That's what Stephen Marche wants us to do today:
Today, your attitude toward pork belly is a clearer statement of who you are and where you come from than any television show you watch or band you follow. Tell me what you know about pasta, and I'll tell you how much your parents made, how much education you managed, how much is in your savings account.
Unlike other cultural phenomena, which are more or less generationally undefined now, food explicitly identifies youthfulness.
The younger you are, the more you know about food, generally speaking. There are experts, of course, who transcend the generalization, but I automatically know more about food than someone ten years older than me. If you put an Italian dish in front of me, I can probably tell you which region it's from. For my uncles, Italian food is Italian food. … The process of this generational divide in food is only accelerating. I once saw my six-year-old son explain the difference between a sushi bar and an izakaya to his grandmother. What the hell is he going to make of my love of Korean barbecue or bone marrow with squid-ink pasta? It will be like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Jell-O to him.
His advice? Relish Thanksgiving dinner as "an antidote to all that, a necessary break to remind us of how boring and dependable food used to be, and also of how great it is actually just to be able to eat as much as you want."
The Dish 