The food media right now seems to be in another phase of announcing that “food has never been more popular.” I’ve seen it mentioned in mainstream magazines and upstart newsletters alike. What is the evidence? The Bear’s final season made barely a dent in the cultural conversation; Tony was saccharine; Maddie’s Secret, while striking an extremely interesting tone, likely won’t be seen by anyone who doesn’t already get the jokes.

Whenever these sorts of truisms are rolled out as justification for profiling a cookbook author or asking for subscription money, they have a defensive effect. And people have been saying it for decades, whether about food generally or different types of food (see this 2008 blog from Philly Mag that calls out the silliness of the “comfort food is more popular than ever” trope). Right now it doesn’t even seem like this claim is cyclical; it seems like eternal paranoia about an ever-encroaching total irrelevance.

One problem is that there’s a conflation of food as something people cook, something people go out to buy, the media that covers or depicts it, as agriculture, as etc. etc.—when you say “food,” the reader will simply insert the way they are most likely to think about it and engage with it. When I read “food,” I think about something so freaking enormous. It’s a capacious word! I don’t say that to be like “my big brain”; I say it to mean that I understand it the same as when someone writes “art” or “music” or “film.” It’s multiple industries; it’s cultures; it’s a culture industry but it’s also literal sustenance. It’s, indeed, a human right!

Extra credit reading to the below that was published after I was done writing: Bonnie Slotnick (of cookbook shop fame, without whose store I wouldn’t have been able to write either of my books) arrested over an altercation with security about a line for a Harry Styles pop-up outside her store; AirMail’s deep dive into how Food52 shot itself in the foot.