Some types of foods have a negative association with some group that others don’t want to associate themselves with even in that little way. In the South, fruity drinks like Welch’s grape soda and others like orange flavors are associated with the poor black population. They do seem to drink a lot just from personal experience while the whites stick to the colas and 7-up type drinks. There is a bias against whites drinking the fruity drinks because of this.
A similar phenomena can be seen with some of the cheap cuts of meat that are associated with a historically poor population in an area. There are countless examples of this across all areas and ethincities. The simple examples are the organ meats and fatty cuts of meat and pork that poor populations flocked to out of necessity and built cooking traditions around it.
Then, you have foods that are clearly inferior to their competition and indicate there is just something wrong with the person buying it. Bologna is the prime example in this category. I nominate it as a prime trash food. There isn’t much reason for its existence except to get rid of odd meat scraps. Ham and turkey fill the same niche in a non-trashy way.
I think it’s entirely culturally relative. If I go out in the backyard and grab a handful of snails and pop 'em in my mouth, that’s low brow. But if I go to Paris and order a plate of escargot, delicately sauteed and seasoned, that’s high brow.
Almost none.
There are lots of different artificial fruit flavors, with more being added all the time. The ‘tropical’ flavors (kiwi, passion fruit, etc.) are fairly new ones.
There are flavor experts who are hired as consultants by food companies to deal with this area. Here’s an article (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3289/is_n9_v167/ai_21232459) from 9 years ago that goes into some detail on mixing fruit flavors, especially traditional fruits with new tropical fruit flavors.
Before the 20th century, lobster was so cheap and plentiful in New England and the Maritimes that it was a staple food for those in poverty. Consequently, it came to be thought of as “poor man’s food” and was shunned by the upper classes.
Yeah. My parents say that when they were young, prawns (shrimp) were dirt cheap, and used to be sold in newspaper by street vendors outside the pubs at closing time, and they got a reputation as drunks’ food. Now you need to take out a second mortgage to buy the things. Same with lamb. “Lamb chops and three veg” was the typical working class Australian meal when I was a kid in the 1970s, but now lamb is a luxury.
Chicken has done the reverse. My mother says that in the 40s and 50s, you might have chicken once a year, maybe for Christmas. It was very, very special. Now it is the base of a lot of the cheapest fast food, and a poor family can live on chicken daily if they want.
My parents are raising me on an entirely organic vegitarian diet of six homecooked family oriented meals a week.
Consequentially, I sneak out to McDonalds every chance I get and sneak double cheeseburgers. How they pack all that meaty cheesy goodness into that square metal foil is beyond me.
My point is, no matter what you consider a norm for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whether honeybuns or brocolli cheddar soup with a side of panini pressed grilled sundried tomato and cheese sandwitches, it all comes down to wanting what you cant have.
And now, off to the drive through. Maybe I’ll swing by the local Wal Mart and pick me up some Honeybuns.
There was a prank type show a while back, I wish I could remember the details, that had a great idea… their ‘marks’ were several different high brow people with snobby attitutes about food, the set up was they were taken to upscale expensive restaurants with a one name chef who served them chef boy-ar-dee, lean cuisine, boxed wine and ho ho’s, dressed up to look exquisite. IIRC, a few of the people were actually completely fooled to the point of gushing about the food.
Actually, the potatoes are supposed to be cut to the same length, boiled, and THEN fried twice, at two different temperatures. I’ve forgotten the details, I just remembered the general idea because it seemed to be an awful lot of trouble for fries.
I think the perceived classiness of food, or lack of same, boils down to cost, scarcity, and labor involved in preparation.
Any dish made with a canned soup as a sauce is automatically lowbrow, but I will definitely use a can of cream of mushroom soup for an everyday dish, rather than spend half an hour making the perfect sauce.
I don’t think wanting something from the other end of the scale makes it a ‘highbrow’ food. The queen may really fancy a Pot Noodle (and while if that did happen there may be a sudden trend for Pot Noodles) it wouldn’t make it a gourmet meal. I’m with Quiddity on this one.
People with undersized schlongs (which being so undersized are not really schlongs at all – more like gourmet coctail weenies) have created the gourmet mythos in an attempt to compensate for their sexual inadequacies.
If you had a large schlong, you would look at your girlfriend in an entirely different light when she opens her mouth wide to eat a hoagie.
How much does that nice leg weigh(5lbs bone in?)? Is that more expensive in comparison to beef?
20AUD is about 15USD, right? Am I just completely confused by my local expensive California prices? A leg of lamb, bone-in (going from memory, I don’t eat that much lamb) is about 4USD a pound where I live. That’s cheaper than most good cuts of beef.
