Americans are awfully messed up about food -- so thinks Barry Glassner, USC sociology professor and author of "The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong." We imbue certain ingredients with an almost magical power to heal -- when, that is, we're not fearing them as poisons we must strip from our diet.
Glassner is a scholar of worry: His 1999 book, "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things," examined a medley of items that panic Americans, out of proportion, he says, to their risk: poisoned Halloween candy, airplane crashes, exotic infections such as SARS.
On a recent lunch break, Glassner slowly relished beef tacos and fried plantains and talked about his latest book.
What made you want to write this book?
When I finished "The Culture of Fear," I realized I hadn't covered one huge area -- the fear Americans have of more or less everything that's for sale to eat. I'm also really interested in food.
You do seem to revel in descriptions of fine meals.
Yes, and one concern I've had is that so many Americans will just horribly restrict what they eat for one reason or another. Some will only eat in places that are recommended by the food elite. Others will only eat foods on a very particular, restricted diet. Many Americans are almost religious about what they eat.
You meant the title of your book -- "The Gospel of Food" -- quite seriously, then.
I think there are many gospels of food. There are people who worship at the altar of the late Dr. Atkins. And then there are people who are pure vegans. My view is basically eat and let eat. I think it's fine if people want to be vegans or follow Atkins. What concerns me is folks who are restricting themselves unnecessarily and missing out on pleasures of the table.
Such as worrying about saturated fat, refined carbohydrates or processed food?
There are people who select any, or several, of those. And I think there are a lot of people, especially in this country, who subscribe to what I came to call the gospel of naught -- this curious notion that the worth of a food lies in what it lacks rather than what it contains -- be it less fat, fewer carbs or fewer preservatives. I think that's a formula for eliminating a lot of pleasure.
Why do you think people in the U.S. have such attitudes toward food?
