ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the apparently paradoxical phenomenon of foodie austerity. Paradoxical, because foodyism is about pleasure and consumption, while austerity is apparently about denial, and paradoxical because the simple dishes of poverty nostalgia are often sold at premium prices. This is not ‘austerity’ dened as cuts to public services. Nor is it necessarily ‘ austerity’ as a reference to World War II and the immediate post-war era – a common cultural reference at the present time in Britain, and which has recently received some scholarly attention (see, for example, Bramall 2011, 2012, 2013; Potter and Westall 2013; Ginn 2012). Foodie austerity often looks to the past, certainly, but its relationship to the past is imprecise. It is part of a much wider movement born of dissatisfaction with modern food systems, which embraces the rediscovery and safeguarding of tradition and a turning away from mass production, from excess and convenience, towards the simple, the slow and the carefully made (Sassatelli and Davolio 2010).
