[xMenace]

I listened to some of a CBC piece about this on Saturday. I didn't catch it all, but it sounded logical.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food -- the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food -- stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach -- what he calls nutritionism -- and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context -- out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Pollan's last book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time.

[xMenace]

Here's a video

Michael Pollan on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC

[notme]

I totally agree with this theory on eating. If we could get back to eating more "whole" foods and less processed, we would all be so much healthier. I don't think it has to be 100%, but I do believe that the largest portion of our eating should be whole foods.

When you think about it, how many people eat an orange or apple with lunch. How many of us eat chips? When you are hungry for a snack, do you grab baby carrots and a handful of natural almonds or do we grab cookies or crackers. How many people prepare packaged foods for dinner. Mac and Cheese and instant potatoes or a whole potato and fresh veggies.

I think "Mom" used to stay home and prepare meals and take care of nutrition. Today, Mom works and has less time to prepare fresh food for their family. Fast food and prepackaged food has become a way of life for so many. The art of cooking is a dying art with many of the working couples today.

We live in fast times. I am getting old and I wish we could all slow down.

[Evermont]

I posted a link to Pollan's earlier book here a couple weeks ago. I'll read my daughters copy when she finishes it. These books essentially describe the way I've been doing it.

Yesterday I made two soups. One was navy beans, new potatoes, red bell pepper, carrot and celery in veggie stock. The other was a refinement of my cauliflower avocado and garlic soup which I have posted here before. Both turned out better than previous attempts - I'm really getting the hang of this!

Originally Posted by notme

...I think "Mom" used to stay home and prepare meals and take care of nutrition. Today, Mom works and has less time to prepare fresh food for their family. Fast food and prepackaged food has become a way of life for so many. The art of cooking is a dying art with many of the working couples today. ..

There is certainly a measure of truth in your characterization of traditional gender roles Nancy. I think also that it was easier "back in the day" partly because there weren't as many unhealthy options to trip us up.

Generally, while I recognize the evolution of gender roles as you do, I don't find it useful to pine for the past. Yesterday is gone. I could impose on my wife to do my bidding in the kitchen. She would do it too. Rather I choose to enable myself to achieve real nutritional effectiveness. It distresses me that so many others are unwilling to do this for themselves.

[mho357]

I picked this book up a couple of weeks ago and I have been reading it off and on. It is pretty interesting so far...

Mark

[HollyB]

This fits with some recent research showing that attempting to lower risk with high doses of single vitamins (I think this was vitamin E and cancer?) can have paradoxical negative effects. It seems we use nutrients better when they come blended and balanced with many others ... ie the way it is in food.

[morrisma]

Another piece of this food pie (yuck, yuck) is eating food in season. We, in North America, think nothing of eating blueberries in February. They come from Chile or some other summer-in-feb place. Not always easy to pass them up but they are traveling a LONG way to reach my table. Can't be optimal.
Mike

[Mich]

Thanks Mike, for posting that link. I have been meaning to read the newest book. I think many of us diabetics do eat like that already.

Nancy, I couldn't agree more. I wish things would slow down too.

I have two words for those who miss mom's cooking.

CROCK POT

It sure helped me feed my family when I was teaching. It cooked soups, stews, roasts, chicken and dumplings and lasagne. It smelled like mom had been cooking all day when we opened the door.