|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
13 February 08
re: Michael Pollan |
| m-c: |
| I've been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (The Penguin Press, 2008). |
| He's the guy who says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Those are, in fact, the first seven words of the book. (Mark and I first read them in his New York Times piece called "Unhappy Meals" (requires registration). |
| Reading the book made me want to go back and check out all the changes we've made to recipes under the rubric of "healthier." Were we in fact making them healthier? Or were we being taken in by the ideology of nutritionism, the belief that healthy eating is about ingesting some nutrients and rejecting others? |
|
As of the 6th of February, we had changed 8 recipes in ways that we
called making them "healthier":
And in those 8 recipes there were 26 so-called healthy changes in the ingredients. (We change methods as well as ingredients, but not, apparently, for reasons of health.) |
| 9 of the 26 changes were simply using more of an ingredient we regarded as healthy: asparagus to more asparagus, chard to more chard, ginger to more ginger, and in a whopping 6 instances, garlic to more garlic. (As we're fond of saying in my family, we're proof that garlic wards off those pesky vampires.) |
| 3 of the 26 were adding in something we regarded as healthy: parsley, broccoli, tomato. |
| So far, so good. |
| But then we get to the 5 changes using less of an ingredient than the original recipe called for: honey to less honey, Parmesan cheese to less Parmesan cheese, pine nuts to less pine nuts, and 2 instances of olive oil to less olive oil. |
| Plus 2 instances of eliminating an ingredient altogether: olive oil to no olive oil, Parmesan cheese to no Parmesan cheese. |
And the remaining 7 of the 26 were substituting something we regarded
as more healthy for something we regarded as less healthy:
|
| 4 changes -- whole-grain udon to cauliflower, all-purpose to whole-wheat flour, bacon to caramelized onion, light miso to dark red miso -- although Margaret and I might think of these changes in terms of nutritionist ideology, they also embody good whole foods ideas. |
| 1 change simply lowers calories -- oops, nutritionism again, but I don't know how else to express the reason for the change: honey to less honey. |
7 changes reduce or eliminate fats:
|
| Well, honestly, I don't see how we could have lived during the past 25 years in the United States without developing some strong feelings and disordered thinking about fats. Of course we're confused. Let's leave it at that for the moment: We're confused and we'll try to get unconfused. |
| And then there are two changes from less-processed to more‑processed foods: butter to soy butter and milk to soy milk. Butter is full of saturated fats. Mark and Margaret are both lactose intolerant. Nutritionism once again rears its ugly head -- we're thinking in terms of nutrient s, or anti-nutrient s, instead of food. Up till I read Pollan's book, I regarded soy butter and soy milk as two of the glories of food engineering. Now I'm not so sure. |
| I'm harkening back to ten days of "detox" that Margaret and I and a couple of our friends did some years ago. One of its features was no processed food. (Others were no meat, no poultry, no dairy, no nuts.) I remember being surprised that I ceased to crave food in a short time. Three or four days into the detox I began enjoying my meals and having good appetite but not yearning to eat at inappropriate times or in inappropriate amounts. |
| I've had major problems with my weight for the last 25 years -- the same 25 years in which nutritionism has been the reigning ideology. Could I stop struggling if I throw it out the window? If I just eat food, mainly plants, not too much? Seems worth a try. I'll report back when I know more. |
Questions? Comments? Corrections?
Suggestions? Contributions?
Please let us know!
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|