AA Gill on the “organic” food movement
This is why they pay him the big money, and part of the reason why - even though I disagree with him quite often - he is still my number one journalist crush:
It invented the most illiberal, unegalitarian, two-tier food market. There was good, healthy Oxfordshire food, and then there was the poisonous, processed, cancerous muck that the rest of you stuffed into your toothless faces. The organic movement made food the distinction of class and privilege that it hadn’t been for a hundred years, and for that alone it should be eternally and utterly ashamed of itself.
…Conviction reformers begin with an imagined nirvana and work backwards through self-serving facts and draconian instructions. They are made ridiculous by their own unmovable orthodoxy. Pragmatic reformers start with the problem, not the solution, and make it better, a chip butty at a time. The organic movement always cared more for hens than people.
Filed under: Life
What a pose! He looks like a Necromancer.
For me this was the highlight:
“The menu is that now predictable stalwart: John Bull’s view of European, with a few ethnic additions, a bit like an edible Labour party conference.”