The principle is as old as human nature. Anything small, unknown and good gets killed by fame. And it always gets more expensive. Because the owners are only human. And that means fundamentally greedy…
The ‘rule’ that ‘fame ruins everything’ is especially true with food. It goes back, historically, to the time Europeans came to the Americas. And it’s been especially pernicious over the past 100 years or so…
Cases in point…
“Someone on r/AskReddit asked a deceptively simple question: ‘What used to be a sign of being poor, but is now considered a status symbol?'” reports BuzzFeed’s Victoria Vouloumanos. “The thread pulled more than 4,600 replies, turning into something between a hist-ory lesson and a group confession…”
What they said
Not surprisingly, food played a leading role. Redditors were not shy about la-menting the popularization of some of their fave formerly cheap eats…
“It’s a sh—y endless cycle. People in poverty take cheap scraps because that’s all they can get. Ne-cessity being the mother of invention, they perform some actual wizardry on it to produce a dish that is cheap and good. The cheap, good dish becomes trendy. Now, what used to be scraps costs as much as Filet Mignon.”
“An older person from Eastern Canada I know said that when they were kids, if you ate lobster, you hid the shells in your garbage where your neighbors couldn’t see them because it was ‘poor people’s food.'”
“In the 19th century, here in Norway, some railway workers went on strike because they got served wild-caught salmon for dinner far too often for their liking.”
“I’ve been a chicken wing fiend long enough to have seen 10-cent wing nights slowly evolve into people being ecstatic to pay $1 per wing and accepting paying $2 or more per wing. I’ve stopped going to a couple of my favorite wing places because I can’t justify spending $20 on 10 wings.”
My two cents…
As a cook, I remember when ground beef, chuck roast, pork shoulder, ribs and other less-desireable or leftover products of the meat-cutting process were available for next to nothing. But they’re all expensive now, thanks to the popularization of grilling and the explosion of uses for ground meats driven by the absorption into Western culture of Middle Eastern and African cuisines.
The phenomenon really got rolling in the 18th Century when rich folks noticed how good the food their slaves were making was. The grilling tradition, particularly, came north from the Caribbean where the native Caribe people and others had already perfected the art of Barbacoa (grilling) long before Europeans arrived on the scene.
It grew and flourished through the rise of the United States as an economic and cultural power.
Today, ‘hamburgers’ are the foundation of a $100 billion global Fast Food industry. There are no fewer than 6 major BBQ traditions entrenched in regional cuisines spread all over the US map. And the cost of ‘BBQ’ meats has soared to compete with steak.
My take
My concern lies not with the foods that have already been ‘spoiled’ for the masses through gentri-fication. I wonder – and worry – about what other ground-level foods will be lost, due to popular-ization, to those who need them most…
~ Maggie J.