AIBU to wonder how the fuck is LEMON a "MC food"

[Wazzzzzzzup]

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/02/food-choices-proxy-class-britain

What the hell, people😂 What. The. Hell.

Thanks all, interesting to read the opinions!

I just skimmed the article, but I think the writer is complicating the narrative of foods and social class, or trying to. For instance, pointing out the irony of the River Café charging insane money in the 1990s (and still!) for selling cucina povera (Italian 'poor food'/southern Italian peasant cooking -- using limited, cheap ingredients, lots of starch and vegetables to eke out meat, and reusing leftovers in things like ribollita and panzanella) to people with money, thereby associating what in Italy would be the ingredients of the poor, like lentils and polenta, with London elites.

And saying there is nothing inherently middle-class about cumin or pulses, that Asian immigrants have always eaten them as normal foods.

There's nothing inherently 'liberal/leftwing/elite/middle-class/'woke'' about such foods, those are just lazy stereotypes reflecting how those foods have been class-positioned in the UK in recent decades.

Nobody needs lemons so someone who was poor (aka working class some decades ago) wouldn't be buying them.

Buying a lemon so you can squeeze a few drops on your salad or salmon is a bit of an extravagance.

@mokojolo

No, this article is saying that it's a mistake to associate lemons with middle classness. It is quoting someone who did and arguing against the notion. It argues that in fact lemons, garlic, polenta, houmus it gives many examples are international peasant foods and to rhetorically assign them to the middle class is to erase the reality of working class lives, histories, and culture in Britain.

So you are all agreeing with this article in fact.

But he's kind of wrong though if that's his argument. A food can be common in one country, but exotic in another.

Isn't carbonara originally "poor people" food? I remember reading it somewhere that it was something poorer people always had at home. Eggs, bacon (local version), cheese, pasta.

It’s a pretty dumb argument either way... now I’m just off for my lunch of larks tongues and gold bread...

I think the article has a point although not sure about lemons.

Sounds more like you’re the class-obsessive one then?

Nah, I'm not English but grew up here & slowly my eyes have been opened up to the class obsession, MNs is particularly obsessed.

But he's kind of wrong though if that's his argument. A food can be common in one country, but exotic in another.

This. The world doesn't have on single culture. In Britain certain foods are associated with things like foreign travel that are associated with wealth. No, we shouldn't put things in boxes and say certain people can't eat certain foods, but we should acknowledge that different foods have different significance depending on where you are and also where you come from.

It's the Guardian... what do you expect?

I grew up on the US/Mexico border (my parents are Mexican) where avocados are very cheap because they grow abundantly in Mexico. They are always served alongside every meal.

It's truly baffling when I read in publications in the UK that Millenials could be able to buy houses if they stopped spending money on avocado toast.

I never realized that avocados could be seen as a middle class food, never mind, eating them being a barrier to home ownership. Lol

OP don't try to understand class in the UK, it's very complicated. I don't know any other country where you can be working class and own a portfolio of houses and have lots of money. It's just different here.

Don't forget the judging either! absolutely not ok to flash that cash on a shiny car & ££££ watch, so nouveau! However if you've inherited your £££ watch & home (despite some nefarious actions by said ancestors) then that's fine. 🤦🏻‍♀️

As the article points out it was Paul Embery who said lemons (and parsley and spring onions and cumin) were 'middle class' foods. He sees himself as a champion of the working-classes whereas he's actually a patronising twat who thinks a proper proles should only be eating bread and marg and spam. He doesn't concern himself with proles who aren't white and who might routinely eat fancy things like lemons and cumin!

“Food in England,” the novelist Huw Lemmey recently wrote, “is very rarely about food, and that might be half of the problem.”

But this is true of food everywhere. Food has tremendous cultural significance. Like everything, that changes over time. For example, oysters used to be very cheap and food of the poor. Now they are something you buy as a celebration food, to demonstrate wealth or treat someone.

You try telling an Italian that their grandmother's pasta recipe you have just bastardised is 'just food'.

I never realized that avocados could be seen as a middle class food, never mind, eating them being a barrier to home ownership. Lol

It's a lot of bs.

@buttermutt

Sounds more like you’re the class-obsessive one then?

Nah, I'm not English but grew up here & slowly my eyes have been opened up to the class obsession, MNs is particularly obsessed.

Yes a huge number on MNers are class obsessed. Genuinely citing, in the year of our Lord 2021, Nancy Mitford's list from the 1950s on what's U and what's Non-U.

@Wazzzzzzzup

Isn't carbonara originally "poor people" food? I remember reading it somewhere that it was something poorer people always had at home. Eggs, bacon (local version), cheese, pasta.

Many cheap and simple foods that are ubiquitous in most of the world, eg hummus, dhal etc are seen as and aspirational in the UK.

Look at the furore at Jamie Oliver's suggestion of pasta puttanesca, which is cheap, quick and easy and made from storecupboard ingredients. Not exactly quail's eggs and truffles, but apparently inaccessible to many. Makes no sense.

I can see it.

Jif lemons sold next to pancake mix versus organic unwaxed Sicilian lemons still with their stalks and leaves on displayed in a wooden box .

Loved the article! As the writer (almost) says, it's all rather silly and meaningless.

@viques

I can see it.

Jif lemons sold next to pancake mix versus organic unwaxed Sicilian lemons still with their stalks and leaves on displayed in a wooden box .

And the Jif will last much longer.

@Wazzzzzzzup

Yeah I know he is disagreeing, bit to be able to disagree means that there is somewhere the opinion that lemons are MC food and that food is a class thing. I remember couple of years ago a thread about hummus and olives, if I am correct. Which confused me. Because my poor arse family in EE always had jar of olives at home 🙈

I think “where’s the hummus mummy?” Is the most mc thing my children have ever said in public.

@StrawberrySquash

But he's kind of wrong though if that's his argument. A food can be common in one country, but exotic in another.

This. The world doesn't have on single culture. In Britain certain foods are associated with things like foreign travel that are associated with wealth. No, we shouldn't put things in boxes and say certain people can't eat certain foods, but we should acknowledge that different foods have different significance depending on where you are and also where you come from.

Thanks for explaining my point better than I did!

Many cheap and simple foods that are ubiquitous in most of the world, eg hummus, dhal etc are seen as and aspirational in the UK.

What I've noticed over the yrs is the actual authentic places that sell these foods (often very cheaply) die out as a place becomes gentrified. Then you get a swanky new deli or similar that sells said produce for ££££ & people lap it up.

quinoa, polenta, sun-dried tomatoes, coffee, loose-leaf tea, coriander seeds, gnocchi, kidneys, goji berries, hummus, falafel, lentils, croissants, muesli, wine, tofu, soy milk, oat milk, almond milk, avocados

Other than coffee, loose leaf tea and wine, that list is completely wanky middle class.

Add in pesto, couscous and olives

It's the casually but self conscious way people talk about it.