The American Spectator

“Fast foods are dangerous because they bring about the homogenization of taste, because there is no cultural diversity,” he said. “But there is no sense in demonizing them,” he added.

Unfortunately for those cosmopolitans who crave cultural diversity, when cultures are allowed to deteriorate one ends up with fewer of them, not more.

THE POLITICS OF FOOD has never been more intriguing. With the release this month of the documentary Super Size Me, in which its director embarks on a no-holds-barred fast food feeding frenzy, many are attacking “corporate culture” for shoving junk food down their throats. The bigger problem could be that they are allowing this polymorphous corporate culture to take the place of a genuine culture and tradition — including any fundamental beliefs and values — they lack.

And so the Great Relearning in the culinary realm will have to begin. If the Italian communists who founded the Slow Food Movement really want to preserve their gastronomic culture and health-obsessed Americans really want to improve their diet, instead of focusing on the black celery of Trevi and the Ischia cave rabbit of Campania or worrying about what McDonald’s executives want them to buy, they would do well to protect a way of life that values more than the exotic and the expedient.