April 9, 2002
A Rich Diet?
"Slow food" means big costs for consumers. Celebrity chef Dan Latham, a proponent of the expensive, politically correct cuisine, spills the truth in a Village Voice piece.
A Slow Food event in Manhattan drew "mostly white upper-middle-class Manhattan gastronomes with a vague resemblance to Frasier Crane," giving the evening "an unfortunate whiff of elitism," the Voice writes. Standing at the front of the room caressing a humongous pig shank, Dan Latham… explains the difference between ham cured the old-fashioned way and the mass-produced kind." Latham concludes by saying: "Is my ham cost-effective? Nah -- it's gonna cost ya about $75 a pound!" Even according to the Voice, a left-leaning journal sympathetic to Latham's position, that's more than seven times the cost of traditionally produced ham.
In addition to meat for the elite, politically correct fruit is also in vogue among the rich, Reuters reports. In a piece called "Organic Food -- Healthy, or Just for the Wealthy?" the wire service notes that what wealthy organic buyers "believe about the organic ideal is not always strictly accurate," but they're willing to shell out more for it anyway.
Not everyone can afford the price of organics, which the U.S. government has repeatedly said have no added health benefits. Says one shopper surveyed by Reuters: "I think it is incredibly overpriced and a consumer rip-off."
