We Are What We Eat: Food identity, politics, and culture.

You cannot separate food, stories, and place. Food frames and contextualises the culture, history, social order, and of course, the politics of a place.

Food is personal. 

Nothing proves this more than the the latest shitshow courtesy of the Department of Land Reform, Agriculture and Rural Development’s (DALRRD) Food Safety Authority (FSA). In a naming scandal that could rival the proposal to change Cape Town International Airport to Winnie Mandela Airport, the department is targeting the labelling of plant-based meat substitutes. Up until a few days ago they were actually threatening to seize these products using the product names “prescribed for processed meat products in terms of section 8 of the Agricultural Product Standards Act 119 of 1990…” 

There is definitely an agenda here. I’m certain that the issue isn’t that consumers can’t fathom the difference between pork and plant-based sausages. I’m also absolutely sure this isn’t about “safety,” despite the looming presence of the FSA. What it comes down to is naming, and naming issues are always a veritable hotbed of politics. In South Africa renaming and naming things is a bit of a national sport, and boy-oh-boy does it ruffle feathers.

The labelling of plant-based foods is opening a can of plant-based worms. Loose terms such as meatballs, nuggets, ribs, sausages, and even mince (according to some articles) have been flagged, and then there are the more descriptive terms like “chicken-style”. However, nothing is making okes want to moer each other more than disputes over South African specific words like “biltong” and “wors”. These foods are genetically hardwired into any “National Braai Day” stalwart, and no doubt the common or garden red-blooded South African khaki-wearer would rather make wors out of his trusty Jack Russell than braai a plant-only version.

Here’s the thing, food names can be lank complicated– sweetbreads, head cheese, Welsh rarebit/rabbit. In America there’s a famous Southern dish called “chicken fried steak”. Any guesses as to what you’re going to get? Clue, it’s not chicken. In the UK, if you ordered Glamorgan sausages you’d get menu envy if you expected porky treats. These sausages were originally meat based, but the recipe changed during WWII rationing.

Wartime Britain was a tough gig for foodies. Horrible recipes were invented by the Ministry of Food to keep the morale up, and despite their heinous “mock” recipes, no one took the ministry to task. Mock travesties included pork meatloaf masquerading as “mock duck”, and a devastating combo of margarine, milk powder, and sugar dressed up as “mock cream”. And what’s interesting is that while all this mock food might have made people mock charge, no one was bamboozled. No one. 

The world constantly evolves, and language adjusts.

Naming politics comes down to ownership and power. Who owns meaty terms, and who decides what constitutes steak, sausage, mince, milk, or butter?

I remember being horrified the first time I heard about cauliflower steak. But, I got over myself. Things can be more than one thing. If cauliflower wants to have multiple identities and troll us as pizza and bread, I say, “Bravo you cunning beast of a formerly neglected vegetable!” 

Things being more than one thing is great for choice. And, we’re helped to navigate choice because supermarkets are organised in specific ways. This is why we aren’t confused by the ingredients in Baby Oil, and why people aren’t spreading shea butter on their toast. Plant-based foods are found in a very specific section of a supermarket, far away from the butchery. What’s more, the boxes and packaging literally shout “Plant-based!” “Vegan!” “Hug the bunnies!”

My concern is if you battle to navigate a supermarket and are befuddled by “vegetarian”, “plant-based”, or “vegan”, then you’re going to be up shit creek in the chocolate aisle. Speckled eggs, creme eggs, Easter eggs, it’s a minefield. This is made more tricky because I defy anyone to locate eggs in a supermarket they’ve never visited before. I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy. Honestly, it’s not unimaginable to think that poultry eggs could be assigned to the chocolate aisle, especially since I’ve seen them next to the Handy Andy before.

The chocolate aisle is a rogue unit of shapeshifters. Chocolate pasta, chocolate prawns, chocolate cigars, chocolate nuggets, chocolate mushrooms, chocolate salami. It’s a helluva thing.

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So don’t insult my intelligence by saying that plant-based labelling is about confusion and safety. The worst case scenario of being “hoodwinked” into buying a box of chicken-style nuggets, thinking they’re actual chicken, is a mistake you’ll make only once. And the consequence? Perhaps pissing off your carnivorous children? That’s literally the worst case scenario and to my knowledge no one has died from the disappointment of eating a chicken-style nugget.

What’s really going on?

Anthony Bourdain spoke a lot about the politics of food, and his food politics were simple, “You eat what you’re given”. This belief informed his views on vegetarians and vegans, he saw them as fussy eaters who must duck. I can let Bourdain’s dogmatic beliefs slide because he absolutely lived his food politics. He ate everything that was served up. I don’t consider myself a particularly fussy eater, but I will pick the onions out of potato salad, and I won’t eat armadillo, warthog anus, fermented shark, or maggot fried rice, no matter who is dishing it up. So I think the new rule should be that if you’re not prepared to eat maggot fried rice then sit in the corner and pipe down about what other people are eating.

There’s a culture of viewing vegetarians and vegans as a nuisance and fussy. From what I’ve seen on comment threads, these beliefs inform a lot of the discourse around this food labelling issue. In fact the attitude is that this food labelling wouldn’t be such an issue if the bunny huggers just stuck to the fruit and veg section and ate the rabbit food they love so much.

Plant-based eating is a lot more nuanced than that though. Veganism started gaining popularity in about 2010. Before this most of us were skeptical of meals that weren’t firmly centred around meat. This was a hummus-free world, a world where frozen veg was just as good as the real thing. Non-meat eaters were an anomaly, usually met with a scowl and a plate of chips. I remember sometime in the early 2000s being on kitchen duty at the Hilton Hotel and I drew the short straw and had to make the “only-option-vegetable-platter” for a vegetarian.

Let me tell you, he did not thank me for it. And to be honest, I don’t blame him. 

Most of us actively avoided vegetables, and most of us still suffer from PTSD because of how our mothers and grandmothers would boil the living shit out of veg. The narrative was “eat your vegetables, they’re good for you” and delicious wasn’t even on the table. It’s unsurprising then, that when people actually opted to eat only vegetables, we labelled them as weirdos from the wrong side of the Lentil Curtain.

People on the other side of the Lentil Curtain have the bad rap of being sanctimonious. Or, they are seen as militant and aggressive. You may remember those radicals who stirred up a culture war at UCT in 2015. That caper didn’t do a great job of shedding the “Veganism is for privileged whities” lark, and the issue became heavily politicised.

But, have you ever noticed that vegans and vegetarians can’t eat a meal without having to justify and argue their food politics? They’re bombarded by incessant terrible jokes– you know the one about chicken and salad being the same thing? Top that off with the disrespectful host who says things like, “They can just pick the feta out of the salad and eat that”.

It feels like a lot of this heckling is generational and it’s as if “oldies” are associating a plant-based diet with wokeness. Well, here’s food for thought, the World War II diet was predominantly plant-based, and it’s widely accepted that at this point in history, Britain had never been healthier.

The generation that followed these plant-based patriots, the “Boomers”, were fuelled by caffeine and cigarettes for the most part. This was also the generation that fed kids tartrazine and frozen food, so it’s a bit rich for them to say they’re experts on what constitutes enough calcium and protein. No judgement here, I’m hardly a paragon of virtue, but I cannot fathom how anyone could look at a plant-based bowl of delicious grains, legumes, and vegetables, and argue that there aren’t enough nutrients? Particularly because a bowl of Fruit Loops is credited with having “everything a growing child needs,” and no one bats an eyelid.

It’s not only generational, there’s also a pervasive gendered element to food. Did you know that it’s way more acceptable for women to be vegan/vegetarian?

Of course you did.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) boldly stated that men are “the natural meat eaters”. I have him to thank for the time I went to a wedding and was served the dry chicken breast while my partner got the delicious looking sirloin. 9.5 times out of 10 a waitron will assume the man is having the steak and chips and the woman is having the Caesar salad. There are also rules about what “real men” eat and the belief that real men like their meat advertising laden with sexual innuendos and scantily clad women.

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A 2011 study by social psychologists showed that meat and masculinity are directly linked. Vegetarians are seen as less masculine and more sensitive, hence more feminine. Research also shows that men are embarrassed to eat vegetarian or vegan food in public.

What’s actually embarrassing is how much meat we’re eating and how bad this is for the environment. I’ve heard all of the counter arguments but the heaps of scientific studies don’t lie. The fact is that in fifty years meat and dairy production has gone up more than four times. Every guideline advises limiting our meat intake yet 84% of the country is going heavily above these recommendations.

For the skeptics among you who’re wondering where I’m “cherry-picking” my facts about the environmental impact of the meat industry from? Here’s the deal – The United Nations, and an Oxford University study published in the highly reputable and aptly named journal, Science. And if you’re worried about the fact that maybe these homies haven’t done their research, in the Oxford study the research covered 40 000 farms in 119 countries. One of their key findings was that plant-based meat is up to 10 times better for the planet than meat.

Should I drop the mic or are you still Googling that one study you like to copy and paste into social media comments from that random journal funded by Meat Eaters Monthly?

The South African government is on board with the research and they wholeheartedly agree that industrialisation and agriculture need reform. This is a small start to paving the way towards “reducetarian” diets. And, although less than 5% of the South African population is vegetarian, about 20% are trying to limit meat intake. Maybe this statistic is at the root of what’s threatening the psyche of the South African meat industry?

Food evolves and so do diets. And the limited view that only vegans and vegetarians eat plant-based products is absurd. Furthermore, the view that if you give up meat you shouldn’t want to eat anything resembling meat is a sign you haven’t engaged with the myriad of reasons why people limit meat or stop eating it altogether.  

Going back to the crux of this… What the meat industry, DALLRD, and the FSA want us to think this about, is naming and confusion. So to bury that logic once and for all, let’s go straight to linguistics. And to drive my point home, I think my favourite scene from The English Patient does this better than I can. Katherine (Kristin Scott-Thomas) is presented to Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) and she says, “Jeffrey gave me your monograph when I was reading up on the desert, very impressive.”

Almásy, a man of very few words says, “Thank you”.

Katherine continues, “I wanted to meet the man who could write such a long paper with so few adjectives.”

Almásy jumps in, “A thing is still a thing no matter what you place in front of it. Big car, slow car, chauffeur driven car…”

At this point Jeffrey, Katherine’s husband, interrupts. “Broken car?”

“Still a car,” says Almasy.

Katherine then chimes in, “Love. Romantic love, plutonic love, filial love… quite different things surely?”

And with that Almasy is stumped, “Now there you have me.” [End]

Things can be more than one thing.