Food Snobbery
Gwyneth Paltrow eat your (macrobiotic) heart out. I’m basically the beacon of pseudo-clean eating; I shop at the local Farmers Markets every week, my nuts are activated, my water is alkaline and I only ever eat grass fed beef and organic eggs.
My ‘hashtag totes pious’ food choices make me a much healthier and more socially responsible member of society. I love to secretly judge people and occasionally scrunch my pointy little face up when I see them scoffing their faces and filling their trolleys with white bread, peanut butter and dairy milk chocolate instead of raw cacao. It hurts me when I realise that their kale isn’t even locally sourced.
My food choices have made me an assh*le.
The research agrees, the report Wholesome Foods and Wholesome Morals by a bunch of scientists out of Loyola University found that ‘exposure to organic food can harshen moral judgments’ … which is basically a polite way of saying that people who buy organic are just a bunch of self-indignant jerks who’s purchasing decisions helps them feel better about their life choices.
It gets better.
“There’s a line of research showing that when people can pat themselves on the back for their moral behavior, they can become self-righteous. I’ve noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not”. – Dr. Kendall J. Eskine (Wholesome Foods and Wholesome Morals, Lead Author)
High fives to you Dr. Eskine, you just called me (and half of Bondi) out on being a bunch of smug food snobs.
The ‘buy organic’ movement is creating a new class of elitists and social snobbery ‘cause lets face it – that sh*it is wayyy expensive and stupidly overpriced. Not everyone can afford to eat that way.
I know the counter argument is that you can’t afford NOT to eat organic/local due to supposed health and social benefits but lets be real here, cost of living is ridiculously exorbitant and I’d prefer not to pay $30 for a tiny bag of activated walnuts. It just doesn’t make sense.
It’s also a bit crap of me to judge another person based on their shopping trolley or what they scoff into their mouths during their private time. The only exception is eating curried eggs on a crowded train – that stuff smells rank.
No one likes a self-indignant assh*le; whilst I’ll continue to line my hessian bag with locally sourced produce, I will however put a firm stop to the pointy little judgement face or feelings of self-righteousness every time I eat an organic banana.