I recently wrote about how what were once considered food waste products have increasingly hit the grocery market. My inspiration was last Sunday’s First Reading, in which the prophet Amos excoriated the commercial cheats of ancient Israel, specifically, his comment about selling “the refuse of the wheat” as food. But there are two other abuses that I think merit consideration, showing that Amos’s indictment is alive and well in our day.

The first I’d call the “gentrification of food.” The New York Times recently ran a story titled “The Golden Age of American Bakeries Is Upon Us”  (here). The only thing “golden” about it is the bucks some are raking in. The article lauds “fine dining pastry” that it claims has reinvigorated “independently owned” bakeries. Like pharmacies, independent bakeries had been gradually consumed by corporate chains; in the case of bakeries, mega-grocery stores with a cake section. The pandemic shutdown of 2020-21 accelerated that trend. But the Times salutes distinguished pastry chefs from top-tier restaurants who, having lost their employ, have transferred their skills to their own bakeries. Thanks to them, your local pastry shop may be offering “ube halaya croissants or cinnamon-Okinawan sugar toast.” The writer positively exudes when telling us a six-year-old went to one of these upscale bakeries and had — for the first time in his life! — a “canelé.” (In case you’re wondering, a canelé is a small French pastry with custard in the middle and flavored with rum.)

Tell me where I buy a loaf of plain old pumpernickel bread — an ample one, one not subject to shrinkflation. Nor cutoff bread nuggets.

In a snub to folks who might be seeking simple and affordable food, one chef observed, “You can go to McDonald’s and get a fried apple pie for $1.99, or you can decide to spend a little bit more for something made with freshly milled flour, fresh local apples, made with technique and baked fresh for you that day.” Once upon a time — like, say, when I was a kid going to Casey’s Bakery in Perth Amboy, New Jersey — that wasn’t considered some luxury. It was normal baking that every baker did.

Amos criticized the marketing of refuse as “wheat,” but he also criticized upping prices so that people suddenly found staples to be luxuries. It’s what I call “gentrification of food,” the disappearance of hearty, standard staples in favor of “refined tastes” at refined prices that makes putting food — including dessert — on the table increasingly a challenge for middle-class families to the benefit of connoisseurs.

In discussing gluttony, St. Thomas Aquinas serves up a rather refined treatment (here). For him, gluttony is not just overeating. Gluttony can be expressed in other ways, too. Two pertinent ways in this context are eating too “expensively” or “daintily.” One sins by wanting to eat expensively for the self-indulgent pleasure. Another sins by “daintiness” when the ingredients, preparation, etc. become choke points to normal eating. Gluttony is implicated whenever one shifts — temporarily, long-term, or permanently — from eating to live to living to eat.

One thing Aquinas doesn’t address — probably because his times always were threatened by starvation and the wealthy elites were few — is the social impact eating too “expensively” or “daintily” has on the overall market, including food costs for the less dainty.

“Food gentrification” is one abuse that mirrors Amos’s critique. The other I call “food substitution.”

Advocates of food substitution generally aren’t driven purely by market forces (though I’d still look carefully in where they’re invested). They often are driven by ideological considerations like the modern religion of “climatism.”

Consider the food substituters who would take away your beef and serve you bugs instead. In the name of “the planet” they say we should largely destroy the dairy and beef industries and get people to consider the advantages of an insect “diet.” (At least it’s not as sinister as the two Michigan bioterrorists masquerading as “bioethicists” who suggest we genetically modify a certain tick species to spread digestive intolerance to red meat among humans. See here.) It’s a sad commentary on the joke about the man in the restaurant who points out “there’s a fly in my soup.” Today’s food substituter would tell him, “Oh, that’ll be $1.99 extra for the protein topping!”

Amos warned against selling refuse as wheat. Today, we sell bugs as beef and daintiness as bread. The prophet’s warning remains: Woe to those who forget the poor in pursuit of refined tastes. Let’s take a look at ourselves.