53. How American Food Got So Bad

[0] From APM, American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace.

[1] Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Rizdahl.

[2] Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio, that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co -author of the books and the blog of the same name.

[3] It is the hidden side of everything, as it usually is.

[4] Dubner, it's good to talk to you.

[5] Good to talk to you, Kai, and I have a question for you, if you don't mind.

[6] That's kind of the way these things go, isn't it?

[7] On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate America's food?

[8] I'm curious to know.

[9] America's, oh, okay, big topics.

[10] 7 .3.

[11] Yeah, all right.

[12] So is there a right answer or wrong?

[13] No, there's no right answer.

[14] I was curious to know because, you know why?

[15] We love to complain about our food.

[16] Yes.

[17] And for those who like to complain, there's a new book coming out called An Economist Gets Lunch by Tyler Cowan.

[18] And he explains how he puts it, American Food Got Bad.

[19] And some of the explanations are really interesting.

[20] For starters, he blames Prohibition.

[21] A lot of good restaurants, they make a lot of the profits on the drinks.

[22] When you shut down their ability to sell wine beer, other drinks, basically it put them all out of business.

[23] Those quality restaurants within a period of a year or two, they vanished.

[24] But Prohibition was like 80 years ago, man. It is true, but many profound effects have distant causes, as I've tried to teach you, Grasshopper.

[25] So, no, actually, it's not that.

[26] But, anyway, but, you know, we did bounce back.

[27] But what we did is we bounced back in volume of restaurants.

[28] But a lot of them were diners and cafeterias.

[29] Cowen says that we began to cater more than any other nation to our children's palates.

[30] Compared to a lot of Asian cultures or European cultures, when it comes to the food scene, very often in America, the child is in charge.

[31] And that again means soft and sweet and gooey.

[32] So you've got soft, sweet and gooey, taking center stage.

[33] Plus, Cowen argues, a lack of...

[34] of new flavors.

[35] Now, can you guess why we didn't get any new flavors?

[36] A lack of new flavor.

[37] No, I got nothing.

[38] Immigration.

[39] That's the argument.

[40] Or really, the lack of immigration.

[41] So the Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas in this country that weren't lifted until the 60s.

[42] More immigration generally means more food innovation.

[43] Right.

[44] You know, everything.

[45] Spices, ingredients, know -how strategies, and we weren't getting a lot of either of those.

[46] Well, let me throw another one at you, though, just for the heck of it.

[47] What about convenience, right?

[48] We were in the 40s and 50s a more mobile society.

[49] We wanted convenience.

[50] We wanted frozen.

[51] We want to drive through, all that good stuff.

[52] That's exactly right.

[53] And Cowan, he says that this is interesting.

[54] It's kind of a byproduct of World War II, which is that during the war, out of necessity, we had to learn to can and package and transport food on a much bigger scale than ever before.

[55] And then when the war ended, we kind of, we liked our spam.

[56] We hung on to it.

[57] And all those processes that came along with it.

[58] What's interesting, though, is that in Europe, World War II had exactly the opposite effect.

[59] It shut down a lot of transportation.

[60] It shut down a lot of borders.

[61] So people ate very locally.

[62] They would grow things in their gardens.

[63] You know, they might even eat the family pet.

[64] Do things that we might not find that tasty or that pleasant.

[65] But the result in Europe was to make things more local, not less.

[66] All right.

[67] So now that I think about it, the family pet is probably like a cow or a pig, not fido, right?

[68] Depends on your family kind.

[69] I can't speak for your family.

[70] I don't know.

[71] That's right.

[72] And local makes sense too, right?

[73] It does.

[74] And, you know, American food now, Cowan and just about everybody else argues, is on the upswing.

[75] And a big part of that is this local movement, the idea that we should all eat more local food, maybe all local food, which might taste better often.

[76] But as a solution to the food future, the idea of feeding more and more people around the world, nutritious and affordable food, cowen argues that the local movement, is a little bit snobbish and a lot impractical.

[77] The biggest food problem in the world today is that agricultural productivity is slowing down, and for a lot of the world, food prices are going up.

[78] And for that, we need more business, technology, and innovation, not localism.

[79] You are going to get such hate mail, can I tell you?

[80] Well, I think we should direct the hate mail to you this time after the turkey breast incident, if you don't mind.

[81] I'm still hearing about that.

[82] Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics .com is the website.

[83] A couple of weeks, huh?

[84] Talk to you soon, Kai.

[85] Thanks.

[86] You know,