Sarah Marshall

That seems to define American food more than abundance.

And yet I think like as you're talking about the 60s, it feels like we also have these phases.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think it's revealing kind of what we see food as being for, and certainly as American individualists, we will use it as a marker of class identity a lot of the time as well.

I mean, what do you think of my conclusions here, I guess?

My argument maybe is that American food is fundamentally defined by inventiveness and desperation, and also that we keep sort of like going through the same cycles and not really...

being aware because of course now everyone's trying to stretch meat again and we're sort of i don't know falling into these historical cycles where nothing is really that new but that also is what makes it fun and what makes it able to connect us with people throughout history who have also been trying to feed themselves and their families

Yeah, we just kind of keep going back in these loops.

we keep going into kind of there's different versions of what it means and not to get too far into like the more extreme ends of what's going on today but like i do find the carnivore diet thing so fascinating um and disturbing and one of the things i always come back to is this idea that like well ancient man was eating all this butter and it's like we wouldn't

have butter if we hadn't had agriculture and like domesticated and created like the cow as we know it and like where was all this butter coming from that ancient man was supposed to be eating and i realized that that's not really the point it's just like creating a frame story so people can eat butter because they always wished that they could i don't know you can just you can eat butter you can just eat butter and it doesn't have to be a philosophy it's not you can just like

Well, that really is like one of the huge food trends of today.

And I haven't researched this, so I'm not going to like, yeah, opine too much.

But but it is like it's something that, you know, things become trends for many reasons.

But I think partly this seems like very convenient for like the dairy and meat industry.

Which are becoming popular.

You know, too expensive and who can maybe hold hands with some people who are active in conservative politics who can say, right.

And meanwhile, just, you know, you could also try and get enough fiber.

And it's interesting how also in this like push for protein, where we're putting protein in water now.

I'm seeing very little advertising for lentils.