In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

That eating should be foremost about bodily health is a relatively new and, I think, destructive idea - destructive not just of the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically of our health as well. Indeed, no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans do - and no people suffer from as many diet-related health problems. We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obesession with healthy eating.

The scientists haven't tested the hypothesis yet, but I'm willing to bet that when they do they'll find an inverse correlation between the amount of time people spend worrying about nutrition and their overall health and happiness. This is, after all, the implicit lesson of the French paradox, so-called not by the French (Quel paradoxe?) but by American nutritionists, who can't fathom how a people who enjoy their food as much as the French do, and blithely eat so many nutrients deemed toxic by nutritionists, could have substantially lower rates of heart disease than we do on our elaborately engineered low-fat diets. Maybe it's time we confronted the American paradox: a notably unhealthy population preoccupied with nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily.

-In Defense of Food

It's possible that, in lieu of a review, I could just post seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

That's Michael Pollan's oft-quoted mantra, the heart of his argument in In Defense of Food. Anyone who's been paying attention to food news in the last few years may also be familiar with some other pieces of Pollan's work: the idea that you shouldn't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize, for example, or anything with more than five ingredients in it. Still, even if they're not new to you, these are easy-to-remember points that could really stick in people's minds and affect how they eat. Pollan elaborates quite a bit, and provides a lot of useful information about how our relationship with food has changed over time, how it's hurting us now, and what we need to change. It's a matter of spreading awareness and education, and helping people believe that they are capable of achieving better health.

It's not quite so easy, of course. Pollan admits that good food - actual food, that is, as opposed to processed food products - is likely to be more expensive and, in some areas, less available than the junk. Still, it's a matter of people who do have the luxury of making these choices doing so. Individual choices add up, and can gradually change the culture.

It's really easy to be snookered by food. I spent years eating veggie burgers, thinking that they were both tasty and healthy. In retrospect: the soy. The hexane (recently in the news). The ingredient list that runs way longer than five. More and more, I'm reevaluating everything. And continuing to read books like In Defense of Food only reinforces the aversion that I'm developing toward processed foods.*

I'm biased, for sure. I think everyone should read In Defense of Food and Fast Food Nation, and watch Food, Inc. and Super Size Me. Or just pick one - In Defense of Food would be an excellent place to start.

As for me, I'm going to be leafing through back issues of Gourmet, looking for something I could cook this weekend. One of the great side effects of avoiding processed food is that I'm becoming a more adventurous cook. More work? Sure. But it's awfully nice to really know what went into you're eating - and that there was no soy lecithin or high fructose corn syrup required to turn it into "food."

Up next: Stephen Fry's autobiography, Moab is My Washpot.

*Replacing my aversion to blueberries, which I am in the process of dismantling, hooray.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

I share with almost every adult I know this crazy quilt of optimism and worries, feeling locked into certain habits but keen to change them in the right direction. And the tendency to feel like a jerk for falling short of absolute conversion. I'm not sure why. If a friend had a coronary scare and finally started exercising three days a week, who would hound him about the other four days? It's the worst of bad manners - and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society - to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't, add up to having been the thing that mattered.

-Animal, Vegetable, Miracle


The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

-"The World Is Too Much With Us," William Wordsworth

Oh yes, I'm back to write about food some more. I had no idea when I started this blog how many food-related books I would be reading. It's an interesting development for me.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, author Barbara Kingsolver and her family document the year they've pledged to spend eating locally. Month by month, we follow Kingsolver and her family, who have recently relocated to a farm in southwestern Virginia. Kingsolver tells the bulk of the story, which is supplemented by short articles by her husband, biologist Steven L. Hopp, and by essays and family recipes from her teenage daughter, Camille. The going is tough, at first. When they begin in March, they are heavily reliant on the local farmers' market, and there's not much there, either. They persevere, allowing only a few non-local exceptions in their diet: coffee, quite understandably, and flour to make their daily bread. As the weather gets warmer, they are able to plant and reap their own crops, though they remain dedicated customers at the farmers' market. They are overjoyed when their first asparagus starts tentatively pushing its way above ground.

It is Kingsolver's belief that people are too disconnected from the sources of their food. (Hence my inclusion of the Wordsworth poem about the growing alienation of man from nature. Oh, snap.) When people consume food grown locally, they know where it came from. It's as simple as that. Eating food from far away is unhelpful in a lot of ways. It's worse for the environment, since it takes energy to move the food around. It's worse for animals, who are often existing in appalling conditions prior to their slaughter - and non-local animal meat generally comes from these Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). It's worse for family farms, who are being edged out by large corporations. And it's worse for us, the consumers, since we are often getting inferior food, already days old before it's available in a grocery store. Pretty much the only winners in this system are the corporations - and with some corporate giants practically twirling their mustaches as they tie farmers down to the railroad tracks, it hardly seems like helping them out is our best choice.

So what to do? Kingsolver has ideas, and I especially love that she is not so militant that she expects everyone to do as she and her family have been able to do (see the excerpt above). She's not Jonathan Safran Foer, either. Eating animals is okay, but there is a line to be drawn. Yes, you have to kill an animal to eat it. But do you need to support, through your buying power, the existence of a system that allows such suffering? No. I'm trying to take the advice of Camille, who warns against self-righteousness when talking about food. It's something I feel more and more strongly about, though. I'm not perfect (I'd have a hard time turning down a Chik-Fil-A chicken sandwich), but I'm becoming more aware of my choices. Once you have the information, I have trouble understanding the lack of motivation (assuming you have the means and opportunity) to choose food more deliberately. For me, it's like trying to understand another person's politics. Logically, I can understand having different ideas, but really I only understand what feels right to me. Maybe it's sanctimonious of me, but that's why I am going on about it in my blog and not as much in real life. Perhaps it's more forgivable if you think of it as a particular pet peeve of mine. I mean, everyone's allowed to have a few of those, right?

I always tend to go on and on when it comes to food books. Obviously I enjoyed this one a lot, although it wasn't a particularly quick read. It was informative and it was entertaining (the section on breeding turkeys comes to mind). I actually think I enjoyed it more that either of Kingsolver's novels that I've read (The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible).

Related: I thought this profile of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was really interesting.

Up next: Remember my mentioning an eclectic haul from my last library trip? Well, I've just started Underground London by Stephen Smith. It's a nonfiction book about...underground London. Well, it's something I know very little about, so I'm preparing for a lot of (potentially useless) knowledge coming at me.

The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler

The International House of Pancakes recently put a stuffed French toast combo on its menu. Cinnamon raisin French toast (made with eggs and milk) is stuffed with sweet cream cheese; smothered with powdered sugar, fruit topping, and whipped topping; and served with two eggs, hash brown potatoes, and a choice of two strips of bacon or two sausage links. Breaking it down, the French toast is a load of fat on fat on fat and sugar that's then layered with fat on sugar on sugar and served with fat, salt, and fat.

-The End of Overeating

Sounds really lovely when you put it like that, right? It does seem that it's much easier to make choices about food if one turns a blind eye to its origins, its processing, and its nutritional value (or lack thereof). As David A. Kessler notes in The End of Overeating, the foods that we generally consider the most palatable (that is to say, those that "stimulate the appetite and encourage us to eat more," per Kessler), are those with a happy mix of fat, salt and sugar - none of which we need too much of. One of the big problems that has mired our country in an ongoing weight loss struggle, of course, is that we are constantly given opportunity to eat mind-boggling portions of all of those things.

In his book, Kessler describes some of the elements that have led to the current obesity crisis. He is particularly interested in the idea of conditioned hypereating (just what it sounds like), and how people are cued to engage in it. Much of the book is spent on this (bring on the rat studies), in addition to a look at the workings of some restaurants and food corporations. He also presents a plan to end overeating.

In a way, I found this book to be common sense - for example, if you like the way something tastes, you eat more of it. If you walk by the restaurant that serves a favorite meal, you will be more inclined to crave that meal. Kessler offers behavioral reasoning for why we do these things, but it still can sound less than revolutionary (although he does overturn some widely held ideas, such as people having a set point for weight). He lays out all of the science in a very clear, easily understandable way.

I found the plan to end overeating itself to be the most interesting part of the book. His plan, which involves retraining your responses to stimuli, is a natural progression from his ideas on hypereating. It's definitely not a quick fix - Kessler describes the battle against conditioned hypereating as a lifelong one. His plan involves structure - the same structure people go for when they choose "shake for breakfast, shake for lunch." The difference is, a shake-based diet is not a sustainable long-term plan. Kessler's could be.

I'm not sure how what I've learned from this book will affect my eating - I imagine it will help to sustain the awareness I'm trying to maintain about what foods I buy, if nothing else. I am not a huge overeater myself, although I certainly have many, many food weaknesses* - plantain chips, baguettes, ice cream, etc. I was actually hoping that this book would have more personal anecdotes about how people respond to food and information about the evolution of eating in this country rather than the self-help information (although that ended up being interesting). I guess I will have to look for another book to get into those other things - perhaps one of Michael Pollan's books, which are still on my to-read list.

Up next: I'm about halfway through my first Inspector Morse book, The Way Through the Woods - the 10th book in Colin Dexter's series. Ideally I would have started at the beginning, but since the opportunity presented itself, I thought I'd give Morse a try.

*Not French toast, incidentally. I think that IHOP selection above sounds disgusting - to each his own.