Put Down The Camera, Pick Up The Fork

Remember when food was just something you ate? 

Food — you know that stuff you put in your mouth, chew and swallow to stay alive? — has officially jumped the shark.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened. Was it the molecular gastronomy craze of a few years ago, when chefs squirted popcorn and gumdrop foam over your duck breast, and suddenly preparing a meal became a science experiment?

Or was it the proliferation of celebrity cooking and food travel shows, wherein Anthony Bourdain and a crack team of Navy Seals went undercover in Bangkok to bring back a rare mangosteen, then kept it alive in captivity back in his New York City walk-in cooler. (Slight exaggeration, but not so far from the truth.)

I say, let’s ramp down this notion of food as fetish, food as porn, food as adventure, food as performance, and get back to basics: Food as food, as something we eat.

You can read the rest of my column for WBUR's Cognoscenti here.