New York Times food writer Mark Bittman has spent the past few months in Berkeley, home of fellow food-movement leaders Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Bittman recently took the opportunity to let readers know that the fruits and vegetables there really are as amazing as we’d been told:

The mushrooms were one thing; there were also a dozen varieties of tangerines, ranging from kumquat-size to almost as big as grapefruits. There were an equal number of oranges (including the superior Cara Cara) and sweet limes and, yes, Meyer lemons. There were fresh chickpeas and shishito peppers, red carrots and a dozen different turnips and radishes, Little Gem lettuces along with probably 40 other edible greens.

In the comments, readers chastised Bittman for sighing over local California produce at a time when that state is experiencing drought, but I had a different concern. Reading his essay, all I could think was, the jig is up. The food movement has officially stopped pretending it has anything useful to offer to anyone with ordinary, or even better-than-ordinary, grocery options. When Bittman was still (mostly) writing from New York, it was plausible that someone could follow his example at, say, New Jersey strip mall supermarkets. Now he’s offering up fantasy recipes like “English Peas With Grilled Little Gems, Green Garlic and Mint.”

Criticism of the food movement has centered on the idea that it’s elitist, catering to those who have enough money to buy kale and enough time to find some way of making it palatable. This is a fair point, and one that, with varying degrees of success, food writers take seriously. But the elitism charge has had the unfortunate effect of allowing food-movement leaders to suggest that—with the exception of the proverbial “single mother of four living at the poverty line”—everyone could eat the way they’re advising and is just a nudge away from doing so. This, alas, is not the case.

Elite food writers aren’t just out of touch with the working and middle classes. They are out of touch with people who aren’t elite food writers. They’re oblivious not just to those who struggle to put food on the table, but to those whose jobs don’t send them on tours of Paris’s finest restaurants.

The true villain for the food movement isn’t someone who buys fast food when they should be eating lentils. It’s someone who, despite having the resources to do so, hasn’t researched where his or her food comes from. Grocery shoppers’ desire to purchase fruits and vegetables—a seemingly admirable, or at least innocuous, one—is recast as consumer demand for out-of-season produce—the height of decadence. In 2011, Bittman had some harsh words for these consumers: