Food as 'high culture'

In the Sunday review (online early I surmise), there was a cheeky op-ed about how we've traded foodie-ness for high culture. Rather than sit around and discuss the true authorship of Elizabethan plays or the new installation at the museum, we wax philosophical (and starry-eyed) over grass-fed beef and truffle oil.

I found some proof in the pudding, as it were....I have had long concern at 'good food' being taken up as a fad and thus made into something that is for a select few. And remember, this is FOOD we're talking about here.

And perhaps it is true, as the author points out:

“A good risotto is a fine thing, but it isn’t going to give you insight into other people, allow you to see the world in a new way, or force you to take an inventory of your soul.”

Perhaps not, which signals that our concern with food has gone off the wrong end…
That said, here are some foods—oranges perhaps, or lettuce, or coffee—which should make people pause, if not ‘take inventory…’