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Luxury Groceries Have Replaced Luxury Fashion · Never Post

0:10
Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
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podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
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Rugnetta, and we have a scrumptious show for you this
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week. In this episode, Georgia chats with Ludwig Hurtado,
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writer, filmmaker, editor at The Nation, and host of Mold
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Magazine's Food Futures podcast about conspicuous consumption of
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food. Georgia looks at how luxury grocery brands are
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replacing luxury fashion brands and also at the high snobiety
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status economy report, all about what the cool kids online are
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into. And spoiler alert, it's protein bars.
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But first, we're gonna take a quick break. You're gonna listen
0:58
to some ads unless you're on the member feed. But when we return,
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Georgia Ludwig and the tyranny of taste.
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Georgia Hampton: Do you remember the first time that you noticed
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a food or a grocery store item being presented as cool?
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Ludwig Hurtado: I would say the one that stands out to me as
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something that you could get at the grocery store was
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Lunchables.
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Georgia Hampton: That's Ludwig Hurtado. He's the author of the
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forthcoming book titled Bad Foodies, which is a collection
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of reported essays about the relationship between food and
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culture in modern society. What was the thing that made
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Lunchables so desirable?
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Ludwig Hurtado: I mean, there was the branding of it all, like
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the commercials that you see on TV. We can help refuel them. We
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have the technology. With Lunchables' Fun Fuel Wraps and
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Bagels, you're
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Georgia Hampton: Fueled up and ready to go. I wanted to talk to
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Ludwig about quote, unquote, cool foods. What that term means
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now in our online lives, and what it says about our anxieties
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around what we consume, but also why we would want a food to be
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cool in the first place. When it comes to Ludwig's Lunchables
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example, the answer seems pretty straightforward. Kids love games
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and toys.
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Why wouldn't they want a toy they can eat? It turns food,
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something that could be as boring as putting a nutrient
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slurry into your body, into something more than itself,
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something exciting and fun to participate in. New Lunchables
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fun fuel. Fuel up for fun. But Ludwig's point about Lunchables
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is honestly true about any food that is presented to us as cool.
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It's more than just sustenance. But it's also not just about the
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product, of course. It's about you. There's an aspirational
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quality to buying something cool, and it has everything to
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do with money and means.
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Ludwig Hurtado: Like, okay. So it's crackers and ham slices?
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Like, yeah. We can do that for you. Oh, and cheese too?
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Sure. We can do... Like, if you buy deli slices and cheese
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slices and a big box of crackers, even Ritz or, like, an
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off brand Ritz. Like, you could easily make a Lunchables type
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package for yourself at like half the price every day of the
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week. But there was something like embarrassing to me about
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having like homemade Lunchables.
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To me it said to like my peers, you can't afford the name brand
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thing. It's now this game, this activity. And if you can afford
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the game, then you can't play. And no one wants to play with
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the off brand LEGO. Right?
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Like, you wanna play with the LEGO brand LEGO.
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Georgia Hampton: The brand is the thing that makes the food
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cool, and it's the easiest way to signify your status to anyone
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who sees you buying or eating it.
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Ludwig Hurtado: I remember, as is always the case, as has long
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been the case, especially in America, the need to sort of
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signify to folks that you do have money. Like, you want to
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brag about being rich. And I think it's also something
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that's... It's still very prevalent today, but I think the
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idea of, like, telling people you're rich actually feels
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gauche and, like, not what you're supposed to do. But it's
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still very much a prevalent American phenomenon.
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Georgia Hampton: In our online lives, this is an issue that is
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specifically prevalent for influencers. Influencers act as
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the r and d department for the culture's most obscure questions
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of status. They figure out not just what things are worth
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promoting, but how to promote them well. And the questions
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around that are especially tricky right now. How do you
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signify your coolness without being explicit about it?
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How do you moralize your status? And according to the fashion and
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culture website, Snobiety, the influencers finally cracked it.
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Earlier this year, High Snobiety published a report called The
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Status Economy, which argued that, quote, for the last
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decade, fashion has been the most direct way to communicate
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status, knowledge, and cultural credibility. Today, that
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concentration has broken apart. Everything is now a signal.
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Every purchase, product, and experience functions as a marker
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of taste, knowledge, and cultural credibility regardless
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of category, According to High Snobiety, the cool kids are no
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longer showing up to dinner with a Louis V handbag as a status
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symbol. They're pulling a David protein bar out of that bag. The
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coolest thing about these people isn't their clothes or their car
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or their watch. It's their groceries. Some ground up gluten
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free pretzels.
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I love cauliflower rice. I think it's so good. Shout out to one
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of my favorite brands ever, Simple Mills. I love you guys.
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And then I got Song vinegar chips because these are my
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favorite.
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I don't know what they put in these, but I need two bags. This
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shift away from the runway and toward the pantry also has a lot
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to do with money and status. The report writes, quote, when
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fashion and conventional luxury goods become oversaturated and
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inaccessibly overpriced, consumers simply took what
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they've learned about cultural signaling and migrated this
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behavior into other categories. That same idea of cultural
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credibility is now found and purchased in small everyday
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products like groceries, unquote. Groceries aren't
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exactly cheap, certainly not in our current economic climate,
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but they are a much more accessible, comparatively
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affordable sector to treat yourself to the nicer version of
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something.
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Ludwig Hurtado: Most of us are pretty damn poor, and we we
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really can't afford very nice things. A lot of us will never
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own homes. A lot of us will never pay off our student loans,
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but we can spend $8 every once in a while on a cappuccino and
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we can spend $9 on a carton of eggs and that can make us feel
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like we're better off. And if we're lucky and we... If we have
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the audience, then we can at least, like, signal to someone
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else, if not signal to ourselves that we, you know, have the
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leisure.
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And it's maybe just a fake it till you make it kind of thing.
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You know? Like, maybe we just wanna feel better about our
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financial position.
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Georgia Hampton: But who decides what signals what? Part of it is
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marketing, ad campaigns, packaging, but it's also the
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realm of a certain online community of consumers. The
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status economy refers to them as cultural pioneers, but that's
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just another way to describe influencers. The influencer's
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social positioning is not stereotypically one of financial
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precarity. Their business is frivolity, hipness, and wealth.
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They are the people who can afford the name brand thing and
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post it out of it. They are the ones who, at least ostensibly,
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tell us what's cool. And when it came to food, a previous
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iteration of the influencer focused a lot on excess, of
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showing off just how expensive and luxurious food could be and
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luxuriating in it. This is where you saw people ordering one of
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everything.
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Ludwig Hurtado: I'm Alex Salini, and today I am standing outside
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of one of my favorite places in the world talking about JG Melt.
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I'm gonna hit every single menu I'd share. That's one of
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everything on the menu.
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Georgia Hampton: Or making the most expensive sandwich in the
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world.
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Speaker 4: The sandwich needs to be ordered forty eight hours in
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advance because all these ingredients are flown in
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especially for your sandwich.
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Georgia Hampton: Food and drink are a great place for
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influencers to blow a lot of money. And don't get me wrong.
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This kind of content still exists. There's just less of it
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now. In the last few years, the reality of our collective
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financial position made it a bad look to try to order a $214
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grilled cheese just for the hell of it.
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It's not cool to do that anymore. And if influencers
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wanna keep their cultural pioneer status online, then they
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have to pivot to a different way to convey that status. And
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according to the Status Economy Report, that means trading in
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the aspiration of wealth for the aspiration of knowledge. Being
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in the know has always kind of been a part of food's coolness
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factor. It's knowing the taste difference between regional
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varieties of oysters or knowing the best vintage of a certain
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bottle of wine.
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And this has been true for all the domains under the
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influencer's purview. Knowing cool brands, cool shops, cool
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anything can be used to confirm one's status. But it's only
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recently that this process has very aggressively turned inward
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to the body and the food it consumes. In this contemporary
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wave of influencer driven food content, insider knowledge
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doesn't really have anything to do with more traditional forms
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of cuisine expertise. Now, it's about one thing and one thing
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only, wellness.
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The Status Economy report includes in it a list of new
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rules that these influencers abide by. And the very first one
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is that rather than treating healthy as a category, now
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everything is wellness.
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Speaker 4: Holy. This
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Georgia Hampton: term isn't really defined in the study, but
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it's paired with other vague, buzzy terms like clean eating.
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Basically, wellness foods are any food item that purports to
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do something allegedly good for you. Stuff like fermented foods
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or probiotic soda, protein powder, adaptogens. Here in the
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world of buzzword laden dry goods promising all kinds of
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protections from disease or the terror of aging, the wealth it
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takes to live like this is obfuscated away. The broad
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declaration of wellness is the tagline.
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Influencers may spend an exorbitant amount of money on
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these items, but an $18 bottle of Groceries olive oil is a lot
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easier to swallow, so to speak, than that $214 grilled cheese.
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Plus, the term wellness hints that the purpose of spending all
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this money is wrapped up in a sense of moral goodness. It's
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not trying a million dishes just to have fun. It's taking care of
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your body. And that sounds much more serious, much more adult,
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much more culturally informed.
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It's more knowledgeable. And I do understand the desire to do
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this to a degree.
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Ludwig Hurtado: I think for a long time, like, in the two
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thousands, we we were getting told so often, like, there was,
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like, the super size me and, like, you guys are eating
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McDonald's out of ease, but it's actually destroying you. And,
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oh, actually, not only is it destroying you, you're
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destroying the planet by eating it. Just we were made to be so
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anxious and we used to not think so much about the stuff that we
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were eating. Anyone alive and old enough right now to just...
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To make decisions about their food have have existed in a
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world where we've have to know about the impacts of everything
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we're doing both on ourselves and on the world.
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And I think there is just like this desire to escape that
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anxiety somehow. But you never... You can never escape
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the matrix, you know. So I don't know. There's like this there's
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like this food panopticon, pantry panopticon.
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Georgia Hampton: We are paying so much attention right now to
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what food we buy, what food our friends buy, and what food
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people online are buying. And part of that is kind of
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necessary. I'm writing this episode shortly after the summer
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of the diarrhea lettuce outbreak and the recalls on so many
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things that it started to feel like I couldn't eat anything
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without endangering myself. And it's online where I follow the
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latest recalls, look up brands that are affected, and try to
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figure out what I can eat. The idea that certain foods are good
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for you, that they're safe, is very comforting.
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And more broadly, there is a very present conversation
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happening online and offline about the impact of food
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production on the planet. It is a worthy endeavor to try to pay
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attention to where our food comes from. So the idea that the
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influencers could be the ones pointing us to brands that tick
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all these boxes is kind of nice to imagine. But things aren't
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that straightforward in this new world of wellness. Making
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informed decisions about what groceries you buy is one thing.
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Buying groceries that make you look like someone with that kind
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of moral compass, that's something else. The Status
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Economy report says very plainly that the term wellness can also
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be applied to foods that look good for you even if they
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actually aren't. Like, an iced matcha might have 900 calories
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of sugar in it, but it looks like it should be good for you.
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And that's the best case scenario here. There are
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multiple brands mentioned in this report.
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David Protein Bars and Poppy Soda, to name a couple, that
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have been enmeshed in lawsuits that alleged they had falsely
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promised benefits that weren't accurate or hid the actual
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caloric makeup of their products. But in this report,
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none of that matters. Virtue isn't as important as a, quote,
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tasteful point of view, unquote. And as cultural pioneers,
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influencers are following the visual language of any grocery
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item above everything else. Packaging isn't meant to inform,
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it's meant to incur relevance.
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If the label looks good, that's enough. So buy the protein
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powder. Never mind that earlier this year, consumer reports
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published findings saying that there are dangerous levels of
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lead in many popular protein powder brands. In fact, the
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focus here seems less and less about what any of these things
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actually taste like. For the modern day food influencer, the
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reward of buying a $9 carton of eggs is one of visibility, of
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posting about it, and being seen owning these things.
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Not necessarily eating them, just having them. The more shelf
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stable they are, the better. High Snobiety's report writes
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explicitly that any grocery item is chosen, quote, with an
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awareness that it may be seen, shared, or recognized, and
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therefore say something about you, whether in a kitchen, at a
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table, or online, unquote.
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Ludwig Hurtado: Really, think it's like, do we really care
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about the quality? Are we saying that so that we can, like,
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justify the the purchases we're making that are really about
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telling people what kind of people we are versus what we
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actually are?
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Georgia Hampton: The brand is the thing that makes the food
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cool. When it came to Lunchables, the brand was
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Lunchables. And the cool thing about Lunchables was that they
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were fun. Now, the brand is wellness. But that doesn't even
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mean anything.
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If I'm being very generous here, I could say that I understand a
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messy attempt at trying to find food that's good for us in a
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moment in The United States where food regulation sort of
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doesn't exist anymore.
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Ludwig Hurtado: We are so tired, and we are so busy, and we've
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just been flooded with information at all times. And
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it's hard to know what's even true anymore with that
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information. It's hard to know what images we see are real. You
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know, it's so easy to want to just say, you know what? I don't
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know.
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Just just whatever I've seen the most of, I guess, is what I'm
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gonna pick off the shelves. The thing about food is it is like
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our most ancient way of coming together and and like being part
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of a tribe. And this idea, it's known as commonality, which is,
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you know, the coming together around a meal. It is it is so so
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intrinsic in like the human active community. And I think if
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there are any small ways you can consume something to feel like
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you're a part of a group, then then you're going to reach for
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it whether you whether you're doing so consciously or not.
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You know, I do think there is a way of like, well, at least I
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can... At least I have this optionality. Right? I'm able to
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make this choice and say, here's who I'm a part of. Whether
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you're really voting with your wallet or, you know, just kind
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of wanting to say, I'm generally aligned or like, yeah, I'm part
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of the in group or I know what's cool right now.
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Georgia Hampton: But if I'm being less generous and more
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honest, I think the celebration of so called wellness is
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unbelievably ironic when I don't even know what food is safe to
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eat right now. It is insane to watch a host of videos talking
19:39
about how Chicago has its own dupe of the Erewhon smoothie. It
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has banana, strawberry, keeper, beet root powder. To then see
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Speaker 5: This is a public service announcement. You might
19:51
wanna think twice about eating frozen strawberries this summer
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because there is a large voluntary recall of frozen
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strawberries across The United States due to concerns for a
20:01
potential contamination of the hepatitis a virus.
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Georgia Hampton: I guess all I can say is that I hope that high
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snobiety's so called cultural pioneers are also regularly
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checking the CDC's food recall list.
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Ludwig Hurtado: Oh. A
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Georgia Hampton: huge, huge thank you to Ludwig Hurtado for
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his incredible insights. There was so much more in our
20:33
conversation that didn't make the cut, but touched on really
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interesting topics that are going to be in his book. So in
20:40
late twenty twenty seven, please check out Bad Foodies when it
20:44
comes out. I'll include more information about Ludwig and his
20:47
work in the show notes.
20:59
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