Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
IS it just me or do others feel bewildered by the trend to market mass-produced food items as handmade and “gourmet”?
In Starbucks a new coffee drink is pictured with the caption: “We’ve made this just for you.”
Twaddle – of course they haven’t. One supermarket claims its Italian crostini “are made just like real bread in a small Italian bakery in a village called Dolcedo”.
This fad for bulk-manufactured originality wants to make us all feel a cut above the rest. It flatters our aspirational desire to be connoisseurs and escape our plastic, impersonalised culture, to recapture a more “authentic”, traditional way of life and what it shows is that we are fully in the grip of gourmet gobbledegook.
“Special”, “unique” and “real” are all gourmet gobbledegook buzzwords, with a sprinkling of foreign lingo often thrown in to add flavour.
The strapline for one margarine for example is “churned for taste”, harking back to pastoral scenes where busty milkmaids would roll up their sweaty sleeves. But does anyone know what it means? I called customer services to find out.
“It’s basically the method of making it. It’s the way they used to make proper butter,” a woman explains.
“You mean like in olden times?”
“Yes, but on a huger scale.”
There was a long pause while she consulted her colleagues and then returned to the phone: “It’s like a washing machine – so it’s churned round, rather than the other way, which I don’t understand.”
Bemused by this encounter I turned to a packet of crisps. The blurb says they “are made from specially selected potatoes and cooked using our unique recipe and patented cut. …“What is this patented cut?”
The woman at customer services wasn’t sure. “I suppose it’s just that we’ve got the patent on how they are cut on the machine.”
“But the cut is basically just a zig-zag, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s the thickness, I suppose.”
“But how can you patent a zig-zag?”
“Well, I don’t know. I suppose it’s making out they are a more specialised crisp than some of the cheaper crisps.”
Now that sounds like real gobbledegook.
