I was never a particularly good Catholic. Most of the times I have set foot in a church has been for a funeral or sightseeing. So why do I feel so much underlying guilt about everything I do? The horrors in the world I don\u2019t speak out enough on. What I watch on TV. How much wine I drank the night before. My Western privilege. I especially feel guilty about the things I eat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes it\u2019s when I am tired and haven\u2019t gone to the market and there\u2019s nothing in the pantry, and I put some frozen chicken tenders that were for my kids in the air fryer. Am I child? Why am I eating like that? And why does my body enjoy it so much? Or sometimes I\u2019ll overindulge in something rich and fatty, like caviar on fried chicken skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The term guilty pleasure, in relation to the things we eat, often refers to a food that we appreciate but is bad, for one reason or another. A food that might be considered shameful because of what it represents. For what it does to our bodies. Or what it does to the planet or how it makes us look to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few are total purists. Most of the world\u2019s great chefs have their gustatory vices. David Chang<\/strong> often claims his love for Domino’s Pizza, while Dominique Creen<\/strong> prefers lamb merguez on a baguette. Anthony Bourdain<\/strong> is said to have loved Popeye\u2019s fried chicken. Ferran Adri\u00e0<\/strong> has said his guilty pleasure is Bollycao, an industrial chocolate filled cake, so for all we know Alain Ducasse might sustain himself with gas station vol-au-vents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When asked, many people will name some industrial food product that gives them comfort, like a bag of candy or McDonald\u2019s French fries, as their guilty pleasure. Or it might be a one of kind family recipe that evokes nostalgia from a more innocent time in our lives, even though it is made from cheap, supermarket ingredients. Or maybe it\u2019s just something weird, like a Canadian spaghetti sandwich or spam musubi<\/em> in Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do we feel guilty because eating these things can hurt our social status? That it is something that is beneath us? Are we no longer cool if we enjoy sour gummy worms? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve certainly shamed people for their food and drink choices. You probably have too. I once witnessed someone order a Coca Cola at Noma because they felt it was the only way to soothe an upset stomach during the meal of a lifetime. I give them endless shit about it. I\u2019ll probably never let that one go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do we feel guilty because eating these things can hurt our social status? <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Sometimes our guilty pleasure is something that breaks tradition. Like pineapple on pizza. Is that really so bad? Or opting for butter instead of olive oil in a classic Milanese dish. It\u2019s also because of excess. Dabiz Mu\u00f1oz might give you every rare, delicious flavor all at once on a single plate at DiverXo rather than spreading them throughout the meal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Guilt is lurking within every tasting menu and on every supermarket shelf. If we let it, it will take away all our joy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “That whole guilty pleasure thing is full of fucking shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave Grohl<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n What Grohl <\/strong>is talking about, even if it\u2019s not a direct parallel, makes some sense. Can we just enjoy food without worrying about what everyone thinks all the time? If it brings enjoyment, can\u2019t we just let it be? Does the purity patrol have to appear every time we eat a piece of chocolate? <\/p>\n\n\n\n If eating were only about sustenance, we would just eat steamed boiled chicken with steamed broccoli all the time. It\u2019s OK to seek pleasure in what we eat. To find a combination of flavors and techniques that gets our hearts and brains to wake up a bit. We all need these little fragments of ecstasy in this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, there must be some<\/em> limit. Eating whatever we want, whenever we want, regardless of how bad it is for us or how bad it is for the planet and ignoring all the consequences that come with it doesn\u2019t quite make us pleasure seekers. It just makes us bastards. With nearly any food there\u2019s some way you can abuse it. You can cook it in a way that diminishes it. You can waste it. You can eat too much of it. Maybe it\u2019s not guilt that is the problem at all, but our limited view of pleasure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t we get more pleasure by craving something? By understanding what life is like with it and without it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Shouldn\u2019t a perfect heirloom tomato in the late summer, bred for flavor by a collection of farmers over decades, picked off the vine at just the right time, give us as much of not more pleasure as some combination of chemicals spliced together in a lab that tricks our brains into liking them? If that tomato was available every day of the year, we might not derive as much pleasure from it, but God damn, when the stars align, there are few better expressions of time and place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if we just restrain ourselves a little bit? A study has shown that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed in the country. Most of that\u2019s not grass-fed beef either, but the worst kind, much of it from cattle raised on industrial feed lots or on land that used to be rainforest in Brazil. Are they still getting as much pleasure from the burgers, steaks, and barbecue they are eating when they eat it multiple times a day? Should those of us that might have oxtail a few times a year be allowed to enjoy it or should those pricks be allowed to have all the fun?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether you are guided by punk rock or Jesus Christ, pleasure should be derived by what nourishes us. Our bodies. Our souls. Ultimately, that\u2019s not cheap thrills, but love. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was never a particularly good Catholic. Most of the times I have set foot in a church has been for a funeral or sightseeing. So why do I feel so much underlying guilt about everything I do? The horrors in the world I don\u2019t speak out enough on. What I watch on TV. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":215346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"graphics-double-column","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Guilty Pleasures","_seopress_titles_desc":"In an essay, Nicholas Gill invites us to let go of judgment and feed on authenticity, reflecting on the notion of guilty pleasures.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"selected_color":"","palette":"{\"media_id\":215346,\"colors\":[[60,59,60],[185,156,111],[125,99,76],[147,156,160],[142,147,156]],\"selected\":\"rgb(125, 99, 76)\",\"gradients\":{\"a1\":[\"#fffbff\",\"#fff8f5\",\"#ffdcbf\",\"#ffb874\",\"#ec9840\",\"#cd7e28\",\"#ae660b\",\"#6b3b00\",\"#3c1f00\",\"#2d1600\",\"#1e0d00\"],\"a2\":[\"#fffbff\",\"#fff8f5\",\"#ffdcbf\",\"#e2c0a4\",\"#c5a58a\",\"#a98b72\",\"#8d725a\",\"#59422d\",\"#35220f\",\"#291806\",\"#1d0d01\"],\"a3\":[\"#fbffe1\",\"#f4ffc9\",\"#dde8b3\",\"#c1cc99\",\"#a6b07f\",\"#8b9567\",\"#727b4f\",\"#424b23\",\"#212905\",\"#171e00\",\"#0d1300\"],\"n1\":[\"#fffbff\",\"#fff8f5\",\"#ece0d9\",\"#cfc5be\",\"#b3a9a3\",\"#988f89\",\"#7e7670\",\"#4c4541\",\"#2a2520\",\"#201b17\",\"#15100c\"],\"n2\":[\"#fffbff\",\"#fff8f5\",\"#f2dfd1\",\"#d5c3b6\",\"#b9a89b\",\"#9e8e81\",\"#837469\",\"#51443a\",\"#2e241b\",\"#231a11\",\"#180f07\"],\"error\":[\"#fffbff\",\"#fff8f7\",\"#ffdad6\",\"#ffb4ab\",\"#ff897d\",\"#ff5449\",\"#de3730\",\"#93000a\",\"#540003\",\"#410002\",\"#2d0001\"]}}","authors":"[{\"role\":\"Words by\",\"related\":[{\"postType\":\"collaborator\",\"postTypeLabel\":\"Contributor\",\"title\":\"Nicholas Gill\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/collaboratore\/nicholas-gill\/\",\"ID\":144648,\"value\":144648,\"label\":\"Nicholas Gill\",\"thumbnail\":false}],\"title\":\"\",\"unique_id\":\"MTM4NDE3MTU4MDE2ODE0Nzcw\"}]","magazine_id":"216369","footnotes":""},"categories":[1620],"tags":[2073,2254],"location":[],"class_list":["post-215320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-comfort-food-2","tag-guilty-pleasure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215320"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224192,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215320\/revisions\/224192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215320"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=215320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cI don\u2019t believe in guilty pleasures,\u201d Foo Fighters guitarist Dave Grohl once said in an interview. \u201cIf you fucking like something, like it. That\u2019s what\u2019s wrong with our generation: that residual punk rock guilt, like, \u2018You\u2019re not supposed to like that. That\u2019s not fucking cool.\u2019 Don\u2019t fucking think it\u2019s not cool to like Britney Spears\u2019 \u2018Toxic.\u2019 It is cool to like Britney Spears\u2019 \u2018Toxic\u2019! Why the fuck not? Fuck you! That\u2019s who I am, goddamn it! “<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n