• On Good Things Utah this morning – Yikes. Did you just receive a compliment or an insult? Or both — a ‘complisult’? If this situation sounds familiar, you’re one of millions of estimated Americans who has borne witness to what could be called “invidious comparison eating,” or ICE.
    • Potentially the most passive-aggressive bad-dining habit, ICE is when a person indirectly asserts a dish they’re consuming is lesser by listing the “superior” merits of another version (usually their own). ICE can play out in any sort of group meal setting (e.g., restaurants or coffee shops), but it’s particularly offensive when it transpires in a domestic space, right in front of the home cook. Lest you assume ICE is some newfangled fad, let it be known that this nasty behavior has been going on — and more importantly, recorded — for hundreds of years.
  • In his landmark 1899 study of wealth and consumerism, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen argued that invidious comparison is a key way in which members of the wealthy and/or moneyed class actively set out to distinguish themselves from those of lower socioeconomic status. He specifically posited invidious comparison as “a process of valuation of persons in respect of worth,” which plays out often by accumulating and (here’s the important part) displaying or publicizing superior assets. In other words, it’s not enough that your dinner party “friend” can afford to purchase and deploy real cream when they make grits; this fact must also be broadcast to the masses to establish their superiority.
  • Has this ever happened to you? Join us as we jump into this Hot Topic and so much more on Good Things Utah!