Conspicuous Consumption and Dining

                Conspicuous Consumption is an article written by Michael Sandel is about the theory of Conspicuous Consumption, by Thorstein Veblen. The theory says that Americans buy many things that they don’t need. That people will just buy things simply because they want t to look prestigious and more than they actually are. Michael Sandel explains the theory more in-depth, pointing out that there is “a hidden side of everything.” (163) People also tend to pay way too much on random objects, objects that are realistically completely useless.

                When it comes to Conspicuous Consumption, the article, and relating that to the food industry, four questions can arise. What did advertising do to the food industry? What do people buy unnecessarily in the food industry? What does conspicuous consumption look like in dining?  The food industry is a great example of people buying things unnecessarily. Just watching the food channel on TV, you consistently see fine dining shows of people eating cow tounge, or liver, or pretty much anything that can be cooked.

                The first part is to see why this is. One major part of dining is that people will actually buy anything shown on TV. The job of advertisers is just to make people desire what they don’t need, they prey on this idea of Conspicuous Consumption. In the article Advertising in the Food Industry by David Ingram is all about this. He mentions that advertisers use a variety of methods to get you to buy what they are selling. On TV, they tend to sell things that you don’t need. Rarely ever will you find a TV ad for peanut butter, but it’s pretty common to see ads for stuff like giant televisions, game systems, or videogames.

                In another article, Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective, by Robin Fox, it is discussed what in the world do people actually buy unnecessarily. He mentions some great examples right at the beginning, turbot sauce mousseline, aspics de foie gras. There are many random food that people will just buy just to look elegant and above the rest.

                To sum up, conspicuous dining in the world is pretty obvious. People buy random foods just because they are ‘elegant’. I personally have seen on tv shows of people eating foods that quite literally made us all who watched want to vomit. Much of the ‘rich persons’ food is horrifying to think of someone eating, but we eat it just because other people do, and it makes us ‘prestigious’.

Works Cited

“Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective. “ Robin Fox.  Web.  17 September 2014

“Advertising in the Food Industry” David Ingram. Web. 17 September 2014