{"id":8065,"date":"2020-05-09T14:29:01","date_gmt":"2020-05-09T20:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8065"},"modified":"2020-05-09T14:29:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T20:29:02","slug":"the-booming-market-for-gloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8065","title":{"rendered":"The booming market for gloom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commentarymagazine.com\/noah-rothman\/the-booming-market-for-gloom\/\">Noah Rothman<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Peruse the media landscape today, and you\u2019re likely to come away thinking that Americans are more or less content with their current circumstances. The press is replete with a new phenomenon: trend pieces that don\u2019t identify trends but rather forecast them, and the future is quite bleak. Thus, these clairvoyant trend pieces speculate, Americans are probably just going to default to living like they are in lockdown forever.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>The pandemic has changed the way we as a country eat, the Washington Post averred. That\u2019s only partly attributable to the fact that so many restaurants are closed, and the supply chain now teeters on the brink. But is there any bright side? Has this plague perhaps shaken us from our \u201cmass-produced, processed, factory-farm-driven diets?\u201d Nope.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Americans, the Post determined, are cooking at home more, but what they\u2019re cooking is still garbage. Pre-packaged, ready-to-eat meals are fast becoming the norm. So, this dispatch assumes, that\u2019s just going to become part of our new normal. \u201cWhen it is all said and done, the real change brought about by the coronavirus won\u2019t be a back-to-the-kitchen movement,\u201d the report affirms. \u201cIt will be a rush toward hyper-convenience at mealtime that could make us more reliant than ever on food prepared by other people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Know what else is never coming back? Buffets. Supermarket salad displays and hot food bars may be a thing of the past, suggests this item from Boston-area NPR affiliate WGBH. Even though this particular coronavirus is not food-borne, the countertops around which customers huddle may be a source of viral transmission. According to one professor of marketing and hospitality management, it will take a \u201cHerculean effort\u201d\u2013akin to post-9\/11 initiatives to convince travelers it was safe to fly again\u2013to convince customers \u201cit is safe to dine again at supermarket hot bars.\u201d The status quo ante will be unacceptable \u201cin the post-coronavirus economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Noah Rothman: Peruse the media landscape today, and you\u2019re likely to come away thinking that Americans are more or less content with their current circumstances. The press is replete with a new phenomenon: trend pieces that don\u2019t identify trends but rather forecast them, and the future is quite bleak. Thus, these clairvoyant trend pieces speculate, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8066,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8065\/revisions\/8066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}