A.A. Gill chronicles the surge in steak consumption in the US and around the globe:
Steak has become the butch foodie communion, and tellingly not just for flinty-eyed, Armani-suited leaner-than-thou businessmen, but for metrosexuals who wish to beef up their cultural testosterone.
In lean times, when we’re keeping a white-knuckle grip on the rungs of the middle-class ladder, steak comes as a small vote of self-confidence. It’s an emblem of victory, of survival. A slab of bleeding meat is symbolic of something fundamental, something pre-banking, pre-mortgage, predownsizing, prehistoric. It is a metaphor for the most basic achievement: to kill for sustenance, to be strong, to man up. Watch a guy in a suit look at his plate when the waitress brings his steak. He glares at it just for a moment. It’s not even conscious, but it’s the look of ownership; it’s the pride warning, “Don’t touch my meat.”
A lot of men do something called mantling—that is to lean over the plate, surround it with their arms just for a second. It’s body language that comes from a time before speech. The bit of our brain that deals with taste and appetite is the most ancient in our heads, the bit we share with lizards.
Relatedly, McArdle is cutting back on red meat after reading a recent study on its link to heart disease.
(Photo by Instagram user professorgreen)
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