Meals Matter A Radical Economics Through Gastronomy by Michael Symons

 I spent a lot of time before to read this book Meals Matter A Radical Economics Through Gastronomy by

Michael Symons. Published by Columbia Press, when I received it maybe, for the first time, I understood with all the possible gravity, what this pandemic influenza means in terms of eating. Not that I didn't rationally knew it; I was perfectly conscious what this influenza pandemic would have meant in terms of quality-life; I knew that it would have meant also not being anymore as hospitables as we were.

Just: it is sad.

We have always been a family pretty hospitable; italians, Americans, Russian friends, our family have known the world thanks to  good, lucullian lunches, where projects started, ideas grew up, dreams became realities.

Now, social distancing must be a self-imposition and it will pass a lot of time before to seeing  a new, relaxing and reassuring reality.

I think that the phrase can give you the idea of what you will read could be this one: "This is my socially, culturally, and naturally destructive society, in which the overtourism industry has turned the world into a a selfie-stick spectacle, warranting my push toward simplicity in the sense of being more in tune with life's elements."

The analysys of Simons, reporter and owners of restaurants spaces in the Old Greek and the liberism passing through our times and seeing and reading the contradictions that are still keeping a large part of the population poor and without sufficient food in a daily base. Food is also a political and social theme treated by governments and politicians according to their own vision or better, the vision of... money; the birth of fast food and the demolition of eating delicious meals without rush; people not anymore in grade to recognize what it is good and what it is bad, accepting what it is given to them with resignation, passivity. 

I loved reading the story of Epicurus; his philosophy of living substantially with simplicity and surely not alone, but surrounded by a group of friends and people who embraced his way of living. He organized always a feast for celebrating conviviality and life was lived and planned while enjoying a good lunch  all together.

Epicurus will be also later studied by several  philosophers like Hume, Rousseau for explaining much better old ideas that needed to be put into new concepts for a society changed by events and time; in synthesis what the old men said was to eat well and never alone where possible, because food is synonime of conviviality; and to eat for living, not living for eat. 

This book is for everyone who want to discover more about food, societies, policy, sociology and philosophy.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori