Sallie Tisdale is the author of five books including Talk Dirty to Me. She can always be counted upon to offer fresh slants on subjects that seem to have run their course in the culture. In this inventive volume, Tisdale writes about the American obsession with food and the extremes of dieting and eating too much. Commenting on her own Baby Boom generation, she observes: "We are always hungry. We don't always hunger for food, but hunger is our defining experience. . . . Our confused relationship to abundance and hunger, the fact that we are ashamed of both desire and gratification, is the marker of our lives."
Tisdale finds that the topic of food is all wrapped up with money, class, gender, work, leisure time, appetite, pleasure, and big business. What a fascinating tour guide Tisdale makes as she spins off commentary on gourmet cooking, Betty Crocker, Martha Stewart, global cuisine, fast food business, and casual dining chains.
The author is jealous of Europeans who have found a way to savor all the pleasures of a leisurely meal. She laments the fact that while the rich starve themselves to death at luxurious spas, the poor are addicted to junk food. Best of all, she offers wise insights into the diet mania in America and the new asceticism of denial practiced by the dangerously thin. At one point, the author deliciously throws in an acerbic quotation by Warren Belasco: "What if living lightly meant watching resources, not waistlines?"
Tisdale is always a delight to read and The Best Thing I Ever Tasted offers a neat little course in the applied ethics of the middle way — steering clear of excessive indulgence and excessive denial.