Apples and Apples: Do We Creatively Consume Our Food?

Creative consumption is the idea that you have consumed (or purchased) something that is mainstream, popular culture, but have somehow creatively used it for your own purposes instead of the originally intended ones. For example, someone would buy a tshirt showing a person or musical group that they immensely dislike and wear it in an ironic fashion.

This concept mirrors almost exactly what food and cooking is all about. At least truly creative cooking where you take the products (or ingredients) from the grocery store and transform and consume them in a different way than what the majority might do.

Take apples, for instance. Some might purchase them to consume raw, to make apple sauce, apple pie, or maybe in a salad. Those would be the expected means on consumption for apples. But a creative chef might see apples and want to create a flavored mousse for dessert or a sauce for pork chops. That chef has taken the apples and “consumed” them in a way that the mainstream culture may not consider.

While nowadays it seems that we assume that fruits and vegetables will be “creatively consumed,” meaning that they’ll most likely be cooked or cut in order to be eaten in a way other than raw, it’s not unreasonable to assume that this is a newer idea. Not necessarily new as in the last 100 years, but moreso since the industrial revolution. I’m quite sure the ancient Greeks and Egyptians didn’t eat all their food raw, but I’m not familiar enough with them to know for sure. However, I’m almost entirely positive that they didn’t cook in the way we do now, partly because they didn’t have much of the technological advances we do. Ovens, microwaves, blenders, and refrigerators have drastically changed the “how” and “when” of our food consumption.

The question arrises: do we always, unless we eat it raw, creatively consume our food? You could argue both sides and a variety of positions in between. I’m swayed to believe that it depends on the method of consumption more than anything else. Accordingly, the consumer makes a significant difference as well. The average consumer, who makes apple pie with their apples is not as “creative” as one who blends the apples into a foam or a mousse for a dessert. But of course, you could argue that the one who creates the apple pie has been creative in a way that someone hundreds of years ago was not, and therefore creatively consumes as well. Creative consumption, it seems, is in the belly of the consumer.