Cooking the Values.

There’s a scene in Lord of the Rings in which we see Denethor, Steward of Gondor, picking over and chewing his morsels of gourmet delights while Pippin sings a less than merry song. It’s meant to convey the disreputable nature of the character. We’re meant be disgusted, and so we are.

I see the same thing every time I switch on the TV and catch yet another cookery show – the famous and the not-so-famous opening their capacious mouths wide to receive blood-ridden meat and puddings running with sugary sauces. And then they chew and chomp and slosh, while their faces become twisted with overstated expressions of earthly delight. This is joy, we’re being told. To me, this is the disreputable, uncaring side of decadence.

Because while my physical eyes watch these putrid little scenes, my mind’s eye falls on the places of famine, and the refugee camps, and the back streets of wealthy cities, places where the lucky ones among the unlucky millions get just enough to enable another wakening to another desperately miserable day. I’m reminded that 50% of the world’s wealth is in the pockets of 1% of the world’s population.

I don’t expect equality. I don’t even want a return to Puritan values. I have no objection whatsoever to people putting effort into their food preparation and enjoying it. I would just like to see the sense of outrage become more universal. I would like to think that a greater level of awareness and compassion might be on the rise. I suppose I wish that people watching cookery shows would question the value system being illustrated and recognise the level of excess, rather than cooing blandly over superficial and self-centred delights with their inner eyes well shut.