I've been wanting to write about this ever since I went to a seminar by Michael Pollan, (he's the author of The Omnivore's Dilema and In Defence of Food: An Eater's Manifesto). It was very cool and hit a cord with me. Everyone has their own definition of what is eating healthy, but Pollan looked at the history of food. To summarize: There are so many countries in this world and they all eat different diets that are relatively healthy. In China they eat alot of fish and rice, South Americans eat alot of corn and flour, etc. One trend that I noticed however, like in Chile, people eat what was in season. You ate fish in the summer but not really in the winter. You eat yummy fattening corn with sugar for two glorious months out of the year. Here in the U.S. however we have access to any kind of food we want, we can eat rice and fish one day, beans aand corn the next, we can buy fruit in the winter, winter foods in the summer, etc... And our "American diet" is the one diet that doesn't work (just look up obesity, heart disease stats). So with that said, we have two choices: we can keep eating our American Diet and eventually our bodies will have to adapt or evolve, but the cost of that could be very high, or we could quit eating it. Easier said than done, but he gave some really good pointers that I'll list at the end.One thing that I found very interesting is that obesity and health problems have sky-rocketed since the 70's. Before that, portions were smaller, families ate around the dinner table, my parents walked up-hill to school both ways... In 1973 there was a law called the "No immitation law" that stated that foods needed to be what people assumed they were, for example, bread needs to be made of wheat, eggs, should be eggs, if someone wants to call something sour cream and it has no real cream in it, then they would have to call it "immitation sour cream." I guess the big food businesses had a fit and demanded that the law be removed because people wouldn't buy immitation yogurt or immitation meat. This was also the age of the no-fat low-fat diets and the obesity epidemic can pretty much be pin-pointed to this altering of our foods. Maybe it is because people felt they could binge on low-fat foods and portions grew or maybe it was because now instead of eating foods with 2 or 3 ingredients, food companies had to start injecting foods with extra flavor and preservatives to make up for the fat that was missing.
Pollan said that science has been wrong- look at margarine and butter- we now know that trans fats are way worse than saturated fats and that butter is better for us than margarine. (This one's still hard for me because I grew up with a butter= bad, all fats must be terminated mentality, but when I think about it, it makes perfect sense. One bite of prime rib with butter is more satisfying and yummier than 4 slices of low fat meat product) We can't let society dictate what we should be eating, now they're pushing Omega 3's and fortifying all our foods with these extra "nutrients" and probably in 4-5 years they'll decide that was wrong and start fortifying us with something else. By the way, what's up with pushing the f
act that cocoa puffs are made with whole grain- they don't even resemble grain?So, this lecture I attended was very inspiring and made me want to change the world, but lets face it- eating healthy is more expensive than eating cheap processed foods. Here is my list of things that I'm trying to do that may not change the world but will be a little change for me:
1. Avoid products that my great-grandma would not recognize as food (example- gogurt, cheese puffs)
2. Shop the periphery of the grocery store: that's where the fresh produce is and avoid the processed aisles and "snack foods" Pollan said to eat quiet foods- foods that don't try and shout out from their box how good they are for you- think silence of the yams.
3. Don't eat anything that doesn't rot (anyone seen how long a McDonalds french fry lasts in the car?)
4. Eat foods with less than 5 ingredients
5. Go to the Farmers Market and pay more attention to the way food is grown. My mom and I are going to do a crop share thing this summer.
6. I'm having my organic milk delivered to my house. (Its fun, it's from a local farm, from cows who eat real food and no hormones, it's in recycled bottles and I feel like I'm living in the sixtys when I go he porch and see if the milk man has come yet.)
7. I'm growing as many tomatoes and peas as I can on our little patch of heaven
Like I said, I know it isn't much and I don't yet have a compost pile or pay extra for wholly organic everything, but I hope it's a step in the right direction.
I looked around the room and all I could say was, "No" when I saw the first wall, "No" when I saw the second wall, "NO!" when I saw the dresser, and "