Why We Don't Need Any More World Food Days

We don’t like to go too Behind the Magician's Code round these parts – if we told you lot how we do this, you’d just run off and put together your own, better food magazine – but allow us to talk you through a typical day in the Food wing of Skinny Towers.

Bing-bong, an email comes in – ‘Dear sir/madam, did you know it’s National [BLANK] Week? Well it is. Here’s some bumph.’ Everyone chuckles a bit, a few minutes pass, and another email lands. Same deal; a missive relating to ‘Global [THING] Day’, along with some handy guides on how best to eat whatever said thing is. Then another email comes in, the laughs turn to sobs, the computer goes flying out the window, and we spend the rest of the morning putting the thing back together. Then lunch.

The glut of world food days

In the past month alone we’ve seen National Martini Day, Negroni Week, World Gin Day (followed by World Cucumber Day), World Whisky Day, National Beer Day, National Wine Day (not to be confused with National Wine Drinking Day) and the improbable, ridiculous and entirely American Waffle Iron Day. It’s been an extremely boozy time, and the food has been sparse but incredibly sugary. Coming up shortly we have the dual delights of National Cream Tea Day AND Afternoon Tea Week – surely those can be rolled into one, lads – as well as the superfluous Picnic Week, plus National Penuche Fudge Day and Eat A Peach Day.

Later in the year we can look forward to Sourdough September, World Egg Day, National Yorkshire Pudding Day, and National Hot Cross Bun Day (in September, because at this point, why not?). Sadly, we’ll need to wait until 2017 for the next Sriracha Week, celebrating the hipster’s favourite ketchup substitute, but we can keep ourselves occupied until then.

This is not good, and it certainly isn’t fun. We can see exactly why brands, producers, venues and whoever benefits from Cucumber Day are doing this; it’s hard to get noticed, and people won’t just think of cucumbers of their own volition. They’ll be too busy with their Playstations and their Snapchats and their MySpace, and won’t have the requisite time to ponder their fondness for cucumbers, or fudge, or the negroni. Better to focus everyone’s attention, then hit them with some full-force #brand reinforcement.

"This ship has sailed, hit rocks, and fucking sunk"

The ‘Day’ is also supposed to make for an easier sell when it comes to esteemed members of the press – writers don’t just suddenly start going on about things for no reason, they generally require at least a mild prodding. And what better excuse for that prodding than an event you’ve just made up?

And that’s how we’ve ended up with the modern-day gauntlet of hundreds of foodie days, weeks and months of varying legitimacy and logic. If anyone can set up their own holiday, and no-one’s going to stop you, then why not go for it? Well, here’s why – there are already too many, and we don’t need any more. It’s gruelling and ever-so-slightly ridiculous, and not in a good faux-shambolic way.

Not to mention the simple fact that most things – be they foodstuffs, drinks, brands or culinary styles – don’t really warrant their own day. Peaches are delicious, but if someone bounded into your office or home espousing their plans for ‘Eat A Peach Day’, you’d have them drug-tested so fast it’d make their head spin. In many ways, it’s symptomatic of the current way we all get our information – every angry tweet is an ‘evisceration’, every new tune is a ‘must-listen’, and apparently we should only want food when there’s a tightly-defined and entirely arbitrary time limit attached.

Above all else, this hail of events and calendar invites just isn’t very good PR. If the aim of setting up your very own day is to give your chosen field a lift, we have some bad news – that ship has sailed. Not only has it sailed, but on its maiden voyage it hit a big load of rocks and fucking sank. There’s basically a food day for every day in the calendar, so any impact you could hope for is going to be somewhat stunted unless you’re hawking a seriously appealing product (like gin or cakes or delicious, delicious Sriracha) or have bags of cash to blow on some top-notch gimmicks and merch. And if you do have money to burn, burn it in hilarious and unexpected ways.

Food publicity stunts, from tanks to abseiling

Setting up a World Day is an attempt at a publicity stunt, but a really low-risk one. It’s the culinary equivalent of jumping off a moving skateboard; it is unquestionably an action with risk, but you won’t exactly look like a big shot when you do it. If you’re a food brand and looking to court press attention, go the whole hog.

Brewdog driving a tank down the street to raise dat sweet crowdfunding dollar is a publicity stunt; KFC hiring a man dressed as Colonel Sanders to abseil down a forty-floor building is a publicity stunt; the KLF burning a million quid on a remote island is a fucking publicity stunt, although might be outside most people’s price ranges. Launching ‘World Watermelon Smoothie Day’ with a limp press release is, as they say, weak sauce. It’s no Sriracha, that’s for sure.

So, if you’re looking at your sandwich or cup of tea, and thinking, ‘Ooh, I wonder what National Half-Eaten Sandwich Day would look like,’ then please stop. Stop right now, thank you very much. There’s so much delicious food, and so many interesting people making it, that assigning each element its own spot on the calendar is a bad idea.

We can do so much better, and have so much more fun, if we – in the words of Michael Caine at the end of The Muppet Christmas Carol – honour Sriracha in our hearts, and try to keep it all the year.