Is "real" sarcasm or is "real" real?

The latest food article in the NYT stimulate, in me, a hunger for an understanding of "real" — not like some what-is-reality? philosophy/stoner college student, but as a connoisseur of language and humor. In 2 different articles, the modifier "real" is appended to a noun, first "milk" and then "vegetables."

1. "Pots and Pans, but Little Pain/Making Lunch With Michael Pollan and Michael Moss," written by Emily Weinstein, has the Pollan (author of books like "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto") and Moss (author of "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us") wandering judgmentally through the kind of crowded grocery store that people in NYC call a "supermarket."

Mr. Moss and Mr. Pollan considered the mozzarella choices, skipping the pre-shredded kind in favor of a cheese that advertised itself as a product of Amish country and that cost the same as the more generic ball beside it.

“Real milk, no hormones, no antibiotics,” Mr. Pollan said, reading aloud from the label. “I love the term ‘real milk.’ I wonder if we can get fake milk anywhere here.”

2. "The Frankfurter Diaries," by Mark Bittman was about Bittman eating a hot dog. (Somehow, when I clicked on the link, I was hoping for something about Felix Frankfurter, even though I know Bittman is a food writer. I love his cookbook, "How to Cook Everything."). Bittman — like Pollan and Moss in the grocery store — comes across as an elitist out of his normal environment. He's on "a drive to the Jersey Shore" and looking for something to eat at a parkway restaurant.

My first inclination was Burger King; [a friend who largely shares my weaknesses and prejudices] pronounced it “poison.”

O.K., but what wasn’t? Where was the real food? It didn’t exist....

I’m well aware that we’re light-years away from a rest area without any junk food. It might be nice, however, if there were one offering a vegetable wrap or a big fat falafel sandwich with real vegetables. Would you not think there’s a market for that?

#1 is the distanced, humorous way to use "real" to express lofty/prissy/elitist attitudes about food. #2 is the colloquial, earnest way to use "real" to express longing for a better world. I wonder if Bittman really thinks rest-stop falafel would be any good. Even in decent ethnic restaurants with nicely deep-fried falafel, I've only encountered shredded iceberg lettuce, there for the crunch, not for any wholesome goodness. But Bittman's vision of great falafel at the rest stop goes perfectly — like  lettuce on deep-fried bean-mush — with his non-humorous deployment of the adjective "real."

There's no right and wrong here. Myself, I'd use "real" both ways. I'm just interested in the word "real," which has been big in the Baby Boomer era (and Bittman, Pollan, and Moss are all, like me, Boomers). Be real. Get real. It's been real. He's a real nowhere man. I got to laugh halfways off my heels/I got to know, babe, will you surround me?/So I can know if I’m really real.

According to the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, the oldest meaning of "real" — now obsolete — connects to the words "regal" and "royal." In reference to a thing, it means: "befitting a monarch; sumptuous, fine, beautiful, noble, excellent." If we're hearing elitism in those NYT quotes, it resonates with the history of the language. That makes me want to quote Bob Dylan again:

The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden

But the familiar meaning of "real" — actually existing — is also old. "Free from nonsense, affectation, or pretence; genuine" — a meaning that Pollan's sarcasm presumes not to exist — goes back at least to 1747. And look at this quote from "House of Seven Gables" (1851): "Phoebe's presence made a home about her... She was real!" It's like Nathaniel Hawthorne was a Boomer.

The OED has separate entries for a few familiar phrases, notably, "it's been real," which it defines as: "'it's been memorable,' 'it's been an experience'; used as a farewell, with varying degrees of sincerity or irony, and sometimes simply as a formulaic phrase." See! With varying degrees of sincerity or irony. The phrase was first encountered (by the OED) in Wright Morris's 1954 novel "Huge Season": "He stepped forward and bowed to Lou Baker, took her hand, kissed it. 'Doll, it's been real.'"

There's no food-related entry for "real" in the OED, but there is a drink one: "real coffee n. coffee made from ground coffee beans, as opposed either to a substitute or (now esp.) to instant coffee." That goes back to the 19th century:

1877   H. Ruede Jrnl. 13 June in Sod-house Days (1937) 99   Most people out here don't drink real coffee, because it is too expensive... So rye coffee is used a great deal—parched brown or black according to whether the users like a strong or mild drink.

Finally — and say what you will about Pollan, Moss, and Bittman — there's a separate OED entry from "real man" — "a man who fulfils traditional expectations of masculinity in his behaviour, attitudes, or appearance; a virile or masculine man." That goes back to 1872:

1872   Titusville (Pennsylvania) Morning Herald 23 Sept.,   But society is full of shams shoddy and tinsel. The real man puts on no airs at all....
1926   Times-Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) (Electronic text) 17 Oct.,   It's out here in the lonely places that you get the real-man type. There's nothing sissy about it.

That was some earnest "real," back then. Pop forward to the 80s, for some classic Boomer "real" sarcasm:

1982   B. Feirstein Real Men don't eat Quiche ii. 13   In the past, it was easy to be a Real Man. All you had to do was abuse women, steal land from Indians, and find some place to dump the toxic waste.

That's enough for now. Kisses. It's been real.

Long-headed.

Long-headed?! Meade questions my word use in a previous post. It came to mind because I was just law-professing the famous Supreme Court case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, within which the long-headed lawprof-turned-justice Felix Frankfurter — explaining that the Constitution's Framers "were not inexperienced doctrinaires" — wrote:

These long-headed statesmen had no illusion that our people enjoyed biological or psychological or sociological immunities from the hazards of concentrated power. It is absurd to see a dictator in a representative product of the sturdy democratic traditions of the Mississippi Valley. The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.

The "representative product of the sturdy democratic traditions of the Mississippi Valley" was Harry Truman, who had accreted a little too much power.

The (unlinkable) OED defines "long-headed" — definition #2 — as "Of great discernment or foresight; discerning, shrewd, far-seeing." The historical examples include:

1711   R. Steele Spectator No. 52. ⁋3   Being a long-headed Gentlewoman, I am apt to imagine she has some further Design than you have yet penetrated....
1841   Dickens Old Curiosity Shop ii. lxvii. 178   Men of the world, long-headed customers, knowing dogs.
1864   J. R. Lowell McClellan or Lincoln? in Prose Wks. (1890) V. 173   Mr. Lincoln is a long-headed and long-purposed man.

Searching my own files, I see this in Henry David Thoreau's "Walden":

Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one of the few of his vocation who are "men on their farms"; who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty.

Now, don your frock, cronch on in to the comments section, and have a social crack with the long-headed squirrels of Althouse. Extract morals, haul a load of manure, talk of rude and simple times, or try your teeth on the toughest empty nuts. You know who they are!