For a cover illustrating two food-related stories, print editor Jared Hohlt wanted to present food as on overriding obsession of our time. Is there anything to buy in the super market that isn’t bad for you, or bad for the world? Why is healthy food so expensive? And is a “blood avocado” the next super food or the name of a horror film that went straight to DVD? Swarmed by Instagram pictures of food in every imaginable variety, it’s easy to see how one could lose her appetite. It’s this duality that the cover image hopes to express visually.
There’s so much good stuff to eat these days, and some of it is even affordable, as the expert team of food editors Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite have discovered yet again with “Cheap Eats.” But it’s also a cover whose very plenitude became almost disorienting (what is all that spaghetti doing over there?), replicating the experience that some of us have when going to the market these days. As we’re out grocery shopping with a worried frown on our face, it’s not just a question of not knowing what to cook for dinner and being bowled over by the exhaustive selection. It’s also a question of wondering where all this food came from, and whether it was farmed organically, and whether the animals were treated all-right (or at least not sadistically). The inside package, “An Omnivore’s Guilt Trip,” takes the reader through the aisles of this imaginary supermarket. Instead of prices and tantalizing descriptions, it includes some tongue-somewhat-in-cheek rundowns of the ethical, environmental, and health problems of just about everything one might put in one’s cart. Did you know cabbage can hear you eat it? Neither did we.