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IN DEFENSE OF FOOD: AN EATER’S MANIFESTO BY MICHAEL POLLAN

“To reclaim…control over one’s food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing: indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts.”—Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

MINDMAP OF IN DEFENSE OF FOOD BY MICHAEL POLLAN

This was an fantastic book that deserves a better map. Oh well.

Earlier today my friend Tim asked, “What is your most naïve question?”

Mine was, “Why do we live like this?” Which, of course, is also a way of asking, “How should we live?”

I loved this book because Michael Pollan answers my question in terms of food: “Why do we eat like this?” and “How should we eat?”

The answer to the latter: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

In a lot of ways, this book reminds me of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. In an age where food has become nothing but a commodity, something packaged and sold, it’s time to treat it like a gift. “Shake the hand of the one who feeds you,” as Pollan says.

Speaking of great writing about food, I’d like to wish Maureen McHugh a happy birthday! Check out her blog and contributions to Eat Our Brains for some exquisite culinary lit.

Comments

  1. Had to share these other two nuggets from the book.

    On gardening:

    “Much of what we call recreation or exercise consists of pointless physical labor, so it is especially satisfying when we can give that labor a point.”

    On the food industry’s manipulation of language:

    In January 1977, [the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs chaired by South Dakota Senator George McGovern] issued a fairly straightforward set of dietary guidelines, calling on Americans to cut down on their consumption of red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm of criticism, emanating chiefly from the red meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about actual foodstuffs—the committee had advised Americans to “reduce consumption of meat”—was replaced by artful compromise: “choose meats, poultry, and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake.”

    Leave aside for now the virtues, if any, of a low-meat and/or low-fat diet…and focus for a moment on language. For with these subtle changes in wording a whole way of thinking about food and health underwent a momentous shift. First, notice that the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food—in this case meat—had been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. government dietary pronouncement. Say what you will about this or that food, you are not allowed officially to tell people to eat less of it or the industry in question will have you for lunch. But there is a path around this immovable obstacle, and it was McGovern’s staffers who blazed it: Speak no more of foods, only nutrients. Notice how in the revised guidelines, distinctions between entities as different as beef and chicken and fish have collapsed. These three venerable foods, each representing not just a different species but an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as mere delivery systems for a single nutrient. Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves. Now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless—and politically unconnected—substance that may or may not lurk in them called saturated fat.

  2. Hey there Buddy.
    I know I should read the book and Im all for conservationism, but I couldnt resist an initial comment. I know Austin TX isnt the worst…but watch out for those Hippie Health Nuts! You’ve got some of the finest BBQ pits out there filled with glorious piles of Brisket, Pork, Chicken, and lord knows what else but it’s gotta be delicious. I believe Carlin had some choice words for those vegetarians too.
    You do great work though, bud.
    Peace

  3. Oh, my best buddy brings up a point that I would like to make clear: I WILL NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER GIVE UP MEAT!!! Eating animal flesh is one of my favorite pleasures. I live in Austin, TX. It’s near freaking impossible to be a vegetarian, and god help the folks who are.

    I did a post along these lines: SHOWING PIGS, EATING PIGS, DRAWING PIGS

    That said, Meg and I are eating LESS meat, and buying BETTER (and more expensive) MEAT. Organic, grass-fed flesh TASTES BETTER.

    And Corey, we are due in for a trip to the SALT LICK!

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