One aspect of the history of the Society's activities is of course the long series of Symposia, workshops, and other meetings that have taken place over the last fifty years and have brought together various subsets of us for interaction, communication, and fellowship. A great deal of technical information exchange has taken place during these meetings and most of the fundamental developments in our field have been fostered at these conferences. However, when scores or hundreds of people get together in one location for several days, there are other, more basic, functions and events that also take place to support their less lofty, yet equally important, needs and desires.
Today, I would like to focus on one of these "human needs"
which is as central to the nourishment of the body, as our technical
sessions are to the nourishment of our minds. It simply concerns
food! Over the years there have been thousands of communal meals
that have provided sustenance to our conference attendees. Personally,
I have no difficulty suppressing in me any suggestion that this
topic might be perceived as frivolous or flippant. Much before
the hippie leader's pronouncement in the sixties that "you
are what you eat", it was Hippocrates himself who said "let
thy mind be thy food and thy food be thy mind". Popular
folklore in many parts of the world points out that "you
won't make the monkey perform unless you feed him first"
and I would paraphrase this by saying that you can't do good
research if you are poorly fed. I need, though, to point out
in this time of plenty that by "poorly fed" I am not
referring to quantity but rather to quality.
Like most of us, I have had my share of bad meals at technical
meetings. The pressure of standardization (alas, for any line
of products) has produced certain despicable culinary combinations
that dominate conference fodder nowadays (especially in the United
States). I know that, at least subconsciously, most of us would
like to suppress memories of such needs, but let me refresh your
memory. Uncooked, yet strongly "soft" ,vegetables (like
cauliflower, carrots, etc.), served alongside heavily colored,
flavorless, but calorie rich dips, iceberg lettuce leaves, the
legendary "fruit cup" (right out of the can), minestrone
soup, the (aagh!) "rubber" chicken breast, that has
undergone a series of irradiation-induced transformations (from
sickly, hormone-rich, force-fed bird, to rotting carcass, to
electrocuted parts, to microwaved end product), with boiled
green beans and rice, the "gooey" thick brownie, and
the glass of "iced tea", which is mainly ice sprinkled
with a yellowish brown liquid, all constitute the "ultimate"
conference meal and attest to the glory of the institutionalized
meal served proudly by the food industry.
Fortunately, the meetings of the Information Theory Society have
not been plagued by as atrocious fare as that; but some meals
have come close. An outstanding example of shameless assault
on our taste buds has been the series of meals at the 1985 ISIT
in Brighton. England has been much maligned about the blandness
of its traditional food, but I beg to disagree. Fine game birds,
excellent lamb, dover sole, wonderful cheeses, and the legendary
English breakfast constitute compelling evidence of repudiation
of this public misconception. However, the meals at the hotel
Metropole in Brighton did
nothing to dispel the ugly reputation of British food.
The road to mediocre food is very slippery. There are a few simple
steps that assure the establishment of a secure base from which
one can safely plunge to the depths of nutritional mediocrity
and neutralized taste capability. First and foremost is the
rule of selecting the lowest bidder. This assures that your
fish will be nondescript frozen white fillets (thawed for your
convenience), your meat will be overcooked lumps or slices of
tough beef, your strawberries will be pear-size, white, and
hardened, your sauces will come right from the bottle, your
salads will consist of hormone-cured large green leaves with
acrid vinaigrettes, and your desserts will be mainly "aged",
flour-rich, jam-filled pies.
The next rule is to plan meals for huge groups and for minimal
duration. This leads to "efficient", lean- and mean-service,
"buffets", and pre-cooked stale food. Another rule
is to either consider that alcohol accompanying a meal is sinful
(and, hence, leads to colas, "f(l)ab" drinks, and the
aforementioned iced tea) or to allow for "generic"
wines (like "jug" chablis, burgundy, or (God forbid)
"blush" wine). And the last rule is to persuade people
that they should forget about their meals as quickly as possible
(the culinary equivalent to "celibacy") since, after
all, you only eat because you have to in order to stay alive
(would such a life be worth living is a deeper, philosophical
question that eludes the scope of this column).
I am afraid that many of these rules are increasingly followed
in the organization of conference meals and are gradually intruding
into the meetings of our Society. But there have been "counterexamples"
to this trend that constitute moments of glory in our history.
To balance the gloom that can set in from the review of bad
meals, let me remember for you some of these brighter moments.
The banquet at the 1979 ISIT in Grignano shines in my memory
as a fine example where champions of elegant fare prevailed and
served us a fine, multi-star meal. The banquet in Budapest in
1991 was also a fine example of what human talent can accomplish
in food preparation. Even as recently as 1994 (in Trondheim)
the sumptuous, multi-access buffet was almost sinful! The only
way to resolve the congestion around the serving table was to
make aggressive use of your elbows. Strangely (and disappointingly),
the banquet at the 1981 ISIT in LesArcs was much below expectations.
And, unfortunately (but as expected), most of the banquet menus
at the ISITs that were held in the United States were typical
results of the standardized process of food preparation.
One can dwell on this subject in as much detail as one desires
(and I can certainly go on without bound and without need of
prodding). However, the point of this column is simply to alert
the members of our community (who, as a group, have displayed
a much higher standard of food appreciation than other professional
groups) to resist the pervasive imposition of bad food (or, even
worse, "ersatz" or phony "good" food). As
with every human endeavor, the fight against the tyranny of the
institutionalized palate can only profit from the study of history.
Keeping records (and scores) of nutrition quality over the
years provides a useful database and good training for future
... consumption. It may be a losing fight (the pressures are
enormous). But the glory (and the pleasure) is in the strife.