How pineapples got cheap
All those tech-driven foods are still around, but they don’t tempt consumers the way they once did. Instead, the fastest growing categories in the food business are built on an entirely different vocabulary: gourmet, artisan, healthy, organic, nutritious, sustainable, local, homemade.
Ted Gioia • Has the Internet Reached Peak Clickability?
The sunshine tastes like the strawberries that cascade from their straw-lined beds as June draws to a close. But not all the flavours of summer are as pure. It also tastes of a Twister ice lolly – packaged some place far away, a long time ago, but seasonally hand-picked from the corner shop freezer – and funfair bales of candy floss.
Ruby Tandoh • Eat Up: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want
The pineapple itself has not changed; it is our attitude to it that has. Contemplation of the history of the pineapple suggests a curious overlap between love and economics: when we have to pay a lot for something nice, we appreciate it to the full. Yet as its price in the market falls, passion has a habit of fading away. Naturally, if the object h
... See moreAlain De Botton • The School of Life: An Emotional Education
Magazines were containers for someone else’s taste, and when you read them you were inhabiting that taste. But you were also co-creating with the magazine, because by reading the magazine you were contributing to its fantasy of lifestyle. “Dreaming is free. You can’t be stingy with dreams,” said Franca Sozzani, the late Vogue Italia editor.
Daisy Alioto • The Taste Economy
So there’s a weird thing going on where there’s abundance, and yet, at the same time, we’ve become really conservative about our own styles, because people fundamentally don’t want to adopt things that feel inauthentic to them, or will be judged inauthentic.
And because culture is so ephemeral, there’s just more stuff that people are worried that —
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