Virtues of the Table by Julian Baggini

Author:Julian Baggini [Baggini, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, General, Social, Social Science, Agriculture & Food
ISBN: 9781847087164
Google: fUVRAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Granta Books
Published: 2014-01-02T22:14:03+00:00

CHARCUTERIE

If you’re looking for the traditional foodstuff that most flies in the face of current health advice, head to the charcuterie counter. Red-meat consumption has been linked with colorectal cancer, while meats that are cured contain a lot of blood pressure-raising salt, and most contain the preservative sodium nitrite, associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In the UK over recent years we’ve been advised to eat no more than 70 grammes of red and cured meat per day,78 and yet the best charcuterie is a pride and joy of the countries whose great Mediterranean diets we are supposed to emulate. Think of pata negra, chorizo and Serrano ham from Spain, or mortadella, salami and Parma ham from Italy.

Of course, there is absolutely no need to avoid these foods, not for health reasons at least. If you don’t waste money eating a lot of cheap processed meat, you can just enjoy the best from time to time. I recently brought back a pack of pata negra de bellota from the great ham-producing town of Trevélez in Spain. Bellota is produced from the pork of pigs who spend most of their lives grazing freely in oak forests, eating lots of acorns. The pack weighed 100 grammes, and I ate half of it, which meant I was well under the daily recommended maximum – and I don’t eat red meat regularly anyway.

The problem with ham, like cheese, is that the abundance of cheap, mass-produced varieties means that the quantity consumed has risen as its quality has fallen. We are then told we are eating too much and the good stuff gets tarred with the bad: sufficient grounds for scepticism about the idea that good charcuterie should be avoided.

Too much received wisdom about good eating is based around a list of foods we should avoid. Knowing how to eat, however, requires knowing about how, rather than what, not to eat, as I hope to show in the next section.

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