Real Food/In Defense of Food

[SoonerTexan]

Hopefully this wont end up like it should be in the debates forum...

Just curious if anyone has read these books (Real Food by Nina Planck and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan)

I read In Defense of Food last year and liked it, but kind of dropped any sort of "whole food eating" for awhile. I'm in the middle of Real Food right now, and while I like In Defense of Food better, she has some interesting points.

Anybody adhere to this sort of "natural, traditional" food philosophy in their own eating? It really intrigues me. For a 3-4 year period when I was in elementary school, my mom has us all eating very similar to this. I hated it at the time (I wanted my mac and cheese gosh darn it), but we were definitely at our healthiest then.

In short, I'm turning into my mother

[spotty_dog]

I do try to follow a "locavore" diet. It's tough this time of year if you haven't put by anything. I can still get local eggs and stored squash and garlic and a few potatoes but that's about it. I'll try to do better next year with the canning and the root cellaring, as well as planting my garden for four seasons of harvest, and see how close we can get to the ideal of a "hundred mile diet". I've even scoped out a source for chicken and am talking with a friend about sharing a cow and/or pig. Shopping the farmer's markets and getting to know the people who grow my food and the rhythms of the seasons has been just incredible. I adore the cookbook The Art of Simple Food for exquisite preparation of the most basic farmer's market fare. Plenty is a fun book about the challenges of eating locally, particularly in the Pacific Northwest; with Animal Vegetable Miracle Barbara Kingsolver tackled the same challenge but in the Northeast.

I read a good chunk of one of Pollan's books (forget which one now) and will see if the library has the other one you mentioned. When you say traditional food, I think of the Weston A Price movement that I don't entirely agree with. Natural and local though, I am all over!

What Alison said though I am not quite as dedicated. I belong to a CSA and get many of our veggies and some of our fruit that way. Kale, anyone? I also just joined a meat CSA and will get eggs, a whole chicken, beef and pork once a month from a local farm. It sounds like a lot so I'm splitting it with a neighbor. I had In Defense of Food and loaned it out before I read it. I need to get another copy though I have heard him interviewed enough that I feel like I've almost read the book.

[Meenah]

We have the local CSA also, and the vegetables are sooooooooooo good. I usually split it with a friend. We also have a wonderful local orchard. That said, I can also put away a bag of Doritos like noone else. I do it more for the flavor and supporting local farmers than for my health (I'm embarrassed to admit).

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

We got a "cow share" last year. We eat that way to a point. We can't afford to have every piece of meat be free-range, or grass-fed. I know some people can live mostly vegetarian. My 6'8'', 240 lb marathon running husband cannot get enough affordable protein that way. Our chicken is still Walmart Purdue chicken, I just can't afford the other stuff.

We also have a garden, belong to a coop, and do a CSA (farm share) here in Cleveland. Our coop has dried herbs and all grains so I mostly bake bread that way and we buy organic eggs. I don't do organic milk but I wish we did.

I found our cow on www.eatwild.org . It was very affordable (in terms of $/lb) but you have to pay it all upfront. Nonetheless, we've had only grass-fed beef for the last year.

[PrincessFiona]

We try and grow our own veggies in the summer which is sort of along those lines I guess. I also try and get to the Farmer's market when I can. During the winter months though we eat grocery store veggies and I just refuse to pay extra for the organics. There was a year where we bought only free range meat but it simply got too expensive with our big family. In an ideal world I would like to think we would eat more of the 'natural' foods but for now we just do the best that we can.

Kris

What Alison said though I am not quite as dedicated. I belong to a CSA and get many of our veggies and some of our fruit that way. Kale, anyone? I also just joined a meat CSA and will get eggs, a whole chicken, beef and pork once a month from a local farm. It sounds like a lot so I'm splitting it with a neighbor. I had In Defense of Food and loaned it out before I read it. I need to get another copy though I have heard him interviewed enough that I feel like I've almost read the book.

I haven't read his stuff but, like Nellie, have heard him interviewed several times and much of what he says resonated with me. I also try to buy local whenever possible -- and living in Kansas, that's quite often. I've really pared down the processed foods in our world, and will return to that paring down once the holidays are over.

[Ravenclaw]

I've read the Ominivore's Diet by Pollan but not Real Food or In Defense of Food. Buying a CSA share is on my list of after-training desires. It just seems too expensive for us right now. We try to eat as unprocessed as possible. My husband does better than I do admittedly. Eating locally and organically definitely resonates with us.

I've read all the Michael Pollan books, and I have to say they really changed food and eating for me. We are pretty committed to eating local, seasonal, real food as much as possible. It's gotten ridiculously easy where live-- my CSA and grass fed beef sources deliver to my doorstep; there's a farmer's market with local vegetables, dairy, eggs and seafood one block away. Prior to these developments though, tracking down all this good food took a huge amount of time. And it's so expensive. That's where I'm really ambivalent about all this. Eating is such a fundamental element of culture, so eating "differently" is a distinguishing factory. I love eating delicious, ethical food, but the sad truth is that many of our friends cannot afford (either in time or money) the luxury of eating this way, and I don't want to seem elitest or food-snobish so I try not to go too overboard.

The CSA is definitely a big cash outlay to get started. On a weekly basis, I don't think it is too expensive -- at least not if we eat it all and split 1/3 with a friend. The meat is expensive though and I agree that it is a luxury both in cost and in having the time to research it, pick it up, etc. I would like to get a vegetable garden started again for this summer or a cold-frame for the fall.

[oceanchild]

I read Omnivore's Dilemma and found it really compelling, but quite frankly, we aren't very good at following it. Especially on night float months like this where on an average day I'm gone from 7:30am-6pm and DH is gone from 5:30pm-7am. I feel like we're lucky if we eat, let alone cook something nutritious and good for the planet.

[Rapunzel]

We don't do those things because they are just too expensive. We have very healthy diets - lots of fresh fruits, veggies, meat, dairy, etc., but we don't buy the stuff labeled "organic" or buy from local farmers because it's just cost prohibitive. Besides, there's only one farmer's market in the area, and it meets once a month in the summers only. I do plan on starting up a garden sometime in the next year (if not this spring then next). The challenge will be to see if it can actually survive the blistering Texas summer. I've heard of people purchasing an entire side of beef or hog at once - but that would require us buying an additional large freezer for the garage (and the electrical bills would be astronomical for a freezer in a garage in triple digit heat).

Really, the only place I've ever lived where that type of consumerism is possible is up in New England - and even there it was cost-prohibitive for normal families. I think the idea is mostly a luxury with little actual benefit for individuals, the economy, or society as a whole. But, I can see how it would assuage people's desire to feel like they're doing something good.

[Rapunzel]

Just as an aside: If you read the introduction to "In Defense of Food" you will find the author lamenting that we just don't eat the food that our mothers and grandmothers consumed (specifically of the mid 1900's). On Amazon.com is a spot-on review of this argument in the book. It's hilarious in many ways, but it accurately points out the sugar-coated (pun unintended) view the author has of the diet of our grandmothers):

By Keith Otis Edwards "Keith Otis Edwards" (Dearbron, MI United States) - See all my reviews
"In Defense of Food" is a fine book, cleverly written in clear and musical English, and I recommend it to everyone in the hope that the victuals of this benighted land eventually improve.

I go out of my way to obtain decent food, so I'm in agreement with Professor Pollan in much of what he has to say, but as to his central premise, that refined and manufactured food is poisonous to the degree that it is causing the present epidemic of obesity and diabetes -- not to mention all the other maladies he lists-- I remain skeptical.

Certainly there is nothing new about Professor Pollan's hypothesis. Admonitions about the deleterious properties of sugar have circulated for many years; Hitler was said to be a sugar addict, and there is a song of warning called "Poison Sugar" on the Holy Modal Rounders' 1978 album, Last Round

However, I am ancient enough to have lived in a time when the quality of food was even worse than that under which we suffer today. In the 1950s, no food package bore the label All-Natural or No Artificial Ingredients. Instead, food was marketed as being new and improved, modern, and scientifically advanced with secret ingredients such as Platformate. Unlike the culinary utopia that Professor Pollan depicts in those days, television advertising had ensnared American minds, and families were more likely to dine on what were then called TV Dinners (each of which came in an aluminum tray) rather than mother's home cooking. The standard lunch which children carried to school in their Roy Rodgers lunchboxes consisted of a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich on Wonder Bread®. If a child expressed hunger upon return from school, he or she would be encouraged to eat another such sandwich, because the jelly came in decorated glass tumblers which, when emptied, served as attractive tableware in which to serve Kool-Aid®, the standard drink of the day.

The "peanut butter" in these meals actually contained little that was derived from peanuts, but instead about 60% of the paste was hydrogenated cottonseed or corn oil (as were all foods made by the Corn Products Refining Company and the Union Starch Company). When children drank milk instead of sugar-water, it was often enhanced with Bosco® corn syrup. At my best friend's house, they used Similac® powdered milk, and before corn flakes came encrusted with sugar, it was common to sprinkle granulated sugar (a lidded sugar bowl was always kept at the center of the table) on one's cereal.

Bacon grease was saved in a jar that was kept in the ice box, but later Crisco® and Swift® shortening became more popular for frying. Everything, all cooking, was fried, and the remaining grease was saved like a precious substance. Hot dogs were even more popular than they are today, only then, the casings of these floor-sweepings from the abattoir were supplemented with non-meat extenders -- often cereal or starch byproducts.

Penny candy was sold, and after school, children would load up on it at the corner store. Penny candy was what one might consider to be on the fringe of food. For instance, a common candy was buttons of colored sugar stuck to a tape of paper. Another was tiny wax vials containing dyed (but not flavored) sugar water -- some kids even ate the paraffin wax. One which survives today is bubble gum. Can any of these things actually be considered food? Whatever the answer, many such substances were consumed.

The era of air freight and food transportation had not yet arrived, so it was the utopia of local food that Professor Pollan rhapsodizes over. Unfortunately, this meant that fresh produce was unavailable to most of the country for the winter months. During this time, canned fruits were popular -- all canned fruit having been packed "in heavy syrup."

In short, the American diet of the period (the postwar diet of Europe was far worse, and our family charitably sent canned goods and sugar to the old country) was exponentially worse than even the most egregious crimes against the palate Professor Pollan describes in this book. If refined sugar and the wrong type of fat and artificial food are so patently malefic to the human body, why is it that diabetes and obesity were as rare in those bygone days as appendicitis is today? Since we Americans --obedient as always to the orders of the all-seeing TV eye -- ate nothing but processed food swimming in cholesterol, sugar and number-10 red dye, how is it that any of us lived to tell of it? Why didn't Americans vanish from the face of the Earth leaving the ruins of supermarkets as a warning for future archeologists?

In fact, this worst of all imaginable diets seemed to exhibit no symptoms among the populace. Hyperactive Attention-Deficit Disorder had yet to appear in children. It may be argued that it was there, lurking, but hadn't yet been discovered, but to this I would suggest that it was kept in check by the power of fear. Anyone "acting-out" (as I believe it is now termed) in a classroom would be administered swift and cruelly-painful corporal punishment. Obesity was rare and rarer still in children, because most people were employed in manual labor, and in my city, there were no such things as school buses. For that matter, there were never any snow days. Even in those brutal winters --and this was in the era before Global Warming eliminated winter forever-- we were expected to be in school and on time every day. After school, boys spent most of their free time injuring each other.

On the other hand, in times past the wealthy few who could afford the type of diet Professor Pollan advocates -- unadulterated, minimally-processed, unpackaged, natural food in wide variety; fresh-picked produce and prime meats that had been fed on wild clover and fallen peaches; wines without sulfites -- such gourmands often developed gout (the cure for which was a diet of Jell-O® with the tiny marshmallows mixed in).

Upon casual consideration, Professor Pollan's call for a return to the "good ol' days" is admirable, but for those of us so unfortunate as to have been born before the advent of such food messiahs, how is it that we apparently thrived? Actually, Professor Pollan is but one of a long line of food prophets foretelling our doom if we don't repent, and as with all the others, he's getting rich doing so.

There's the real lesson!

[SoonerTexan]

I could be wrong--it has been almost a year since I read the book--but I'm pretty sure the era that review is based on (the advent of processed food) is the turning point mentioned in the book as to when the average food an American ate was no longer "real" food.

He has an entire section of the book devoted to corn syrup and food additives and their negative effects. I think the "golden era" he is referring to is more of the pre-1930s diet.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

I could be wrong--it has been almost a year since I read the book--but I'm pretty sure the era that review is based on (the advent of processed food) is the turning point mentioned in the book as to when the average food an American ate was no longer "real" food.

He has an entire section of the book devoted to corn syrup and food additives and their negative effects. I think the "golden era" he is referring to is more of the pre-1930s diet.

I agree with you, he's talking about a bit earlier. But I do think he's waxing a bit poetic. He's talking about an era when people routinely starved. So while some people ate better, babies died of starvation and failure to thrive. While I don't think obesity and diabetes are a good thing, I don't think the alternative is better.

That's sort of my general problem with his comments. They're great, if you can afford them. I don't think it's affordable for most people. He advocates government spending and investment towards his ideals but I'm pretty sure that's just not economically feasible (see his NYTimes article directed at "Our Next President" just prior to the election of 2008). I think the money would be better spent raising the quality of ALL food, not just enacting laws that can't possibly be affordably met.

Oh dear, I think I may have just shifted this into a debate....SORRY!!! Just ignore me if I'm annoying you.