... as opposed to dead?

How you like your food cooked tells what class you are. The formula is simple: The rarer, the classier. If you eat things raw that usually get cooked, you are a member of the culinary elite. If you get your steak well done, you are uncouth.

What’s so strange about the formula that declares less cooking to be superior to more cooking is that it runs contrary to human history. After all, wasn’t the discovery of fire and its subsequent mastery one of the great leaps forward towards civilization? One thing that separates homo sapiens from other beasts is that we have stoves and pots and pans and spatulas and microwaves with browning elements.

Preferring food raw, whether it be steak tartare or carpaccio, sushi or seviche, turns such values upside down. Kibbles ‘N’ Bits advertises how nicely-cooked its dog food is, with rich gravy and, one assumes, nothing raw or even undercooked in the forty-pound sack. On the other hand, gurus of seafood cookery for humans gloat over pieces of fish so unhandled that they’re virtually still wriggling when placed upon the serving plate. I wonder: At what point in modern human history did those of the culinary cutting edge decree that overpreparation of any meat is a low-class thing, and that less cooking is high-tone?

Rare

            Cookbook writers

            Food critics

            Magazine editors

            Fancy chefs

            Newly rich people

Well-Done

            Elvis and Elvis fans

            Truck drivers

            Elderly Jews

            Cowboys

            Old money

Raw

            Movie stars

            Paranoid schizophrenics

            Anarchists

            People who cleanse their colon

            Runway models