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kleinbl00  ·  2068 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The inexorable rise of identity condiments

Another article that could have been good, should have been good, but not only misses the point it's incorrect.

I read this in the store buying groceries. A little fact-checking: there's still an entire goddamn aisle of mayonnaise. The most recent data isn't that fresh, but five of the top ten condiments in the US are fucking mayonnaise. Or four, depending on whether you consider Miracle Whip to be "mayo."

So mayonnaise is just fine, thankyouverymuch. I remember the panic everybody got into back when salsa first started outselling ketchup but gimme a break, you use a helluvalot more salsa on whatever you put salsa on than ketchup on whatever you put ketchup on. And mayo racks up those numbers despite the fact that it's ludicrously cheap. Even in a goddamn recession people buy more mayonnaise. But let's talk about the demo we're really talking about: privileged white millennials descended from priviledged white 'boomers, the ones who grew up with drown-it-in-Miracle-Whip potato salad (per xkcd, a tradition is anything that happened to a 'boomer twice):

    Besides, I’ve got news: That aioli you’re all so fond of? I hate to break it to you, but that’s just mayonnaise.

Exactly. Worse, everybody knows it. Worse than that, the first time someone took olive oil, mustard and an egg yolk and beat them together, they realized it kicked the ever loving shit out of a jar of Hellman's.

And the nuclear dinner exploded about the same time as the nuclear family; June might have slaved away all day to impress Ward when he got home from the office but nobody lives like that anymore (except privileged white 'boomers). When people cook, they cook like they mean it. They cook like they watch on TV. They cook like they read on Pinterest. They make stunt food, not comfort food, and "semi-homemade" is not in their repertoire.

"Things you make with mayo" came out of the post-war expansion wherein every major industrial agronomist had shit-tons of foodstuffs they had learned to prepare for stable transport across the Atlantic. This also taught them that margins were higher on prepared foods than on raw. it also taught them that shelf-stable non-refrigerated foodstuffs broadened their markets. Thus was shit-tons of marketing applied so that all these new housewifes would spend all their new money on all-new boxes of shit mixed together to impress the neighbors - after all, only darkies and chinamen ate food grown in the ground. Bottle-feed your baby for good health!

And as "things you make with mayo" are fundamentally the non-value-added non-local non-organic non-differentiated things you're going to non-impress the shit out of your friends with, "things you make with mayo" are White Trash Food. Of which there's plenty. Again, an entire aisle of mayo at my local.