Why the Food Hipsters Are Pissing Me Off

Why the Food Hipsters Are Pissing Me Off

Image by Ross Cains from Pixabay

Disclaimer: we know that the information here applies to none of our readers, and is not to be taken personally.

 

Here’s the thing about hipsters: they want to be different, re non-conformist, so they adopt a unique way of dressing. Of course, those accouterments then become the hipster uniform, and so much for non-conformity.

But it’s the Super Food Du Jour syndrome that gets us. Here’s why: Let’s take quinoa. We had been purchasing quinoa for years, at New York’s 9th Avenue international markets. It was one of the few places you could find it, save for the odd health food store, and it was about the same price as rice.

Then it became a Super Food, a fact about which we were unaware until we stopped by the 9th avenue market, and the quinoa barrel was empty. It took weeks for it to appear again. Of course, it was now available at other stores – at more than twice the price – and when they did get it in again at the international market, the price had more than doubled.

The hipsters had obviously discovered quinoa.

What, you couldn’t stick with amaranth or faro or even kale? We could care less about them. Knock yourselves out and it was bad enough when you had discovered chia seeds! And for the record, even lettuce has more nutrients than kale.

Cassava Flour – The New Black?

They’re clearly now on to cassava flour, which we used to be able to purchase in Chinatown for under $2 a pound, but is now only available in specialty stores and online, for at least three times the price. It’s gluten-free (nothing wrong with gluten – which is a protein found naturally in wheat flour – unless you’re a celiac. As for so-called gluten intolerance, you’re probably reacting to that carcinogen in all purpose white flour that has been banned by over 100 countries around the world, and is not labeled or outlawed in the US), but food hipsters pay attention to things like gluten, fat content, carbs and calories – items that are marked on food labels – when they should be more concerned with glycemic load or the glycemic index. That’s Type 2 diabetes territory which, considering that you’re proudly gluten free and buy baked goods where the wheat flour has been replaced primarily with rice flour and potato starch, guess where you’re heading? Takes time, but would you sit down to a bowl of rice flour, potato starch and sugar? Read the ingredients, kids. And do some research, if you truly want to be healthy. Start using that web thing for more than taking pics of your food and posting to the gram.

Anyway, once again, you’ve made our lives more difficult. The good news is, we’ve found a perhaps even healthier replacement for the cassava flour. Also gluten free and low glycemic load and has been available for years right under your noses and on your grocery shelves, and online, since we can’t say with utter certainty that you frequent brick and mortars, and which will no doubt make the hipster Super Food list soon enough. In the meantime, not sharing and enjoying that it’s currently readily – and affordably – available.

Another thing: we know you like to eat healthy and not ingest four-leggeds. We support that, but you know those fake meats that have suddenly cropped up all over? Have you looked at the ingredients? Or the nutrition labels? Pretty heavy in fats and saturated fats.  Expeller-pressed canola oil? Refined coconut oil? Pea protein isolate? Thought you all were against processed foods and note to self: the fakes/replacements are nothing if not processed. We know you’re into saving lives. Does your own not factor into the equation? Just asking. Want to go vegan and get protein besides tofu into your diet? Try gluten-based products. Pure wheat protein, 100% natural, non-GMO, and you’ll recognize every ingredient. Available in mock pork, duck, chicken and abalone. In Asian markets in the US, too. Despite the fact that these products were not grown in Silicon Valley labs, no animals lives were sacrificed. Just hipster cred. Many of the same ingredients are in the Impossible Burger, but the latter is actually less healthy. It’s mostly the packaging that has been changed to deceive the clueless and, unlike the Chinatown alternative, these Frankenfoods are part of the Silicon Valley Hype Machine/Hockey Stick Growth League.

No doubt that coming up next on the hipster menu will be the lab-grown, or ‘clean meat,’ developed from stem cells extracted from animals, then processed in labs. Even though Wired swears it’s coming, just to clarify: aren’t genetically modified foods on the food hipster no-fly list?

Spoiler alert: in case you missed the memo, Camel milk could be the next superfood—thanks to East Africa

Don’t get us started on milk. We’re aware of the fact that humans are the only mammals who continue to consume milk beyond the initial nursing period, but low fat? Non-fat? Skim? The only truly healthy bovine milk to drink, if you’re going to continue to drink it, is whole milk. Without the fat in milk, your body reads it as pure carbs and stores it accordingly. In fact, in most countries around the world, all lower fat milks are fed to farm animals to fatten them up. We’ve written about this before (Got Milk?).

It’s all marketing. We know that, because in order to get food hipsters, you need the food hypsters, although we’re not sure which camp starts the trends. But isn’t that always the conundrum: which came first, the mock chicken or the egg replacement?

Onward and forward.

 

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