My Other Favorite (Food) Writer

Once again I find myself having great cause to say, "It's been too long." November 23rd was the date of my last post. I left you with a favorite essay from the prolific Wendell Berry on the ethics of eating.

My plan, as of yesterday, was to post some reflections on The Omnivore's Dilemma, written by this ball-capped guy to the left who's holding the piglet. Michael Pollan is his name and he is fast becoming my "other" favorite (food) writer, taking his well-deserved place alongside Wendell Berry. I finished reading TOD this afternoon, having started it only last weekend, and having managed to get through all 400 plus pages of it in only a week. Or, more to the point, I managed to put the book down long enough to actually get done the rest of the things I had to get done this week, which was truly the greater accomplishment, by far.

I've got quite a lot to say about the book and all that it contains, and I still hope to share some of my reflections on it here, since that kind of thing is exactly the sort of thing we do here at The Reverent Eater. But first, it seems appropriate to get back into blogging mode by sharing a quick summary of another more recent piece of Pollan's writing, which is actually reminiscent of the contents of my last post by Wendell Berry. This one is from last Sunday's New York Times Magazine (January 28, 2007) - from an article called "Unhappy Meals," the sort of subtitle to which reads, "Thirty years of nutritional science has made Americans sicker, fatter and less well nourished. A plea for a return to plain old food."

I commend to you the whole article, which I'm sure can be found over at www.nytimes.com. The list that follows is my summary of Michael Pollan's summary of what one might call his own Wendell-Berry-like ethics of eating. So, here we go:

1. "Eat food." By which Pollan means "real food," not processed food products. Or as he explains it, "Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Which is a lot.

2. "Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims." Those that claim to be healthy often are not. Instead, they are often highly processed. Don't let what, as Pollan calls it, "the silence of the yams" fool you. Fresh fruits and vegetables are your friends. Even though they don't have highly paid and highly vocal spokespeople.

3. "Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number - or that contain high fructose corn syrup." 'Nuff said. That's been one of my rules for years.

4. "Get out of the supermarket whenever possible." Or as he says elsewhere in his writings, try to buy food without barcodes.

5. "Pay more, eat less." Good food costs more, no doubt. But you get what you pay for. And even more importantly perhaps, so called "cheap food" carries with it an overwhelming number of hidden costs - oil for transportation, pollution, the devastation of local economies, etc. Besides, Americans used to pay close to 25% of our income on food. Nowadays we pay closer to 10%. Most of us can afford to pay more, and we should - not only for ourselves and our families, but for the welfare of the rest of the world. Oh, and eat less. Yes. We can afford that, too.

6. "Eat mostly plants, especially leaves." If you eat meat, you might be better off thinking of it as a side dish, suggests Pollan.

7. "Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks." As Pollan argues elsewhere, Americans have no consistent food culture of our own, and that gets us in trouble by making us more vulnerable to food fads. In fact, it may matter more HOW we eat than WHAT we eat, which is precisely what an intact food culture would tell us if we had one. "Let culture be your guide," writes Pollan, "not science." Makes good sense to me.

8. "Cook. And if you can, plant a garden." Doesn't this sound like Wendell Berry? In a sentence that this student of the culinary arts deeply appreciates, he writes, "The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism." All the eggs, butter, and cream notwithstanding, I think he's on to something.

9. "Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet." Here he is singing the praises of diversity. To paraphrase Pollan, the greater the variety of the foods we eat, the more likely we are to get all the many and varied nutrients we need.

So, there you have it: Michael Pollan's ethics of eating. Someday soon, I'll share some of my thoughts on The Omnivore's Dilemma. In the meantime, it's time to start reading a new book, which I think will be...Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan. (And no, I haven't forgotten that I promised you a summary of Zen Master Dogen's Instructions to the Cook. I'll get to that...don't worry...all in good time...)