When it first came out, Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals was definitely on my radar but was something I chose to actively avoid. I already had a certain level of frustration and paranoia when it came to food industry — especially the industrial corn engine: high fructose corn syrup has been on my “avoid if possible” list for a while now — and I figured I’d rather stick to my semi-ignorant partial bliss. Eventually, though, my curiosity won out and I listened to the audio volume of OD on my commute.
It’s seriously one of the most frustrating/educational/shattering/enlightening things I’ve done to myself in a long while. I highly recommend it, though it always comes with a warning. It’s either going to piss you off, make want to throw your hands up, or make you figure “Fuck it! that’s too much to care about!” Or all three. Or more.
Then I immediately moved on to Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which is basically his answer to all of the people who read OD and wrote him to ask “Well, WTF can I eat and where the hell can I find it?!?” to which he replies with his zen koan of a “manifesto”:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
It’s a bit trickier than it sounds, believe me. In particular, when he says “food” he means real food, not engineered and manufactured “food products”. He does go on to lay down some more specific - but still simple - definitions and rules that all make perfect sense, but have almost nothing to do with the average Western (more specifically, American) diet these days. I’m happy, though, to hear our new president is at least aware of Pollan’s open letter about the state of food in the Union.
These two books have made quite an impact on me, obviously. Thanks to Michael Pollan, I am now researching things like local farmers markets, CSAs, polyculture farming, “slow” food, grass-finished beef, pastured poultry and eggs, and on and on and on. And this stuff doesn’t come cheap. Pollan notes that himself, but he also points out that the percentage of income spent on food in the US is almost ridiculously low compared to other countries with healthier-seeming diets/lifestyles, so maybe it’s worth it.
It also tends to balance out a bit if you actually cook for yourself, which this shift to whole and real foods has definitely inspired me to do.
That said, I certainly haven’t stopped dining out. I have, however, become a bit more discerning in where I take my lovely wife for a meal. Now I look for establishments that do their best to use local and natural ingredients. Luckily, many of these places also make some kick-ass food. I talk about three examples in particular after the jump: Continue reading ‘Food Awesomeness’
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