Abstract
Michael Pollan terms it “a national eating disorder,” for Lynn Z. Bloom it is “America’s current preoccupation with food,” and Michael Ruhlman points to what mass media and its consumers have begun to call a “food revolution” in a “food-neurotic country.” Each of these terms suggests the occurrence of a sort of sudden, pervasive cultural change. No matter the rhetorical weight of distinction, the fact remains that “the obsession with food that in the past few decades has taken large sections of many Western cultures by storm apparently will not subside any time soon” (Parasecoli). It is an ultimately positive change, even, if only due to the fact that a measurable shift is occurring in the amount of attention food receives in personal, cultural, social, and political forums. This increased attention results in more material communicating food information, subsequently requiring consumers to sort between trustworthy and misleading sources. The ‘gastronome’ is the public figure both inviting of trust and concerned with encouraging consumers to participate in educating themselves surrounding issues of food production and consumption.|The goal of the gastronome is best described using a term from Slow Food as taste education. The general premise of taste education for Slow Food is that arming food consumers and food producers with knowledge of the food behind consumption and production processes creates a public that is well-informed and thus capable of better enjoying food with full knowledge of its important tenets. What results is a rhetoric or narrative of involvement by which the gastronome invites the consumer to actively participate in the production of food experiences. This project outlines this narrative at work in many forms including menu writing, food blogs, and Slow Food’s organizational materials.|The narrative proves to not only affect and inform the formation of the gastronome, but later become one of the most significant rhetorical tools at the disposal of the gastronome for advancing the “fundamental right to pleasure” that Slow Food explicitly pronounces and more casual food writing often relies heavily upon (such as evidenced in the personal stories of enjoyment, fond memories, and personal connection to food generously peppered throughout menus, blogs, cookbooks, magazines, and other media venues). The real goal of this narrative, essentially, is taste education.