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Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution
For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food.
Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads.
Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser , Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.
Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads.
Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser , Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.
289 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 24, 2017
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317 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 10, 2018
Idk I’ve never felt so simultaneously vindicated and dragged in my entire reading career????
Basically everything is a scam and we are all frauds!!! My worst fear!!! More specifically:
Do you think you could pass a blind taste test by differentiating plum and mango, tahini and peanut butter, chervil and lettuce? Think again because even the Most Refined Palates in the world can’t!
Do you like sriracha or arugula??? If you do you’re probably a yuppie snob!!! That’s not what she argues to be clear because she also explains the foodie aversion to élitism and snöbbery as just a profound class anxiety (you have to genuinely have class and you can’t fake it) and like is that why its so in fashion to talk about chicken nuggets on Facebook nowadays!?
Also do you fast forward to the weigh-in part of the biggest loser??? I don’t because I don’t watch the biggest loser because I’m a Yuppie Snob!!!! But if my consumption of Kayla Itsines posts is any indicator I probably would fast forward if I watched!!! Basically diets are fake and exercise is a Hoax!!!
Most importantly everything that’s happening now has happened before, which is the theme of all history, gastronomical or otherwise, great
Also I am excited to read Paraliterary which I suspect will have some echoes w Bad Eaters and Bad Readers
Want to hear more of my hot takes listen to Three Peas in a Podcast where I’ll continue being incoherent about alla this!!!
Basically everything is a scam and we are all frauds!!! My worst fear!!! More specifically:
Do you think you could pass a blind taste test by differentiating plum and mango, tahini and peanut butter, chervil and lettuce? Think again because even the Most Refined Palates in the world can’t!
Do you like sriracha or arugula??? If you do you’re probably a yuppie snob!!! That’s not what she argues to be clear because she also explains the foodie aversion to élitism and snöbbery as just a profound class anxiety (you have to genuinely have class and you can’t fake it) and like is that why its so in fashion to talk about chicken nuggets on Facebook nowadays!?
Also do you fast forward to the weigh-in part of the biggest loser??? I don’t because I don’t watch the biggest loser because I’m a Yuppie Snob!!!! But if my consumption of Kayla Itsines posts is any indicator I probably would fast forward if I watched!!! Basically diets are fake and exercise is a Hoax!!!
Most importantly everything that’s happening now has happened before, which is the theme of all history, gastronomical or otherwise, great
Also I am excited to read Paraliterary which I suspect will have some echoes w Bad Eaters and Bad Readers
Want to hear more of my hot takes listen to Three Peas in a Podcast where I’ll continue being incoherent about alla this!!!
October 14, 2018
s. margot finn understands 8th-12th grade me better than I understood myself. O_O
she articulates four ideals of the "food revolution"--sophistication, thinness, purity, and cosmopolitanism. all these have happened before (in the gilded age!), are full of inconsistencies, and are class-based ideals that come in and out of fashion and are not Objective results of Progress.
my dad's reaction to my description of this book: she doesn't give the postwar culinary dark ages enough credit--anyone who has seen the discourse about microwaves or fon due pots from the time wouldn't say that they didn't care about sophistication/cosmopolitanism, just that it was expressed in different ways.
my mom's reaction: I haven't actually talked to her about the book, but she is a psychologist who sometimes sees patients with eating disorders. my guess is that she would say "no shit" and emphasize how harmful the ideal of thinness actually is to the patients she treats! I guess I'll call her and find out.
she articulates four ideals of the "food revolution"--sophistication, thinness, purity, and cosmopolitanism. all these have happened before (in the gilded age!), are full of inconsistencies, and are class-based ideals that come in and out of fashion and are not Objective results of Progress.
my dad's reaction to my description of this book: she doesn't give the postwar culinary dark ages enough credit--anyone who has seen the discourse about microwaves or fon due pots from the time wouldn't say that they didn't care about sophistication/cosmopolitanism, just that it was expressed in different ways.
my mom's reaction: I haven't actually talked to her about the book, but she is a psychologist who sometimes sees patients with eating disorders. my guess is that she would say "no shit" and emphasize how harmful the ideal of thinness actually is to the patients she treats! I guess I'll call her and find out.
September 23, 2021
Pretty quick and accessible for an academic read. I'd come across most of these ideas before but there were still new things that challenged me and all my middle class American beliefs about what "good" food is. Everything in that set of beliefs contradicts something else in it and none of it is backed up by science!
I especially liked Finn's approach of analyzing a media thing or news story in terms of both what actually happened in it, and the internet discussion about it. It's a great way to look at how pervasive some cultural beliefs are - the reviews of Ratatouille especially jumped out at me.
Also, dang, I knew Biggest Loser was a cruel and abusive show in kind of an abstract way, but I don't think I'd ever read someone just straight up describing what happens on it and it's somehow even worse than I thought?? Again, super interesting to read how fans reacted contrasted with what the producers were trying to do.
I especially liked Finn's approach of analyzing a media thing or news story in terms of both what actually happened in it, and the internet discussion about it. It's a great way to look at how pervasive some cultural beliefs are - the reviews of Ratatouille especially jumped out at me.
Also, dang, I knew Biggest Loser was a cruel and abusive show in kind of an abstract way, but I don't think I'd ever read someone just straight up describing what happens on it and it's somehow even worse than I thought?? Again, super interesting to read how fans reacted contrasted with what the producers were trying to do.
August 18, 2017
Read my full review at: http://wp.me/p2Amsi-2qe
In Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution, published in April 2017 by Rutgers University Press, S. Margot Finn asserts that “the ideals of the food revolution gained traction due to class anxiety” (15). With a satisfying clarity, Finn distills the ideology of the food revolution into four ideals:
- Sophistication / gourmet food
- Thinness / healthy food + dieting for weight loss
- Purity / natural-and-organic food
- Cosmopolitanism / “ethnic” food
She argues that “the unifying characteristic of the food revolution’s otherwise incompatible ideals is their association with the elite” (36), and how they compose a discourse of “aspirational eating.”
In the end, Discriminating Taste provides a provocative and historically-informed answer to how the current mainstream definition of “good food” came about. Finn asserts that today’s emphasis upon gourmet, healthy, natural, and diverse foods are not the result of culinary enlightenment or decline, but of class anxiety, rooted in income inequality and its attending correlations with various types of capital.
Finn also demonstrates why this definition of good food matters: it misdirects the economic, cultural, and social energy of the middle class, while further denigrating the lower classes. Finn proposes that the true food revolution lies in more critically examining Brillat-Savarin’s maxim—you are what you eat—taking into account the forces of inequality in all its forms.
Read my full review at: http://wp.me/p2Amsi-2qe
In Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution, published in April 2017 by Rutgers University Press, S. Margot Finn asserts that “the ideals of the food revolution gained traction due to class anxiety” (15). With a satisfying clarity, Finn distills the ideology of the food revolution into four ideals:
- Sophistication / gourmet food
- Thinness / healthy food + dieting for weight loss
- Purity / natural-and-organic food
- Cosmopolitanism / “ethnic” food
She argues that “the unifying characteristic of the food revolution’s otherwise incompatible ideals is their association with the elite” (36), and how they compose a discourse of “aspirational eating.”
In the end, Discriminating Taste provides a provocative and historically-informed answer to how the current mainstream definition of “good food” came about. Finn asserts that today’s emphasis upon gourmet, healthy, natural, and diverse foods are not the result of culinary enlightenment or decline, but of class anxiety, rooted in income inequality and its attending correlations with various types of capital.
Finn also demonstrates why this definition of good food matters: it misdirects the economic, cultural, and social energy of the middle class, while further denigrating the lower classes. Finn proposes that the true food revolution lies in more critically examining Brillat-Savarin’s maxim—you are what you eat—taking into account the forces of inequality in all its forms.
Read my full review at: http://wp.me/p2Amsi-2qe
June 26, 2017
A fascinating, detailed look into the past and present of how Americans approach food, in particular upwardly-mobile and middle to upper-middle class Americans. The book does an excellent job providing evidence and debunking alternative explanations for her central argument, which is that the 1980-present "foodie" trend is primarily a result of wealth inequality and the growing class anxiety accompanying it: people who are not truly rich can nonetheless meaningfully perform their social class through knowledge and enjoyment of food that is some combination of gourmet, natural, slimming, or exotic. This recent foodie trend is not wholly new, but actually closely resembles a similar trends around 1890-1930, another period of growing wealth inequality and class anxiety.
November 20, 2019
If you want to read a book that questions everything you thought you knew about the food choices you make, this is the one. The author is straightforward in her analysis of how we are shaped by our culture, and says what we believe to be healthy and environmentally beneficial might be only what our culture has told us is good for us and the planet. Moreover, it is likely that it just reflects our striving to seem to be in an upper class. I'm left with a lot to think about, and that should be a good thing!
May 30, 2018
Very thought-provoking and it makes you question essentially all of your food choices and views if you've been part of this 30+-year food revolution that was brought on by widening economic inequality. To me, the book felt more like separate essays joined together but I still really enjoyed the book and it made for great conversations over the last few weeks.
July 1, 2019
Very interesting and thought provoking book. Enjoyed reading a different perspective on the underlying causes of the "food movement" and how it is not easily explained by culinary enlightenment (ie "good" food isn't necessarily better) . Will be referencing in the future.
to-read-actual
May 6, 2021Pub 2017
November 7, 2025
The idea behind this is an interesting one, and there are some great sections. However, it's a bit too much in the weeds for me.
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April 20, 2018394.12097 F5143 2017
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews