Category Archives: Food

Nice interview in Grist magazine:

The new book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. It’s a book that really grew out of questions I heard from readers after Omnivore’s Dilemma, which was basically so how do you apply all this? Now that you’ve looked into the heart of the food system and been into the belly of the beast, how should I eat, and what should I buy, and if I’m concerned about health, what should I be eating? I decided I would see what kind of very practical answers I could give people.
I spent a lot of time looking at the science of nutrition, and learned pretty quickly there’s less there than meets the eye, and that the scientists really haven’t figured out that much about food. Letting them tell us how to eat is probably not a very good idea, and indeed the culture — which is to say tradition and our ancestors — has more to teach us about how to eat well than science does. That was kind of surprising to me.

Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma got out in paperback today, so if you have not read it yet, now is the time.
Also, in his mailing-list letter, Pollan announces that he has “…just completed a new book, a short manifesto about diet and health called “In Defense of Food.” It’s scheduled to be published January 1.”
On the Farm Bill, currently going through the Congress, he writes:

The House Bill was a disappointment in many ways, leaving the current subsidy system undisturbed, though there are a handful of creative provisions tucked into it regarding school lunch and local food systems. There’s reason to hope the Senate Bill will offer more genuine reforms. It’s important to keep public attention focused on the process, lest the usual suspects have their way. A good site for keeping up to date on the substance and politics of the debate is www.farmpolicy.com.

Michael Pollan will be on On Point on NPR, talking about the farm bill tomorrow (Monday) morning at 10am EST. This is in advance of some important votes in the House next week.

While in San Francisco, I’d like to eat at Incanto (look around the site for their menu and progressive food and water policies, and they also have a blog). It is at 1550 Church Street, on the southwest corner of Church and Duncan Streets in San Francisco’s Noe Valley. Where is that? Anyone game to go with me?

In this Sunday’s NY Times Magazine (not available online yet), Michael Pollan will have the cover story: “The Age of Nutritionism: How Scientists have Ruined the Way We Eat.”
Looking forward to reading (and perhaps blogging) it.
Update: You can now read it here.

Good article by Michael Pollan in today’s NYT Magazine: The Vegetable-Industrial Complex

..but were too afraid to ask. Or, why do I, unlike some people, like stale cookies.

We are what we eat: corn and petroleum
Interview by David Auerbach in this week’s Independent Weekly.

Amanda, a fellow hot-pepper-lover, reminds me that I have not finished my Hot Pepper series. It is supposed to be a THREE-part series, but I only wrote two parts so far, the introductory (personal) post and answering the question why are peppers hot (quite a popular post of mine, linked and e-mailed around a lot, I noticed) – an evolutionary account from peppers’ perspective.
I still owe you the third part trying to explain why people (at least some people, like Amanda and myself) like to eat hot food. It turned out to be a much more exhaustive area of research (and dispute) than I initially expected so I left it for later, once I have more time and the weather cools off a little bit…but I promise I will write it sooner or later. In the meantime, read what Amanda and her commenters have to say on the subject.
But, as an Intermission, here’s a little more on my personal relationship with hot food:
Indian Tandoori restaurants in the USA are fixing much milder food than their counterparts in the UK.
My initiation to the cuisine was in London (in 1980, I believe). My cousin who lives there and his family took me to a Tandoori restaurant. He told the waiter that I was a novice to which the waiter grinned broadly and brought me a foot-high stack of napkins and an extra glass of water.
Then, we ordered the “mild” stuff for me from the menu. The waiter was still grinning. The food arrived. Bread was hot. Salad was hot. Chicken was hot. Vegetables were hot. I LIKE hot food, but I was crying and quickly depleting my stash of napkins, my two glasses of water and a glass of yogurt.
In the end, my mouth was so numb, I tried the hottest spices they had and could not feel a thing.
Needless to say, I went back to Tandoori restaurants many times since and am quite disappointed that the US version is so mild.

Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Elizabeth Ransom, Winona LaDuke, Peter Singer, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Eliot Coleman & Jim Hightower recently participated in a Nation forum: One Thing to Do About Food. Here are a few excerpts – go read the whole thing:

“Once you learn how our modern industrial food system has transformed what most Americans eat, you become highly motivated to eat something else.”
“….the American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by the federal government with virtually no input from anyone beyond a handful of farm-state legislators. Nothing could do more to reform America’s food system–and by doing so improve the condition of America’s environment and public health–than if the rest of us were suddenly to weigh in.”
“There is one very simple thing that everyone can do to fix the food system. Don’t buy factory-farm products.”
“Corporate control thrives on monocultures. Citizens’ food freedom depends on biodiversity.”
“Industry and the production ethos have robbed people of the knowledge of food and reduced it to pure merchandise–a good to be consumed like any other.”
“An addiction to treating the symptoms of problems rather than correcting their causes is an unwise choice made by our society as a whole.”
“In the very short span of about fifty years, we’ve allowed our politicians to do something remarkably stupid: turn America’s food-policy decisions over to corporate lobbyists, lawyers and economists. These are people who could not run a watermelon stand if we gave them the melons and had the Highway Patrol flag down the customers for them–yet, they have taken charge of the decisions that direct everything from how and where food is grown to what our children eat in school.”

This is pretty common knowledge, but it’s nice to see it supported by data:
In `food deserts’ of city, healthy eating a mirage:

For African-Americans who live in “food deserts” on Chicago’s South and West Sides, where fast-food restaurants are plentiful and grocery stores are scarce, a lack of choices is more than an inconvenience. A provocative new study concludes that residents are more likely to die prematurely from diabetes, cancer and other ailments.
———-snip———–
Starting with the fundamental premise that the well-being of urban communities is a block-by-block phenomenon, Gallagher measured the distance from every Chicago block to the nearest grocery store and fast-food restaurant. She then developed a score to quantify the balance of food choice available to residents.
Finally, Gallagher compared food access to health outcomes shown in Cook County death records, city epidemiology data and outside studies. Gallagher said her calculations show that the correlation between food choice and health holds true regardless of differences in education, income and race.
Overall, though, the study shows the worst food choices fell in African-American neighborhoods.
———-snip———–
“If you’re finding huge disparities, say, in levels of obesity by neighborhood, then you can’t really say that people with genetic deficiencies up and move to the South Side,” Drewnowski said. “The only deficiency, frankly, is in the wallet.”
Though he had not read the report, he said he suspects it suffers from what he dubs the “Chernobyl model of nutrition”–a model that would suggest mere proximity to McDonald’s means people will be obese and diabetic, while living nearer to Whole Foods would make people healthy.
“Physical access, I suspect, is not as important as economic distance,” Drewnowski said. “The issue of economic distance is trickier to handle. Higher minimum wage? Health insurance? What do you do?”

How about changing the American food system as a whole? If food is healthy no matter where you buy it, you’ll be healthy, too.