New Food Guidelines

Don't be misled, this has nothing to do with anything the FDA is laying down.  These are some ad hoc rules I've established in a Bitter Dregs reaction to the constant cute-ification and marketing bullshit of the food industry.

Rule 1.  Not every beer is a "craft" beer.  Stop pretending that everyone who puts something in a bottle or can for micro-production and slaps a clever graphic on it is making good beer.  Many of those beers taste terrible and show very little... craft.

Rule 2.  Let's put a little more "loca" in the locavore movement, shall we?  Sitting down at a supposedly locavore restaurant and finding they bring their ingredients from a neighboring STATE is bit of marketing caca.  If your food isn't sourced within 50 miles of where you're eating it, don't try to tell me it's local.  And don't try to charge me extra for it.

Rule 3.  "Artisinal" should mean something.  It's now the most over-used adjective in the high-end food industry.  Artisinal Cheese has become the craft beer of dairy.

Rule 4.  Let's eliminate obscure ingredients.  Lately, in food and drink, recipes seem more of a scavenger hunt challenge for difficult-to-source ingredients than a plan for cooking something you'd actually want to eat.  So, for those of us not living in Brooklyn, stop calling for one drop of monkey-blood-orange-distilled-cognac-barrel bitters in a cocktail that ends up tasting like a jock strap.  It looks suspicious when said bitters in only produced in a "craft" distillery with "artisinal" methods by someone in your family.

Rule 5.  A "Farmer's Market" should feature actual farmers.  If it doesn't, you're being duped and shopping at a mobile food mall.

Of course, ignore the rules.  Eat what you like, drink what you like.  Don't be pressured to like something, no matter what the label says.  If a craft beer tastes like horse pee and you keep drinking it, then the only craft involved is mis-direction.