Food IS Art.

I think I just have read the only letter-to-the-editor in the history of my reading letters-to-the-editor that has honestly and truly offended me. Two weeks ago, the New York Times Magazine published an entire issue dedicated to food and the ways in which food can build community. This letter was written in response to that issue, and published this week (about halfway down the page):

In dissecting the nation's eating habits, the Food Issue presents a smorgasbord of obsessions that are inevitably linked to the astounding fact that from the early 1960s to the present, obesity in the United States has risen to well over 30 percent, from 13 percent. Worse yet, abdominal obesity has risen in both women and men. These unsightly trends suggest that America's obsessive interest in eating is dangerously abnormal. Typically the plight of our nation's waistline is blamed on low-cost fast food and ever-present junk food. But clearly the malfeasance is broader and extends to more sophisticated, high-priced epicurean foods.

This end of the food spectrum needs to take more responsibility for the weight problem and start warning consumers that the tiramisu and T-bones are injurious to their health. Better still would be recognizing that food is not an art, that eating is not a sport, and that conquering obsession is good food for the soul. [Emphasis mine.]

Well, thanks for that lovely expose on what's really wrong with our eating culture. It's not the abundance of junk food or the high-calorie, high-sugar fast-food that's constantly being shoved at us in advertisements. It's not the fact that most of our meat and dairy comes from factory farms where conditions are deplorable, animals are genetically modified to produce more, fattier, and faster, and antibiotics are as necessary to life as water. It's not the culture of eating without thinking that's to blame for the myriad nutritionally-based problems that people suffer.

No, none of that.

It's those darn foodies and their epicurean ideals. It's those darn people that want to bake their cake and eat it, too. Preferably after having consumed a dinner that they prepared from scratch using fresh & locally sourced comestibles.

What we all really need to do is realize that food is not art, and that we would all be much better off eating nothing but bran flakes, sprouts, and water. Then, we could all be perfectly healthy and painfully skinny models of productivity that have conquered our need for comfort in life. Oh, and we'll be aesthetically pleasing to the fat-phobic.

"Food is not an art." I don't think I've ever been quite this offended. Food IS, in fact, a beautiful, primal, fascinating art form. To cook is play with color like a painter, with texture like a sculptor, with sound like a musician, with mathematics, with flavor. Cooking is the ultimate art form, creating pieces that indulge every single sense we have, not merely one or two of them.

In my kitchen, I am an artist. Forgive me, sir, that my obsession with the creative and curative power of food so offends you, but don't you dare detract from what I do with my hands and my time and my energy and my brain. How dare you denigrate my art form to such a degree. How dare you tell me that my life is unhealthy because I put care and thought into the morsels I put in my mouth, those bites that sustain me not just physically but also emotionally and spiritually? Yes, it's my thought that is the culprit, the root of all evil in the culinary and gastronomic worlds. Thinking is always, always the enemy.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a pie crust. And start cleaning beans and potatoes. Food brings the family together, after all, and I've got 10 to feed for dinner this evening. Ten happy people with a little belly fat between them that enjoy a good meal and appreciate the art that is good food.