Jamie Oliver has triggered another class war. In a recent Radio Times interview he more or less stated that the poorest of our society are ignoring the value of good food, in favour of technology and chips. Cue a media backlash culminating in one very loud message: What the hell does he know?
Well the thing is, he knows quite a lot. Jamie might not have ever lived in poverty, but he understands food. Of course, being a chef does not entitle him to the gross generalisations he’s routinely rolled out since the start of his TV crusades. We know that there are many people living on the poverty line who eat well, but we cannot deny that there are thousands who don’t. We have an obesity epidemic as proof.
Whilst Jamie’s remarks on the eating habits of society’s underprivilaged is hardly a meanwhile social commentary, his point about Italian’s prioritization of food is. In Italy I found that to so many people, being able to put a plate of homemade pasta al pomodoro on the table was more important than gathering around the telly.
By arguing that a ‘massive fucking TV’ and cheesy chips are a necessary form of escapism, we are assuming that our British brand of comfort can only be derived from cheap carbs. Orwell noted the same thing about the poor’s devotion to fish and chips in 1937, “Let’s have three pennorth of chips!” the unemployed would shout. Orwell put it down to a desire for small pleasures, eighty years later we’re still singing the same tune. There is truth in it, of course, but the point is that cowering under a blanket of grease and social norms is not okay.
It’s time attitudes towards food – what’s posh and what’s not – changed. Parmesan is relatively expensive, but it’s economical. That statement shouldn’t mark me as privileged and ‘out of touch’, but let’s be honest, it does. In the 1950s Elizabeth David brought the notion of Italian cooking to the British middle class, now we should bring it to the impoverished kitchen table. It’s not about showing off, it’s about changing attitudes to what food should be. Looking at the shopping of a Sicilian street cleaner for inspiration shouldn’t be idealism, it should be opportunism.
We dismiss him because surely Jamie’s recipes are a mere spectacle: an unreachable world reserved for that massive TV screen. For the most part his ingredient lists are completely unrealistic, but his dedication to good, wholesome food needn’t be. A TV series about frugal cooking is not getting to the core of the food poverty issue (and it is most certainly an issue), but it can help to mend broken attitudes towards food. The fact is that comfort doesn’t have to come from that big TV, it can come straight from the kitchen table.
To The Table 