Albert Molins (Barcelona, ??1969) does not consider himself a gastronomic journalist, but his interest in the discipline and in food as an everyday phenomenon has grown over the years until it became his first book, Comer sin asking permission ( Rosameron). Molins, head of the Society section at La Vanguardia, collaborates with different specialized media and blogs and now publishes an essay full of quotes and reflections in which he reviews the cultural history of food to demonstrate the transcendence of the act of eating, its implications and the importance of claiming it in times when cooking is becoming less and less.
Do we really choose what we eat?
We have more choice than we think, but we do not exercise it. We are subject to the power of advertising and the food industry, which are the enemy of health, the environment, animal welfare and our pleasure. The only way to prevent them from deciding for us what we eat is by cooking again.
If what we eat is part of our identity, what does what you eat say about you?
That I am lucky and that I have a palate well educated by a mother who cooks like angels, parents who have taught me to value food and a grandfather who was a bon vivant, in the most literal sense, who knew how to see that I pointed out ways.
In the book he analyzes how different religions have tried to establish norms regarding food.
Any religion is a system of social control. What we like most in life is sexual pleasure and that caused by food. Limiting pleasure is a way of keeping ourselves under control. It has taken us centuries to get morality out of our beds, now let’s not put it on our table.
It starts by saying that it is becoming more and more difficult to eat without feeling guilty.
After the death of God, which Nietzsche proclaimed, health has been sacralized and death has become the greatest fear, even more so after the pandemic. In this context, dieticians-nutritionists and food technologists are dedicated to telling us that we eat poorly, that we cook poorly, that we do not store food as it should in the refrigerator, that it is dangerous to cut vegetables on a wooden board… They make us feel Guilty for not doing things their way. But the generations before us have been fed without problems or nonsense. And I say enough is enough.
It also doesn’t leave vegans in a very good position.
I have nothing against them. But I’m not willing to accept being told what to eat, being made to feel guilty, and being given moral nonsense about food. Veganism is the wrong enemy. All food production is conflictive, not just meat. We must rethink food systems as a whole.
Who is responsible for facing this change?
We can’t put all the weight on consumers, but they have a lot to say. Buying local products or small and medium-sized production may be a little more expensive for your pocket, but it gives great benefits in the long term. We must forget about the large food industry and ultra-processed foods, which is what the majority consume.
Choosing what you eat is sometimes a privilege.
The relationship between income and food is evident. There are people who are forced to exchange euros for calories, and not for nutrients.
He dedicates the book to his children, ages 15 and 18. How has the younger generations’ relationship with food changed?
They relate to her to the extent that their parents do. If they are as lucky as I was and have my children, they will continue cooking. The problem, as my friend Maria Nicolau explains, is that there has been a break in the chain of transmission of knowledge.
We cook less and less, you illustrate it with data.
We put leisure before everything else, rejecting anything that deprives us of it, and we gourmetize cooking, reserving it for special occasions. But the important thing is the day-to-day cooking, and it is what we are giving up due to a supposed lack of time.
There are those who say that in the future we will only eat in restaurants or take home delivery.
The situation is dramatic and points in that direction. I am not an optimist, but we must rebel, because to stop cooking would be to surrender completely to the food industry.
Does culinary enjoyment have a part of exhibitionism?
The braggart, the brother-in-law, has always existed. But with the networks the foodie and posturing appear, and a kind of frenetic competition to be where you are supposed to be and brag about it. Because what you eat is also a demonstration of status.
The book has an important aspect of anthropological study and references to philosophy. Do we sometimes understand cooking in a limited way?
Of course, and against that I also rebel. It is necessary to separate the discourse exclusively from restaurants, chefs and some producers. The modest intention of the book is to raise the intellectual bar of discourse in gastronomy.
You can see the journalistic investigative work behind it.
I am a journalist and I cannot stop being one. When I want to write I look for sources, books, documents… I can’t conceive of doing it any other way.
But there are other moments in which there is not that distance typical of the journalist, but rather he gets naked and talks about his intimacies, about the moments in which food has been a refuge for him.
For me, eating is a very intimate and human act, and when writing I have tried to demand the same things that I defend. Like everyone, I have had difficult times. I detect when I am not well through food and many times it has been my lifesaver.
Only one restaurant appears in the entire book.
Swab. That was where I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself, as much as possible, to writing about gastronomy. I had an epiphany while eating rice with hake.
