More on picky eating

I recently wrote a post about the ethics (or lack thereof) of picky eating.  It seems I have an ally in Pamela Druckerman, the NYT's resident Parisian expat.  She describes the French conception of food as a social bonding ritual, which of course means that being picky and self-centered in eating totally destroys the social, cohesive aspect of it.  Here's a quote from an anthropologist who researches the US's idiosyncratic, harmful eating habits:

Americans often described eating as part of an individual journey of self-discovery, in which each person tries to “find out over time and experience what my true nutritional self is, and satisfy it.”

Once again, we see an excessive focus on the self destroying the self.  A constant quest for satisfaction breeding everlasting insatisfaction.  If I'm right, the US cult of food individualism is only good for junk food peddlers and pharmaceutical manufacturers treating diet-caused illness, but certainly not for the human beings whose satisfaction and self-discovery is supposedly the ultimate goal of the current food system in the US.