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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Are We Culturally Bankrupt, Too?: Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Exposes Another Problem
  • Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:08:19 -0600



Are We Culturally Bankrupt, Too?: Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Exposes
Another Problem
Are we done with manners?
Gerit Quealy April 12, 2010 10:44 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerit-quealy/jamie-olivers-food-revolu_b_532446.html

Watching the launch of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution when it aired on ABC
left me slack-jawed in disbelief. Not just about the bizarre relationship
with food Americans have, but something even more fundamental. Newsflash:
People don't know how to eat! And the reason is, they're not taught as kids.

I'll amend that: They don't know how to eat properly. I'm not talking about
what food to eat, which is what Oliver is addressing; I'm talking about
physically transporting ingestible matter from the plate to the oral cavity
-- which is stunning for a civilized nation.

Which begs the question: Are we still a civilized nation? Or are we
culturally bankrupt, too?

During the two shows, run back-to-back, I was by turns amused, amazed,
appalled, even outright crying at the situation in Huntington, WV. But in the
latter half of the second hour, I was as stunned as Oliver when he discovered
the schoolchildren he was trying to educate about food did not actually use
cutlery.

"We're tryin' to figure out how we're going to do this fork/spoon business,"
said Alice, one of the cooks in the school cafeteria. "They need a fork."
Oliver: "Yeah, and a knife would be nice. They don't have a knife?"

"Oh no, no knives."

"You don't get your kids to use a knife and fork?" Oliver replies, confusion
clouding his boyish features.

In an on-camera narration, he underscores: "[That] means from the age of 4 to
10, they never use a knife and fork!"

The conversation continues, with an incredulous Oliver: "This is school. You
teach them how to spell, you teach them to read, you teach them to write --
you teach them to use a knife and fork!" he emphasizes. "You don't want to
bring up a nation of kids that only use their fingers and a spoon!"

But the staff was equally amazed that small children in Britain are given
these utensils --and asked for documentation.

Slight tangent: I hope a neon sign spelling 'irony' is not necessary here
when noting that we have a British citizen, with the word 'revolution' in his
show's title coming to this country to teach us how to be civilized 200+
years after the American Revolution.

I scuttled over to my style library and grabbed The Girl's Guide to Social
Savvy, Manners for the Modern World, by Jodi R.R. Smith (Barnes & Noble,
2004). I don't know what the R.R. is for, but clearly she should have
railroaded her book down everyone's throat, especially since they're not
using a knife and fork anyway.

Yep, there it was, Chapter 4: Gracious Dining. The information is out there
folks, and hopefully not just relegated to bookshelves. And another, Kate
Spade's Manners (Simon & Schuster, 2004), states, " I don't think table
manners are passé." Clearly before the advent of Oliver's show. Spade also
quotes Deanna Troi of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Higher emotions are
what separate us from the lower orders of life... higher emotions, and table
manners." There you have it! Space, the final authority from the final
frontier.

Oliver opined later in the episode that to have no use for a knife and fork
was neither a class nor a cultural issue; it was saying we've no use for real
food. I agree, to a degree.

But I also think it is a distinct marker of a civilized society. Human beings
in third world countries are forced to eat with their hands -- it is not a
choice. How you eat reflects your personal style, grooming habits, attention
to detail, a host of things. Smith's website has this quote from Goethe, "A
man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait."

Several years ago, I was on a quest to discover why Americans practice (or
used to, anyway) the complicated ritual of switching the fork back and forth
between hands after using a knife -- unlike our European counterparts who
keep the two utensils active in each hand while eating. Americans think this
looks barbaric. Europeans think keeping one hand in our laps is restrictive
and illogical.

I found the reason at the bottom of a pool in St. Augustine, Florida. Well,
the pool was drained and filled with antique shops in what is now The
Lightner Museum, but Julia, the shopkeeper, had the tidbit I'd been seeking.
She was showing me what I thought was a crumber -- a silver utensil to push
the crumbs from one's place at the table. "Oh no," she said, this was for a
baby to learn how to push its food onto the fork, in lieu of a knife.

A baby! No wonder our nation's children can't use cutlery; we're equipped
with sippy cups (adult version: to-go coffee mugs) and sporks.

Oh, the reason Americans switch back and forth? In our country's infancy,
knives were scarce and primarily used for tools in the field, Julia said. The
knife at the table was placed in the center. You used it to cut your food,
then replaced it and put your other hand in your lap to make room for all the
people crowded round the table. The root of the custom was deprivation.

Now, deprived of nothing, and armed with pizza, buffalo wings, mozzarella
sticks, hamburgers and chicken fingers, who needs cutlery?

Perhaps with a little history of the practice now illuminated, and Oliver
enlightening us on what to eat, we can employ these valuable utensils again?
For real food, that requires cutting, and chewing, and digesting.

It's certainly something to chew over.


Oliver won the TED prize in February 2010 for his global initiative to change
our approach to food, and has a petition to that effect anyone can sign.





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