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WTF is up with 'Man v. Food'?



Truth In Advertising: The Knucklehead Challenge
(photo credit: http://www.travelchannel.com/)

 Lying around in full couch tuber regalia, following the heartbreakingly tantalizing 49er game, I had the misfortune to channel-surf through the treacherous waters of Monday Night Television, only to find my mental Minnow festooned around the awful coral head of Adam Richman's Man v. Food. As if driving past an overturned car in a highway ditch, or probing a sore inside a cheek, I sat there, glassy-eyed and I must suppose mildly brain-damaged, for perhaps 15 minutes (an amount of time that, at roughly 0.00003% of my expected life span, strikes me as too long by at least half), transfixed, seemingly incapable of averting attention from either Mr. Richman's ham-handed narrative or the grotesque display of gustatory abuse which forms the dubious premise of the show.



This particular car-wreck happened to be an episode in Philadelphia, in which the host must face down a single, titanic cheese steak from Tony Luke's, the sandwich in question (although to call it that is surely to insult the Earl's good memory and proper sandwiches everywhere) weighing in at an appalling 5lbs in total, and constructed from 3lbs of meat, 1lb of American cheese, and a half-pound of fried onions, all stuffed into a 20"-long sub roll, which I suppose we're meant to infer weighs another half-pound. This is not the foul pile of landfill masquerading as food and pictured above-right; that unfortunate distinction belongs to Parker's Hot Dogs in Sacramento, home to yet another 5lbs of televised obscenity at the hands of said Mr Richman. But even to debate the particulars is to offer the offer the show far more quarter than it deserves; the what he eats is irrelevant in comparison to the why.


I've been puzzling over what bothers me so much about the show for the last couple of days: Notwithstanding the puppy-dog eyes and smarmy winks, Mr Richman himself seems inoffensive enough, and arguably knows what he's doing, both in front of the camera (he studied drama at Yale) and in the kitchen (he claims to be a trained sushi chef); nor is it the quality of the food itself, as he generally chooses destinations of some culinary merit (I have nothing against his roadie-food strong suit of cheese steaks, chili dogs, and burgers), or at least so they seem prior to his blasphemous display of eating whatever it is that they make. No, I think the problem lies with the premise of the show itself, the very idea that eating - to me, an inherently pleasurable, and literally life-giving, enterprise - should be reduced to a contest between the eater and the stuff on the plate


The great writer and patron saint of food bloggers everywhere, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, once said that the "enjoyment of the art of living, as well as of eating... are, or can be, synonymous." Man v. Food is predicated on nothing less than the complete moral inversion of Ms Fisher's guiding principle - the title itself proclaims mouth and fork to be enemies - and I'm guessing that that is what chafes me like a dull razor. Food is (or at least should be) enormously enjoyable and, served in proportion to its purpose, satisfies one of the most basic conditions for life; the absence of food implies hunger and death (the millions so afflicted are a tragedy of global proportions and a blight on our collective social conscience), and food in excess implies death by means other than hunger, but death just the same (we are a nation of over-eaters, on this the data is incontrovertible). And yet here is a major television production that exists solely by virtue of our ability to transform good food into something dangerously unpleasant. Worse still, this transformation is effected by the application of quantity: What would otherwise be nourishing, or at least tasty (I'm not sure if even the finest chili dog could ever be called 'nourishing'), becomes a threat, simply because of the sheer size of the serving.


I know, I get it, it's all just entertainment, you don't need to post a reply with a litany of even-worse sins; we can just stipulate that competitive eating likely fails to represent one of the clear and present dangers to civilization as we know it, and that there are any number of significantly more disturbing examples of televised programming (certainly, The Swan and anything even peripherally related to Toddlers and Tiaras would rank higher on both lists). But its relative innocuousness in relation to graver threats in no way obviates my argument with Mr Richman and his self-destructive quest for ad revenue: The fact remains that the Travel Channel, by aggrandizing gluttony for a nation of the epidemically obese, sells our collective good sense of what food can and should be right down the river.

Should I buy local wines at Costco?

Outstanding local Pinot Noir at big discounts

We've talked about Costco before, a conversation in which I argued that monolithic, small-business-destroying category killers still have a place in the kitchen, even proximal kitchens, if for no other reason than because saving money on staples allows us to allocate a larger share of our budget to the locally produced goods of premium quality (and, let's be honest, at a premium price), that we like to cook with. But what about buying locally produced goods at the Big C?

If the identical local product is offered at the farmer's market, the local health food store, and Costco, and I choose to buy more of it, at a lower price, at Costco, should I pat myself on the back for being such a savvy, sustainably-minded locavore and supporting the production of good, local food, all while saving my family money? Or, should I offer myself up as whipping boy du jour for the inevitable and copious tongue lashing and politically correct cacophony emanating from the barbarous hordes of checkbook liberals and self-described apostles of some quasi Pollan-esque faith lying in wait?

Let's consider the case of wine: The wine industry is Sonoma County's largest single employer (directly accounting for some 19% of all jobs county-wide, excluding all the ancillary but clearly material employment in restaurants, hotels and gift shops generated by wine country tourism), and total wine-related revenues account for 40% of the County's entire contribution to the nation's GDP. So one thing is clear: Where and how I spend my wine dollars matters to Sonoma County.

Or does it? If I buy Bordeaux in-bond from a broker in London, then you might argue that I'm not doing much to support artisanal winemakers (not that that should stop anyone from drinking the occasional Bordeaux, mind you - the road to deprivation is littered with the carcasses of overzealous locavores, and I, for one, have little interest in dinner-table asceticism), but it's far from obvious that I'm doing harm to our local economy. Suppose I take the total number of dollars that I would have otherwise spent on Sonoma County wines, at tasting rooms and specialty retailers in my neighborhood, and instead spend those same dollars, on the same wines, at Costco? Who wins, who loses, how much is at stake, and should I care? The answer is not as obvious as you may think. (Unfortunately, this post is about to run quite a bit longer than usual; call it the curse of the two-handed economist. I promise to get back on-thread tomorrow.)




Costco, the nation's largest (although I'm never sure if this statistic refers to volume, revenue, or both) wine retailer, is the elephant in the cellar, and their fine-wine pricing can be very competitive, provided you can separate wheat from chaff, because their selection, and the price/quality ratio thereof, can be inconsistent; the prices are never bad, but some of the wines are distinctly mediocre, and at prices no better than you'll find in about 5 minutes on Google. That being said, here is what I picked up the other day on a completely random visit, 3 outstanding examples of Sonoma County Pinot Noir (out of at least a half-dozen options), each from a premium local winery that I could easily drive to, and collectively a representative sample of just what is at stake, from my wallet's perspective:

1. 2006 Keller Estate "La Cruz Vineyard" Pinot Noir. Costco price: $18.49. Winery: $44.00 (current release, 2007). 
2. 2007 J Vineyards "Russian River Valley" Pinot Noir: Costco price: $24.99. Winery: $35.00 (identical bottling).
3. 2008 Pellegrini Family Vineyards "Olivet Lane" Pinot Noir. Costco: $19.99. Winery: $35.00 (identical bottling)

Thus confronting the data, we find an average savings of 43% of retail, or better than $200/case, and moves a few of what I would otherwise consider "luxury" wines back into the "maybe not for every day, but plausible and guilt-free" category. Still, while total dollars spent remain constant, who gets those dollars does not. I'm a trained economist with a weak suit in micro, so I enlisted the help of former classmate and top-shelf game theory wonk, Mad Dog, and we came up with the following economic implications:

• My wallet, and my palate (although perhaps not my liver) win, because I get to consume more and/or better wine for the same outlay.
• The County coffers are indifferent, because my total taxable consumption, as well as overall wine industry receipts, remain constant. 
• The wineries are a slightly trickier story: Definitively, some of what they would have made now goes to Costco, and their gross margins suffer; their cost-of-goods-sold likely falls (e.g., less labor, no tasting room lease), but I think it's safe to assume that, on balance, winery profits decline on a per-bottle basis. But there is a price and volume story here: It's entirely possible that the winery sells so many additional bottles, by virtue of the Costco distribution channel, that the absolute level of winery profits actually increases.
• Even if total profits in the economy may remain unchanged (it's hard to see them falling, or else why would the business model persist), the reallocation of profits from the winery to Costco would shift some income out of the County, inasmuch as winery capital is locally owned and Costco capital is not. Still, that does not necessarily imply a net loss to the County, because of gains from trade: If Sonoma has a competitive advantage in making wine but not in selling it, then we, collectively, will be better off if we "pay" Costco to sell it for us, thereby reallocating our resources to more productive ends. (This is, essentially, the "gains from trade" argument. Don't let the "anti-globalization" whack jobs bamboozle you, they have no idea what they're talking about, a world without trade would be a far darker, colder, and generally poorer place for nearly everyone.)
• Employment at Costco gains, but at the expense of jobs at the wineries. I'd rather work in a tasting room than Costco, but that's a purely personal preference, it's not my place to say which job is "better". I do, however, think it's fair to assume that Costco labor is more productive (in the economic sense, i.e., it takes less person-hours to sell the same dollar volume of wine), which would imply fewer total jobs for the County. However, one has to be careful, because that does not necessarily imply a net loss of income, but rather a reallocation of the share of total profits away from labor and toward capital, which is unequivocally bad only if you're still reading that threadbare copy of Marx from your freshman year.
• All the preceding is an inherently partial equilibrium analysis, and there may be more complex, general equilibrium considerations, particularly along the temporal dimension: It is possible, for instance, that the winery will eventually go out of business by selling via Costco, even if doing so maximizes its short-run profitability (or minimizes its losses, as the case may be). The Keller wine is a case in point: I don't know what Keller's cost structure looks like, but I seriously doubt they are making money by selling a $44 Pinot for well under $19 (remember, Costco has a margin in there too, of that we can be certain). More likely, they lose less, which is a perfectly rational thing to do, but hardly a sustainable business model. It is at least possible, therefore, that I will contribute to the demise of the local wine industry by consuming its wines exclusively through Costco. (General equilibrium analysis can get very complicated: One could argue that the failure of an otherwise unsustainable business leads to a more overall economic efficiency in the long-run, in which employment, consumption, and tax receipts could all actually be higher in the absence of the business than they were in its presence.)
• You could argue that one should "shop locally" in order to "support" the local economy, which is all fine and dandy, but starts to get awfully close to subsidization, if not outright charity. While I've got no axe to grind with charity, it's not at all clear what that should have to do with my consumption decision: If I want to subsidize a winery, I don't need to overpay for their wine, I should just write them a check and save everyone the trouble. And if you don't think that makes much sense, then you probably didn't want to subsidize them in the first place.

For all that, I think the lesson is pretty simple: First and foremost, you should buy the wine you like to drink at the best possible price. If knowing the wine is local confers other, non-pecuniary benefits (e.g., it makes you feel better about yourself), then by all means, buy locally - heck, I like our wines, and purchasing them makes me feel good. Similarly, if tasting rooms have value to you - as they do for me - then, again, buy some wine directly from the winery. If you can only afford to drink local wines from Costco, don't sweat it - you may be doing more for the local economy than you think. Above all, don't kid yourself: The wine aisle at Costo is neither good, nor bad, it simply is, and where and how you spend your wine dollars is nobody else's business but yours.