Let Them Have Little Debbies

Apparently, it’s now both regressive and elitist to do your own cooking. It’s not just insulting for the poor who don’t have the same resources as the upper classes, but it is also gender-normative to take a hobby out of roasting. What right does a woman have to voice her opinions on protein in flour and how often a chicken breast should turn when it’s being cooked in a pan? It’s so housewife of me.

A mid-sized, anonymous Twitter account made this argument Monday. It concluded that there will be a revolution in the kitchens, but not in the restaurants. The person behind it was quickly rebuked immediately by thousands of Twitter users representing every political wing. A few radicals supported the tweet author, but not many. Despite publicly disavowing such extreme examples, many Americans still believe that home cooking should be considered a luxury of the upper classes.

This is particularly true for farm-food culture, and the backlash against them. Farmers’ markets are no longer viewed as a Leftist idea. The cause to return to traditional food and ways of cooking has been supported by homesteaders and online educators (such as this writer) and other groups such as homeschoolers and homeschoolers. These recommendations have been criticized for being too expensive and impossible. However, many of them are much more affordable when implemented well, which is closer to the way our grandparents lived two generations back, during the Great Depression.

The suggestion is that Americans of lower income can’t afford healthy eating. This almost always means they have to cook at home. Let them have Little Debbies.

This is evident in pop-culture as well as politics. Take a look at the most recent campaign advertisement you saw. If the candidate were an old-school Republican and engaged in slow-motion tumbles with his children on a green lawn, the politician probably joined his wife to make homemade cookies in the kitchen. If she was a Democrat, meanwhile, she probably strolled into a bodega to get something premade. Joe Biden made a lot of his presidency brand by ordering ice cream at an ice cream shop. This appeal to the common man is not only about which voter base each party historically targeted by such ads but also the assumption that homemade is an aspirational indulgence.

And indeed, as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, compared to restaurant prices today, home cooking is a luxury. The inflationary gap between restaurants and grocery stores is now the widest it has been since the 1970s, which is why, despite labor shortages, longer wait times, and a 7.6 percent increase in prices, restaurants are faring better than grocery stores. As supermarket prices have increased 13.1 percent, and cooking your own food takes valuable time, more average Americans have found they can save money by paying someone else to do the work.

A friend of mine loves to tell me that any problem we have in today’s world can be reduced to freezing peas. A bag of frozen peas represents our cultural approach to food. In which efficiency is more important than enjoyment or health, the bag is the best example of this culture’s way of eating. Home cooking can be expensive. Restaurants are able to buy ingredients in large quantities and get them closer to their source. However, home cooking requires a lot of time. Modern times don’t allow for women to cook as well as men. These hours have to be more than what they earn in pay. Instead, many people eat out or resort to frozen peas as a shortcut.

It is important to note that people who go out for dinner are largely middle-class and not only eating at fast food restaurants. The Journal reports that Americans making $75,000 per year and above are choosing Chili’s over casseroles. Although they are choosing to eat cheaper alternatives than home cooking, this does not mean that there is a McDonald’s fast-food phenomenon. This is important. It suggests that this isn’t about getting the lowest price. They will eat at tables as long as the middle class can afford it.

What’s the deal with dining out more frequently? The history of taverns goes back as far as any other food. Even if quality differences weren’t there between eating at home and dining out, which there certainly are, there is a difference in the quality of life when the public place becomes your kitchen table. Although most people would be a bit offended by the Twitter suggestion that Applebee’s is the true revolution, the rejection of home as the center of the food industry is a great idea.