Inflation has become Public Enemy No. 1 in America, even though it’s clearly a temporary condition — since, as the stock market always painfully reminds us, what goes up must come down. Politicians are scrambling these days to avoid blame for inflation, and the government is trying to contain it without setting off a recession. But while we’re waiting for all that to work, we could try to patch things up on our own – like, by cutting our rising grocery bills.
We’re told that one key way to do that could be by eating less meat. But that’s about as likely as Mitch McConnell signing up to sing bass in the Senate Kumbaya Chorus. Americans eat more meat than anybody else in the world: about 219 pounds per person each year. We do love our meat: Only about 8 percent of Americans claim to be vegetarian or vegan – so we will not go gently if we are asked to hand over our Whoppers and Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese.
One reason for that, it turns out, is politics: What we eat, like practically everything else in our country, has become partisan. It’s a pretty good metaphor, in fact, for the way political identity is seeping into every aspect of our lives.
Back in the middle of the Trump administration, The Economist surveyed Americans’ eating habits, and found that Democrats were 1.8 times more likely than Republicans to say that they wanted to reduce their meat consumption. Maybe they were simply turned off by Donald Trump’s well-known appetite for fast food. A book published early in his term revealed what aides said was Trump’s favorite meal on the campaign trail. Get this: Two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, a large order of fries and a large chocolate shake.
Mike Pence might have been closer to the presidency than we imagined: That one meal is 2,381 calories, by McDonald’s measure, which experts say is more than even a moderately active male in Donald Trump’s age group ought to consume in a whole day.
Of course, Trump is not alone in this gastronomic neopopulism. As if to suggest that a patriot wouldn’t show up at a Nancy Pelosi dinner party, some Republican politicians have stretched their imagination to denigrate green food.
Senator Ted Cruz, for example, has often bragged of how much he loathes avocados, as a mark of right-wing bona fides. Senator Marco Rubio, too, not long ago spoke sneeringly of people whose mornings include, as he put it, “drinking your caramel macchiato, and then you’re reading The New York Times… as you’re eating your avocado toast.” Not to be outdone, the senator from Louisiana, John Kennedy, deplored “cosmopolitan, goat’s milk latte-drinking, avocado toast-eating insider elites.” Well!
Of course, food as a tool of political branding isn’t a new thing. In the late 1980s, George H.W. Bush sought to shed his image as a New England prepster by asserting that he loved pork rinds and hated broccoli. And in 1972, when Richard Nixon visited the Texas ranch of John Connally during his re-election campaign, an elite crowd of 200 invited guests enjoyed juicy steaks washed down by Moet et Chandon champagne, while a few miles away, Democrats sought to make the point that they were the party of ordinary working folks by presenting their vice presidential candidate, Sargent Shriver, at a $5-a-head street party featuring vats of tamales and kegs of beer. I know; I was there.
But those are efforts to use food to establish a candidate’s identity — like chowing down on hot dogs at the state fair, or sampling pizza at a local pub. That’s not the same as what we see nowadays, which is a branding of voters by diet. I’m a political progressive, but don’t try to stop me from eating pork chops or bison burgers, nor shame me for putting avocado on my toast. I drink black coffee with lunch, as my Republican-leaning parents did, but does my occasional latte with whole milk reveal me to be a leftie? Are conservatives really supposed to avoid vegetables, because Donald Trump does?
This is not the way that food ought to figure in American politics. How we produce, process, pay for and distribute food in this country deserves deep scrutiny at government’s highest levels, but it’s overshadowed by the topic of the day, which never seems to involve that basic issue of what we eat.
We need to be discussing issues like this: Tax policies that encourage corporate ownership of farms… and low commodity prices that for years have driven out of business millions of small farms, the kind that tend to better conserve the land. We need to address the fact that federal standards for what’s organic are so lax as to be laughable, which makes real organic farms, which practice regenerative agriculture, uncompetitive with the big guys who get the organic label.
Rather than using food preferences as a cudgel, politicians should be viewing food policy as an environmental issue, a rural development issue, an immigration issue and a foreign policy issue.
But that requires the kind of long-term thinking that is hard for a public official to embrace when an election is just around the corner, as an election always is. Right now, we’re all signed up to board the bus to bust inflation, and if we can’t quickly do that, well, we’ll just blame it on somebody else — like, maybe, those folks who enjoy some avocado slices on toast.
That approach to our politics is, sadly, as American as a juicy burger and fries.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.