The Travel Channel has a new show called, Man Versus Food Nation. It’s a spin off of Man Versus Food in which a fellow named Adam Richman would tour the country taking on “food challenges.” Richman’s challenges included eating gargantuan plates of food or dishes so spicy they cause tears, profuse sweating, a seared palate, and the delayed vengeance of “what goes in must come out”, proving beyond all doubt that foolish behavior carries its own rewards.
In the original, Richman took on the challenges himself. In the new version he recruits his fans to….well, I simply couldn’t do justice to the show by describing it myself, so from the program’s website; After 3 years of eating his way across America, Adam’s heard the Man v. Food Nation …they want a piece of the action. Now, Adam is recruiting local talent to take on their beloved hometown challenges. As Adam samples the local flavor of every location he visits, he'll look for fans to walk in his shoes. Richman has apparently retired his fork and hung up the bib to become coach, mentor and cheerleader. So the basic premise of the show is that Coach Richman travels the country to instruct other culinary jocks in the nuances of eating anything from a 5 pound Stromboli to a 12 pound hamburger. This is truly bringing sport to the masses; something akin to Tom Brady teaching a Southie to throw a tight spiral or Tim Lincecum schooling a bleacher bum on the finer points of the cut fastball.
And why would someone want to try to eat a pizza the size of a dining table? The Man Versus Food Nation website poses just that kind of insightful question; “Is it for the glory? Is it for the honor? It’s for neither, the website says; Adam and his Man v. Food Nation are doing it for the love of the game, as they work together to defeat these edible "beasts" and celebrate the community that created them.” I suppose this is proof that alcohol, vanity and the hunger (no pun intended) for that 15 minutes of fame have absolutely nothing to do with it. This is not only a celebration of sport and community; it’s democracy in action showing the world that in this great land of opportunity, just as anyone can be President of the United States, even the little guy can achieve gluttonous greatness. Why this is enough to stir the soul, bring a tear to the eye and make you want to salute the flag. It’s as American as baseball and mom’s apple pie (a 10 pound pie that you have to finish it in 45 minutes and you can’t get up from the table during the challenge).
In a recent episode this guru of gorging visited Albuquerque, New Mexico to mentor three “warriors” named Travis in the fine art of eating a dish called Travis on a Silver Platter; an 8 pound burrito hidden under a mountain of French fries. No, no, no; they didn’t team up to eat one Travis. Each Travis got a Travis of his own, which he had to finish in an hour or less. The Travises battle bravely but in the end they sat before their platters of leftover beans, tortilla, fixins and fries in stuffed, subdued defeat. One Travis finished about three pounds of burrito, another about 4 pounds and the third Travis had barely scratched the surface of fries. All told about 15 pounds of spuds and burrito looked to be destined for the dumpster.
In a recent episode this guru of gorging visited Albuquerque, New Mexico to mentor three “warriors” named Travis in the fine art of eating a dish called Travis on a Silver Platter; an 8 pound burrito hidden under a mountain of French fries. No, no, no; they didn’t team up to eat one Travis. Each Travis got a Travis of his own, which he had to finish in an hour or less. The Travises battle bravely but in the end they sat before their platters of leftover beans, tortilla, fixins and fries in stuffed, subdued defeat. One Travis finished about three pounds of burrito, another about 4 pounds and the third Travis had barely scratched the surface of fries. All told about 15 pounds of spuds and burrito looked to be destined for the dumpster.
Of course gastronomic excess has always been available to the masses. Mere mortals have only to go to the local strip mall and visit the all you can eat buffet, where for the price of a double sawbuck you can take multiple trips to the warming table and load your plate with heaps of soggy fried chicken, leathery beef, squishy fish sticks, Salisbury steak in brown goo and various kinds of mass produced starches. Posted signs admonish patrons to take only what they can eat but invariably the eyes become bigger than the stomach and those five buttermilk biscuits in sausage gravy that looked so manageable and yummy at the warming station suddenly start to look a bit overwhelming after the half dozen chicken legs and the mound of grayish, green bean casserole have settled into the belly. A sigh of satisfaction, lay down the napkin, lean back and let the busboy scrape a plate of barely touched food into the trash.
And so because every story, good or bad deserves a moral, equally good or bad, we come to one here. It’s a moral that has nothing to do with clogged arteries, adipose tissue or consuming calories that reach into the 5 digit range. Hey if you can eat that 48 ounce porterhouse with a stuffed potato, order up. Back in the day, when my metabolism raged out of control many was the Friday evening when I sat in front of an extra-large pizza and a pitcher of beer, shared nary a solitary slice or a single drop and left a clean platter and an empty vessel. And it isn’t a moral about badly cooked food or food so drenched in hot sauce that it’s just this side of toxic. Not everyone is impressed by cassoulet or a Michelin star. That’s why Papa John sells lots of pies and Applebee’s has lines out the door.
This moral is about a patent disrespect for a basic necessity of life; food. And it isn’t just disrespect for that necessity but disrespect for those who lack that necessity.
When you face off against the 12 egg omelet and three pounds of hash browns challenge the odds are that a half a dozen of those eggs and a fair amount of taters will end up in the trash while you find yourself huddled in a corner of the bathroom vanquished by breakfast, hurling your meal and dreaming of that photo on the tavern wall that could have been. I wonder how much food winds up in the dumpster or down the toilet all to satisfy some misguided quest for entertainment. Oh I know, there are those who’ll dredge up that wise guy response we all made to our mothers at one time or another when she told us of the “starving kids in India.” “Well box it up and send it to them COD.” But doesn’t this go beyond just the wasted food?
There was a time when overeating was something people did at a wedding reception or in a moment of weakness to “cure” a bout of depression. Gluttony has somehow managed to become not only an entertainment fad but a distorted sporting event. Don’t believe me? Just tune in ESPN on July 4th to catch the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. That’s right, ESPN the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports will feature Joey Chestnut going down on a bunch of wieners (and to think I once considered log rolling contests on Wide World of Sports to be phony sport). Through the medium of television, binging has gained popularity, acceptance and a sort of whacked out culinary cult following which undoubtedly has encouraged restaurant owners everywhere to invent their own contests; challenging all comers to eat some gut busting or tongue scorching meal. And why not? Someone has to be a bit of a fool to choke down a dozen nuclear wings and we all know the old saying about what happens to a fool and his money. And the fool usually brings along an entourage of fellow fools to watch. And so, while Mr. Restaurateur might be on the hook for a free meal on those rare occasions when someone actually beats the challenge, he’s already made a bank roll on the posse’s bar bill. When it comes down to a choice between the morality of wasting food or having a few more bucks in the till at the end of the night, money, to borrow from Bob Dylan, “doesn’t talk, it swears.”
Sure some of you are taking me to task right now, for being a spoilsport, a stodgy old fogy, pooping the eating party. Why should I get my moral back up you ask? Well because this is my blog and I can, but the more important reason is because of the way I was raised. I’m one generation removed from folks who at some time in their lives found food hard to come by. My father lived through the Great Depression and while his family managed to put food on the table it was a valuable commodity, its scarcity was frightening and it wasn’t wasted. My mother lived in Italy during World War II, a place and time in which bread was worth its weight in gold. My parents never forgot how precious food could be and so when I was a child at the dinner table what we put on our plates ended up in our bellies. The “clean your plate” lecture I got didn’t come with a story of some faceless hungry waif in a land I'd never heard of. It came with real life stories from parents who lived with the real possibility of going hungry. And so I dutifully cleaned my plate every night. Leftovers were served the next day for lunch or combined to make a stew. That little fistful of pasta at the bottom of the bowl became part of a delicious frittata the next morning. I recall a visit to my family in Italy. We had just finished a steak dinner and as I pushed away my plate I was scolded for wasting food. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was waste until I noticed a few scraps of meat on the bone. Chastened, I retrieved my plate and cleaned the bone. Extreme? Maybe, but these were people who had learned the value of food the hard way. The lessons have remained with me. You know that heel at the end of a loaf of bread that usually ends up in the trash or as food for the pigeons? It’s perfectly good toasted and served with a layer of Nutella. I'm not too proud to pick up that chop bone and gnaw off the last threads of meat. When I have to throw away food that’s gone bad I do so with a measure of shame.
America truly is a country of plenty and we plenty take it all for granted. We are a nation of shameless wasters. In 2008, The New York Times reported that Americans threw away 27 percent of the food available for consumption. That waste amounted to 30 million tons per year or 12 percent of the total waste stream. It’s only gotten worse as the total waste in 2011 as reported by the EPA was 34 million tons, or 14 percent of the total waste stream.
The question is often asked, “Why do they hate us?” When we say they; “they” usually refers to folks from other, often impoverished, countries. The jingoistic, often angry and defensive response to the question is that they are jealous. Maybe they aren’t jealous but angry and insulted that we take our riches for granted; because they have to work many hard, back breaking, spirit crushing hours to put scraps on the family table. They live with the sword of hunger dangling over their heads. Often what they have for a pantry is a dumpster or the local landfill which we cavalierly fill with mountains of wasted food. What they live in constant, nagging fear of not having enough of, we use as an entertainment prop or as equipment for a phony sport.
My maternal grandmother who lived through two world wars and knew intimately the want of food used to always say, “It’s a sin to waste God’s food.” I’m not sure if the greater sin is actually wasting the food or having such a cavalier attitude towards something that people die, even in our own country, for the want of.
And so because every story, good or bad deserves a moral, equally good or bad, we come to one here. It’s a moral that has nothing to do with clogged arteries, adipose tissue or consuming calories that reach into the 5 digit range. Hey if you can eat that 48 ounce porterhouse with a stuffed potato, order up. Back in the day, when my metabolism raged out of control many was the Friday evening when I sat in front of an extra-large pizza and a pitcher of beer, shared nary a solitary slice or a single drop and left a clean platter and an empty vessel. And it isn’t a moral about badly cooked food or food so drenched in hot sauce that it’s just this side of toxic. Not everyone is impressed by cassoulet or a Michelin star. That’s why Papa John sells lots of pies and Applebee’s has lines out the door.
This moral is about a patent disrespect for a basic necessity of life; food. And it isn’t just disrespect for that necessity but disrespect for those who lack that necessity.
When you face off against the 12 egg omelet and three pounds of hash browns challenge the odds are that a half a dozen of those eggs and a fair amount of taters will end up in the trash while you find yourself huddled in a corner of the bathroom vanquished by breakfast, hurling your meal and dreaming of that photo on the tavern wall that could have been. I wonder how much food winds up in the dumpster or down the toilet all to satisfy some misguided quest for entertainment. Oh I know, there are those who’ll dredge up that wise guy response we all made to our mothers at one time or another when she told us of the “starving kids in India.” “Well box it up and send it to them COD.” But doesn’t this go beyond just the wasted food?
There was a time when overeating was something people did at a wedding reception or in a moment of weakness to “cure” a bout of depression. Gluttony has somehow managed to become not only an entertainment fad but a distorted sporting event. Don’t believe me? Just tune in ESPN on July 4th to catch the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. That’s right, ESPN the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports will feature Joey Chestnut going down on a bunch of wieners (and to think I once considered log rolling contests on Wide World of Sports to be phony sport). Through the medium of television, binging has gained popularity, acceptance and a sort of whacked out culinary cult following which undoubtedly has encouraged restaurant owners everywhere to invent their own contests; challenging all comers to eat some gut busting or tongue scorching meal. And why not? Someone has to be a bit of a fool to choke down a dozen nuclear wings and we all know the old saying about what happens to a fool and his money. And the fool usually brings along an entourage of fellow fools to watch. And so, while Mr. Restaurateur might be on the hook for a free meal on those rare occasions when someone actually beats the challenge, he’s already made a bank roll on the posse’s bar bill. When it comes down to a choice between the morality of wasting food or having a few more bucks in the till at the end of the night, money, to borrow from Bob Dylan, “doesn’t talk, it swears.”
Sure some of you are taking me to task right now, for being a spoilsport, a stodgy old fogy, pooping the eating party. Why should I get my moral back up you ask? Well because this is my blog and I can, but the more important reason is because of the way I was raised. I’m one generation removed from folks who at some time in their lives found food hard to come by. My father lived through the Great Depression and while his family managed to put food on the table it was a valuable commodity, its scarcity was frightening and it wasn’t wasted. My mother lived in Italy during World War II, a place and time in which bread was worth its weight in gold. My parents never forgot how precious food could be and so when I was a child at the dinner table what we put on our plates ended up in our bellies. The “clean your plate” lecture I got didn’t come with a story of some faceless hungry waif in a land I'd never heard of. It came with real life stories from parents who lived with the real possibility of going hungry. And so I dutifully cleaned my plate every night. Leftovers were served the next day for lunch or combined to make a stew. That little fistful of pasta at the bottom of the bowl became part of a delicious frittata the next morning. I recall a visit to my family in Italy. We had just finished a steak dinner and as I pushed away my plate I was scolded for wasting food. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was waste until I noticed a few scraps of meat on the bone. Chastened, I retrieved my plate and cleaned the bone. Extreme? Maybe, but these were people who had learned the value of food the hard way. The lessons have remained with me. You know that heel at the end of a loaf of bread that usually ends up in the trash or as food for the pigeons? It’s perfectly good toasted and served with a layer of Nutella. I'm not too proud to pick up that chop bone and gnaw off the last threads of meat. When I have to throw away food that’s gone bad I do so with a measure of shame.
America truly is a country of plenty and we plenty take it all for granted. We are a nation of shameless wasters. In 2008, The New York Times reported that Americans threw away 27 percent of the food available for consumption. That waste amounted to 30 million tons per year or 12 percent of the total waste stream. It’s only gotten worse as the total waste in 2011 as reported by the EPA was 34 million tons, or 14 percent of the total waste stream.
The question is often asked, “Why do they hate us?” When we say they; “they” usually refers to folks from other, often impoverished, countries. The jingoistic, often angry and defensive response to the question is that they are jealous. Maybe they aren’t jealous but angry and insulted that we take our riches for granted; because they have to work many hard, back breaking, spirit crushing hours to put scraps on the family table. They live with the sword of hunger dangling over their heads. Often what they have for a pantry is a dumpster or the local landfill which we cavalierly fill with mountains of wasted food. What they live in constant, nagging fear of not having enough of, we use as an entertainment prop or as equipment for a phony sport.
My maternal grandmother who lived through two world wars and knew intimately the want of food used to always say, “It’s a sin to waste God’s food.” I’m not sure if the greater sin is actually wasting the food or having such a cavalier attitude towards something that people die, even in our own country, for the want of.
Paul, I grew up exactly the same way. Both my parents lived through the Depression and knew what it was to be jobless and how to stretch a dollar. We never wasted a scrap of food, or anything else, for that matter. We live in a "single-use" society now; everything from diapers to electronics. To me it's obscene. I've never appreciated or enjoyed those eating contests, and if you look at the size of the people who generally engage in those activities, you can see why it's no wonder we have an obesity and diabetes problem in this country.
ReplyDeleteI fondly remember you grandmother. I bet she sort of scolded as she said those words to, didn't she? My wife cannot tolerate Man vs Food. I like the travel aspect and the tour de greasy spoons, but the excesses are hard to get around. Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives has a better format - casual fare without the gluttony.
ReplyDeleteSusan, My wife, from The Philippines had a similar experience. Her parents dealt with the specter of hunger during the Japanese occupation. She too hates the gluttony shows.
ReplyDeleteI saw on the news that Joey Chestnut is still the reigning hot dog eating champion. In honor of the 4th I ate two dogs and probably enjoyed them more than Chestnut enjoyed the few dozen he ate.
Craig, She didn't sort of scold me. She scolded me in no uncertain terms.
ReplyDeleteGluttony contests, super sized everything, no surprise that our society has become a nation of lard asses. My friend Cindy's mom was from Italy. Whenever some of her relatives visit the Bay Area from Italy, they always comment that they've not seen more fat people in any other country.
ReplyDeleteI agree about not liking to waste food. My freezer contains baggies of frozen cubes of buttermilk, cilantro, and other items that were left over from the amount a recipe called for.
When I traveled to Italy as a child we used to think that the Italians tended to be heavy. The last time out there it was clear that the heaviness had shifted to our side of the Atlantic.
ReplyDelete