A couple weeks ago, I had heard a great interview with Michael Pollan, author of "In Defensive of Food", on NPR that discussed the relationship we have with food (aka what are we eating and how).
Click here to read the introduction.
So what are we eating? It's not food. It's food products, or even scarier sounding "edible foodlike substances". The primary culprits are: high-fructose corn syrup, processed white flour, and food science. These were revolutionary in their times because they allowed more families to work, expanded who could get vitamins and simplified home cooking. However, they are the modern bane of massive proportions (no pun intended).
He postulated that much of the "old-wives" wisdom about food and nutrition has been lost because of the recent rise of food science. One key example was the rise of margarine-grammas knew that butter, in moderate proportions, was ok but they were told by food scientists that they were wrong, that margarine was now the advanced butter (healthier, better tasting etc). But! It was actually margarine that was more unhealthy and butter actually is better.
Here are some of his simple suggestions for eating food!
1. Stay on the outside of the grocery store (just like no celery please suggested!)
2. If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it
3. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, stay away from it (I foresee "WWGGE" what would great-gramma eat bracelets)
4. Don't buy something if it has more than 5 ingredients (note: this doesn't mean that cassaroles, spaghetti sauces etc are verboten, especially if you make them yourself)
So, keep it real fellow piggies! Enjoy your food!
:) LJS
Next time, I'll ponder why we eat alone.
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5 comments:
I subscribe to Bill Moyers Journal podcast and Michael Pollen was on not too long ago.
He advocates everyone having a small garden if possible, much like the victory gardens that were popular in WWII. Eleanor Roosevelt had one on the White House grounds.
I'd love to have a small garden. If I get ambitious, it might happen but the idea of digging might get in the way.
*If* I had something other than concrete in the back "yard" perhaps. Otherwise, I'll have to be satisfied with other's gardening efforts.
dig it.
Container gardens! Tomtoes, herbs, squash, etc can be grown in 5-gallon buckets or such. I'm think that this will be my garden of choice this year, because the dirt in my yard is so very baaaad that nothing will grow for long except weeds.
Who's going to join me? One pot for the veggies (one tomato plant, once squash, and maybe one (1!) bean plant) and one for the herbs...sounds manageable, eh?
Weeding a bucket seems much less daunting than slogging through a half-yard of dirt with a hoe and squadrons of mosqueeters. I could weed a bucket.
And since I'm motivationally challenged on hot muggy days, maybe I could just weed ONE bucket at a go. Whee, fresh tomatoes!
We grew container tomatoes, lettuce and herbs this summer. They were delicious!
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