With obesity and diabetes at epidemic levels, the experts agreethat America's diet is in serious need of reform. Even so, thereare times when food criticism seems to wander away from the realmof reasoned analysis in the direction of religion. With reformerssuch as Morgan Spurlock and Michael Pollan preaching about themorality of high fructose corn syrup and organic produce, it cansometimes seem like American cuisine is caught in a battle betweengood and evil -- and your plate is the OK Corral. Economist Tyler Cowan sees it differently. In An Economist Gets Lunch, his analysis of food, farms, and restaurants, he argues that thereal story of American cuisine bears little resemblance to thetales told by Spurlock, Pollan and their fellow travelers. FromCowan's perspective, America's culinary problems date back muchfurther, and the solutions may be as near as your local Chineserestaurant. And the Real Villain Is ... Most experts blame factory farming and mass production for thedownfall of American cuisine, arguing that the availability ofcheap, plentiful ingredients translated into blandness. Nosurprise, the contrarian Cowan offers up a few alternate foodvillains. He starts by blaming Prohibition. As he points out, in the 1920s, the country's finest restaurantsused alcohol sales to subsidize the prices of their food, and theirFrench-trained chefs often cooked with wine. When America bannedalcohol, it effectively destroyed their business model and robbedthem of one of their primary ingredients. And while 1933s repealgot the liquor flowing again, it didn't heal the economic damage:It took about 40 years for U.S. alcohol consumption to return toits pre-Prohibition levels. Cowan also places blame on another unusual set of suspects: ourchildren. His findings suggest that a rising desire to produceconvenient food that the entire family would like meant parents andrestaurants adapted by finding ways to tantalize kids' bland,sugar-centric tastes. Add these two factors together with apost-World War II food-packaging push, and you get McDonald'sburgers and Stouffer's mac and cheese -- foods that please thekiddies, but not a sophisticated palate. Using Economics to Pick a Restaurant So economics changed the American diet back then. But how is itcontinuing to affect what arrives on today's tables? To explorethis question, Cowan begins by showing how even the simple act ofpicking a restaurant can involve one in a rich web of economicpractices. In his view, the first step toward finding a good restaurant liesin finding good guides -- a group of people who know the area, eatout regularly, and are also "prosperous or middle class but notnecessarily rich." The best guides: taxi drivers, firemen, textbooksalespeople, and, generally, people aged 35 to 55. They have a fairbit of experience, aren't too set in their ways, can afford to eatout regularly, and are interested in getting the most for theirmoney. I am an expert from automobilevideorecorder.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China DVR with HDMI Output , Dual Camera Car Dvr, DVR with HDMI Output,and more.
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