In the most critical moments of processesin October 2017, a couple of people criticized me for tweeting about restaurants or recipes when the revolution was about to break out in Catalonia. The reproaches seemed so absurd to me that I didn’t even talk about them, but those indignant people planted a seed in my head, because since then I have asked myself more than once what is the point of addressing seemingly trivial topics when the world is burning. How can we worry about how to make gazpacho, where to go to eat sushi or which is the best croissant in Spain, while dramas such as housing or poverty, to name two very lacerating ones, rage around us.
Until now I had weathered the storm by remembering a quote from Voltaire that a friend told me one day when I was complaining to him about the unbearable lightness of my work. “If nature had not made us a little frivolous, we would be very unhappy. Precisely because it is frivolous, the majority of society does not hang itself.” In clear contradiction to the above, I also told myself that eating is a fundamental human activity, which is underestimated when it should receive more attention.
Yet this year the news became so thick that it was difficult to swim in it. The Gaza genocide shocked us all, except for the human-looking pieces of flesh and a vague smell of decay that mocked a certain flotilla that was trying to bring food to the starving people. This horror, together with other phenomena such as the persecution of migrants, the decline of human rights, the rise of the far right or the climate emergency, lead us to ask: gastronomy? Now? Oh really?
Maybe we will find answers in some people who, instead of ignoring what is happening in Palestine, have faced it through food. I think of the journalist Mikel Ayestarán, winner of Ortega y Gasset for his Gaza Menu project, in which he collected photos and testimonies of what a Palestinian family was cooking and showed how Israel has used hunger as a weapon of war. Or in chefs like Andoni Luis Aduriz, who had the courage to denounce the massacre in a sector prone to Ayusism-extremecentrism such as haute cuisine. In Campo Adentro, a project that tries to keep Palestinian varieties of vegetables alive in Spain, or (sorry for the self-citation) in the video we made on El Comidista on the boycott of Israel through food.
Another clue as to where to go could be found in a recent study from the universities of Birmingham and Munich. Its researchers analyzed the attitudes of around 1,000 white British adults towards migrants and cross-referenced the data with their consumption of Indian, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, Caribbean and Hispanic food. They found that enjoyment of these cuisines was “significantly related” to pro-immigration positions and a lower willingness to vote for xenophobic politicians. That is to say, far from being irrelevant, a culturally diverse diet can help combat the most inhumane of contemporary scourges: hatred towards those who come from the outside out of necessity.
In such an unflattering present, gastronomy can count, but in our territory it is essential to look more at what surrounds us. Continue to champion culinary pleasures and adventures, but pay attention to the social implications of food. Understanding, for example, that the taste of a food is not more important than the impact of its production on the territory, that a restaurant is no good if it exploits its employees, or that cooking at home is not a trivial matter, but rather an act of resistance against the most predatory capitalism. What doesn’t seem very feasible is continuing to grow delicacies for the rich. As it stands, a gastronomy that ignores reality and continues to indulge in luxuries accessible to few will resemble the orchestra of the Titanic, but with kitchen instruments instead of music.
Gastro Special from ‘El País Semanal’
This opinion article is part of the Gastro Special prepared by ‘El País Semanal’ and EL PAÍS Gastro.
