More Beloved Even Than Bacon

Slow Food International’s Sloweb posts today on my favorite food, cheese. I love cheese so much, I can even enjoy simply reading about it. Although I wouldn’t describe my experience of this article as enjoyment. Shame-flavoured self-awareness was more the case. The European author travels to America to explore the raw milk cheese industry, and discovers along the way the thoughtless ubiquity of cheese this side of the pond.

The fact is that, in the US, cheese is not treated as a hedonistic, gourmet product as it is in Europe: a little piece as an appetizer with your aperitif, a selection of cheeses instead of meat for an alternative main course, a little piece at the end of a meal, as is customary in Greece or southern Italy. In the States, cheese is mostly transformed into a huge, unending flow that floods the whole market, and especially the fast food sector.”

This is one of those things you know, but you don’t dwell on, n’est-ce pas? I cannot even take refuge in the maple leaf on this one, as abominable eating practices appear to me to be shared across the border. I am left to contemplate the true nature of my relationship to cheese.

Slow Food International – Sloweb.