- crawdads, crab, and shrimp were seabugs in the eyes of the elite.
Food Gentrification is a serious issue that comes as a direct result of the culture of luxury, and by extension is a result of systemic racism, classism, and capitalist greed. It results in severe food insecurities, eating disorders, heightened rates of health conditions like heart disease, and an overwhelming strain on the lives of the many for the illusion of luxury in the few.
I’m not even sure if the wealthy truly understand how damaging turning food into trends can be. If they do know, they certainly won’t care. And it’s exhausting.
We need to care more about poverty, and the people living under that line.
