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The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
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All the time I was reading this I kept wishing my father were still alive. He was Professor of Biochemistry and Nutrition at USC until about 1970. I would have liked to discuss it with him.
I recently read In Defense of Food and enjoyed it. I thought it was a lot of common sense notions that we can easily forget in America's atmosphere of convenience eating. I now have Omnivore's Dilemma and Botany of Desire on loan from the library.There is a revelation in In Defense of Food about dietary fat sources that made me a little angry. Also he states that a study revealed no connection between elevated blood cholesterol and heart disease. When I get back to school next week, I'm so getting the article and bringing it up with my pathology professor.
One reason I would have liked to talk to my dad. I wondered about some of the science.
We had talked about this book before Ruth on the older Constant Reader site. I had written a review and included several quotes. The book and quotes were met with a lot of resistance.Here is a link I had posted about corn a couple years ago in the discussion:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-...
I remember a couple folks were suspicious of the science and I tried to reassure you all that the Smithsonian and Pollan were fairly reputable sources. I am glad that someone from Constant Reader has read this book. I have been trying to spread the word that biodeisels are not always a more environmental option. It takes a half gallon of oil to grow a bushel of corn. Actually, it's funny there was a re-run of Martha Stewart on today...and I watched it because Pollan was a guest!
I suspect it is difficult for many people to believe that we might not always know everything even if we have studied such subjects...in the last ten years (especially) there has been a more holistic approach...consilience if you will...to many contemporary papers (and books) in science, biology. It's not the same approach as twenty years ago (or more). Resistance has also been given to similar approaches such as Jared Diamond and "Freakonomics".
As well as the above link to Smithsonian article I had posted many quotes including this one:
1) Cows see very little grass nowadays in their lives. They get them on corn as fast as they can, which speeds up their lifespan, gets them really fat, and allows you to slaughter them within 14 months.
2) The problem with this system, or one of the problems with this system, is that cows are not evolved to digest corn. It creates all sorts of problems for them. The rumen is designed for grass. And corn is just too rich, too starchy. So as soon as you introduce corn, the animal is liable to get sick.
3) It creates a whole [host] of changes to the animal. So you have to essentially teach them how to eat corn. You teach their bodies to adjust. And this is done in something called the backgrounding pen at the ranch, which is kind of the prep school for the feedlot. Here's where you teach them how to eat corn.
4) You start giving them antibiotics, because as soon as you give them corn, you've disturbed their digestion, and they're apt to get sick, so you then have to give them drugs. That's how you get in this whole cycle of drugs and meat. By feeding them what they're not equipped to eat well, we then go down this path of technological fixes, and the first is the antibiotics. Once they start eating the [corn], they're more vulnerable. They're stressed, so they're more vulnerable to all the different diseases cows get. But specifically they get bloat, which is just a horrible thing to happen. They stop ruminating.
And in previous discussion...I also included this quote...
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. " Max Planck
I find a lot of people are threatened that they may have lived their whole life under one belief...and to find a paradigm or different perspective...they resist. It's like they just have to make sharing knowledge and information an opportunity to showcase their intelligence or turn sharing into a competition.
One good thing though...is so many people respect your opinion Ruth, that I hope you will have better luck than I did, turning people on to a contemporary type of analysis such as Pollan's work. Hey...it's never too late to change our habits and to enter this millenium!
I recently read an article (in the NYTimes, I think) that made me feel a lot better about coffee. I drink about 3 or 4 cups a day (but these are made with an espresso maker and are pretty strong). This article was about a long-term study that seemed to indicate that coffee had nothing to do with heart palpitations or heart problems, that it did not dehydrate you--it hydrates as much as the same about of water would. It's good for attention and energy (as that's the reason we all drink it) and the only small negative was that it might have an affect on weight gain. Maybe that's why I'm inching out? I won't give up my coffee though. WIll give up sweets if I have to, but not the bitter brown tasty stuff. I found the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/hea...
Pollan sums up In Defense of Food in a few brief thoughts: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants, especially leaves." This seems like sound advice, implemented with a few small changes. See Pollan's own synopsis published in NY Times. In my house, we eat little prepared food. We do not make our own condiments now; it is in that area where high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats are sneaking into our diet. So once we are through with what is in the house, we are switching over to homemade. I figure if we eat like my great-grandmothers did, we will be eating pretty well. If we eat what my cousins fed us when we visited them in Italy, we will also be eating well. It’s a time investment more than anything else.In Anatomy & Physiology, I studied about the impact of the Western diet on our digestive system and greater health. The science of that is correct, Ruthie. Americans who eat a diet of mostly prepared food containing altered fat & sugar are doing exactly the wrong thing. It just makes me angry that this information is not being publicized by the entities supposedly looking after the health of Americans. I guess it is far easier and fattens the bottom line to prescribe a drug to reduce blood cholesterol than to take the time to instruct persons how to eat properly. (I can see by now that I will become the sort of renegade nurse no one wants to employ…)
I haven’t convinced myself of the need to go completely organic yet (that may well come), nor do I think that canned foods are all villainous. How does one soak beans overnight in a house containing four unruly cats? I have taken a few extra moments to pack my lunch over the last month which enables me to sure up my defense against convenience lunch while at work.
I think that sadly we live in a society that has largely forgotten how to cook, so its children will grow up eating mostly food prepared by a factory instead of loving hands. Great quote, Candy, but after observing how my coworkers feed their children, I doubt it will be the next generation.
2006 was a bad year for me, Summer, and I've not regained all my strength since. Therefore, I find myself eating more prepared foods than we used to. I just don't have the strength for those hours in the kitchen. Mostly Trader Joe's fresh prepared, tho, and I look at the fat content of everything I buy. The villain in our case is generally too much salt. I don't cook with salt (except soups, soup with out salt tastes like Cream of Dishwater), but prepared foods are loaded with it.
Organic foods are becoming cheaper and more available, but Pollan explains why, and why this is not necessarily a good thing. My main reason for buying them has been that I do not care to ingest too many tons of pesticides.
I began reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma this morning. I'm well into the second section, now, on organic growers. Yikes! It seems like know your grower is the best policy. soup with out salt tastes like Cream of Dishwater Funny, Ruth.
Did I call you Ruthie above? I did. I'm dreadfully sorry. That was a slip of the fingers caused by thoughts of a dear friend. I apologize.
Sherry, I find that good strong coffee requires little accompaniment. I used to add a small amount of milk, but now I drink it unadulterated. Two cups a day is generally my limit, but I drink more on the weekends.
I always drink coffee black without sugar. And lots of it.
No problem. I was Ruthie in high school. Since then, the only person who calls me that is our fellow CR, Steve Warbasse. And you.I like my coffee black with no sugar. Why adulterate a good thing. Alas, tho, I'm now restricted to decaf. I'm going to ask the doc about what you said about palpitations, Sherry.
My Neuro's staff say a cup of coffee first thing in the morning is good for people with low blood pressure. But if your BP is too high, maybe it's not a good idea? My husband was on a low-sodium diet & I got into the habit of not using a lot of salt.
Interesting discussion - Yesterday there was a report in the papers and on the BBC website saying that sales of organic foods have decreased over the last few months because of the increase in inflation. in addition there are farmers who are not finishing their conversion to organic certification on their farms because of this decrease. It will be interesting to watch as there is a related trend that looks at food-miles.
As for biofuels - (this from the BBC website) - Under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), the government had said that by 2010, 5% of all UK ethanol and diesel should come from biological sources - primarily crops including corn, sugarcane and rapeseed.
But last month, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said the UK would slow its adoption of biofuels because there were "increasing questions" about them.
The questions referred to include the increasing destruction of the rainforests to produce them. the need to support worldwide food production, as well as, as Candy mentioned, the costs of producing them in terms of fuel expenditure.
As for food - I don't drink coffee or tea unless it would be socially inept to fuss about it, don't buy ready meals or ready-prepared food (bar tinned tomatos, tuna and the like) but cook things from scratch. It's just the way I've always done it, apart from the time when my then small daughter had a great desire for fish fingers and chicken nuggets. My children, however, use convenience food, etc - it'll be interesting to see what happens in the future when they eventually have families.
I found a grass-fed farm not too far from my home, but the prices seem out of my budget. Harvesting yeast from the air seems easier than using it out of the packet, which I seem to fail at a third of the time.
Now, I am reading The Botany of Desire. I guess I'm in the midst of a Pollan-binge. I have started the a list on the first page of my Pathology notebook with scholarly articles and books I want to ask my professor about. He's a pretty cool guy (works in a research lab when school is not in session and breeds goats) I don't think he's too uptight to field a few questions about nutrition.
I've always pretty much cooked with a Mediterranean approach. My mother, who was not Italian, was taught by my father's Sicilian family and caught on quick. So I've always pretty much cooked from scratch. Except for now. During the 8 months of 2006, when I was pretty much out of commission, Leif (who is most definitely not a cook) relied on a lot of prepared stuff from Trader Joe's. And like I said, weak and lazy, I use more than I used to.
I didn't take your comments as a poke at me, Bun. I was just blathering on.Fast food all tastes the same. Not only does a McDonald's burger taste just like one from Wendy's, but every other item on McDonalds menu tastes like all the other items. Yech.
The botany of desire is really good and much more of a story. If you like Pollan and even if you find him kind of preachy, i think you'll really enjoy Botany of Desire.I love cooking - whether it's a fast meal or a long process and am already passing this love onto my nieces, 3 and 18 months. Sure they eat out, but they make a lot healthier choices than most kids - fruit, avacado sushi, chicken soup, rice and beans, grilled chicken - rather than chicken nuggets and fries.
But I am very careful to avoid discussions with many people on this topic - new moms especially feel enough pressure.
Sometimes we are barely aware of where our food thinking springs. We know what we are fed as children and we add to it what we experience once we go out on our own -- IF we actually try something and like the experience. While we had our family staples in the recipe file, we also ate all kinds of offering -- Italian one of the top ones I recall. My grandmother cooked in several local restaurants including the local family owned Italian restaurant. We learned to explore when given the chance.This came home to me when we were living in Europe and while enjoying the differences for the most part and loving much of what we found, we also realized when dining out that the food offerings in Germany seemed most welcoming, comfortable -- it spoke of what we'd experienced in our childhood homes -- lots of German bloodlines in our two families and while Americanized certainly the roots had evidently been true.
I also reveled in the availability of rabbit in several forms -- again, childhood training as my hunter father's game was a common meal component. There were also other wild game offerings to explore and I'm sure my childhood eating led me to try things which some folks would shy away from.
How does all of that fit into the ideas being bandied about by Pollan and others these days?I've got to get started on Pollan's books soon.
I find all of the new books about food to be a welcome change in attitude; however I am concerned that many Americans are simply unable to follow the excellent changes being proposed. Local food is the best, but just try to find a Farmer's Market in the inner city. Many people are lucky if they can find any decent vegetables, much less organic. Many of the elderly have difficulty obtaining transportation to their closest grocery store; they're not making it to Whole Foods. People with chronic illnesses (including myself) often are unable to cook for themselves - if there were no Lean Cuisines, I couldn't eat when my husband is at work. Before I was ill, I cooked from scratch, mase my own bread (with wheat sprouts I sprouted myself), and really loved cooking. Now, making a cup of coffee can completely confuse me. I am fortunate to have a husband who cooks our food, but I think that it would be unfair of me to insist that he follow any prescribed method of cooking on top of my diabetic restrictions. My husband is unable to drive because of visual limitations, so if I can't drive, canned and frozen foods are a lifesaver. And in a choice between bagged salad and no salad, bagged salad is wonderful.I have a copy of Omnivore's Dilemna and think that it's an excellent book, I love Barbara Kingsolver and her local foods approach, but I hope that we remember how difficult it can be for many people to have any sort of a decent diet and remember to include everyone in the search for solutions to the food problem. (And I am only talking about Americans - for many around the world, finding any food and clean water in which to cook it is a daily struggle. Their choices are not between natural and processed, but between eating and starving.)
Great discussion everybody, thank you!
Wilhelmina, I agree with you completely. Most of my patients are unemployed and living on very limited means. Getting any food at all is an issue. While I agree that local and organic food is best, it's not something I usually discuss with my patients. What I focus on instead is what food is available and affordable in their neighborhoods or local food depositories and what their best choices are within what they have available. And I don't turn my nose up at Lean Cuisines either. Not only are they easy to store and prepare when people can't or don't have time to make a full meal, they're frequently deeply discounted and offer good examples of proper portion sizes for my weight-challenged patients.Sometimes the food books and articles can sound somewhat snobby, inducing guilt in people who can't afford to participate in the latest food trends. While I agree that farmers should be adequately paid for their efforts, I also support anything that makes food affordable.
In keeping with that message, a great charity to support is Second Harvest http://www.secondharvest.org/ which funds a number of food depositories around the country, including in communities affected by Gustav (and all those storms that are lined up behind him).
I agree with Happyreader that food books and articles can seem snobby and, I think, a little self-righteous. A lot people didn't like Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America because of it's "Gee whiz! I didn't know fast food could be bad for you" prose style. But the book was squarely aimed at people who simply don't realize how bad a processed-food diet can be.I wish Pollan would write a book like that. In Defense of Food is a good read, but it doesn't provide the kind of concrete, step-by-step advice that someone who wants to eat better on a budget needs.
This weekend, I went to visit my grandmother who lives on an island. She is by no means on a fixed income, but she lives as if she is. Conserving money is a habit she got into many years ago and I have no doubt that she will live frugally the rest of her life. She can neither walk easily nor drive at all. Twice a week, she catches a senior bus to the supermarket or discount store. She goes twice a week because it enables her to carry her packages more safely and it provides an outing, but she refuses to buy produce at either place because she finds it to be too expensive. She was elated when I took her to a produce market today. Contrast my grandmother's circumstances with mine: I have both sufficient income and the will to spend it. I live in a community full of farms, roadside stands and farmer's markets. I have ready transportation. Plainly there is no barrier to me making a few changes in favor of my health. What for my grandmother has become a sort of luxury is accessible to me on a regular basis. That seems to be the way of the world. What is easy for some is impossible for others.
I think Pollan touches on that idea in Omnivore’s Dilemma where he asks the beyond-organic farmer ‘What about New York City?’ And the farmer responds, ‘What do we need it for?’ (Or something of similar substance.) There is a measure of both ignorance and conceit in that what-is-good-for-me-will-work-for-everyone approach.
Great discussion! I have really enjoyed Pollan's books. I live in Detroit and am very conscious of the difficulty of finding food that is both afforable and nutritious in the inner city. To me books like Pollan's get me thinking about things like neighborhood gardens. I am a school librarian in a k-8 school and many of my students don't have the slightest idea where food comes from. This lack of background knowledge hurts them in more ways than their nutrition. It's not just about stores and money, it's about culture and knowledge.
Cynthia, if you haven't read anything about Alice Waters' school program, one source is Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. It's described in one of the early chapters.This is really a book I need to finish. I read the early chapters, including a great chapter on healthy food programs for the poor in Brazil. Frances Moore Lappe is someone I really admire since she's focused on providing healthy, environmentally-friendly food for as wide a population as possible. I've heard her speak and she struck me as very insightful and genuine.
I have read articles in magazines about her program, but never her actual book. I'll be sure to read it soon.
I saw a TV program about Alice Waters school cafeteria program. Could it have been on 60 minutes? A couple of years or more ago. I wonder how it worked out?
What a great idea.I remember having a school Victory Garden during WWII, but I can't remember anything but radishes coming out of it.
Swiss Chard. No one had heard of it until the seeds arrived in our Victory garden package. It turned out to be good -- a green better than spinach which was forced upon us by the new science of nutrition. But Swiss Chard was easy to grow & you could pick it until it was covered with snow. Right now, I can look out the window of my little apartment & see a row of "Bright Lites" Swiss chard growing happily in front of the tomatoes.
My mother grew an enormous Victory Garden, and swiss chard was prominently featured.But not everybody is a gardener. When I first met Leif he told me how Norwegians were particularly fond of rhubarb and volunteered that he had some planted in his back yard.
I expressed amazement that he could grow rhubarb in Southern California. I just couldn't believe it.
So he took me around the corner of the house where he had a lush plantation of rhubarb....chard.
Not only are some people not gardeners, but they don't read seed packets well.
Marion,Swiss chard is lovely and it goes on here through the winter - and the colours do add so much to the brightness of the garden in winter. You can make spanakopitta with it too (or with a mixture or it and spinach) and it gives it a really good flavour. I grow spinach beet which works well also through the winter and never bolts in hot weather - not that we usualy have long spells of heat in southern England. Have you tried celeriac? Cardoons are something I want to start growing next year and I'm planting a quince tree. I'd love to hear what else is in your Victory garden package.
My daughter, Robyn, planted way too many tomatoes in her/our garden this year. And too many yellow squash. But one of the more interesting things she planted was tomatillos. They did very well. Tom makes a great Mexican stew with them, and I've canned several jars of salsa verde. (We still had too many, though.) She planted enough pumpkins to start her own Halloween stand (they took over the garden) and are ripe NOW, which is a bit early. We had haricots verts (which were great until some four-legged creature decided he liked them too---leaves and all), okra, cowpeas, mesclun (which bolted a bit soon, we had a hot spring), bell peppers, jalapeña peppers, basil up the ying yang and bok choi. We tried corn, but it was too dry, and the worms like it (she's organic, so some pesties are hard to kill). We have enough jars of tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, BBQ sauce, and marinara sauce to supply a decent hospital. Next year, we'll cut back; we'll probably still have some left from this year.
Sherry,I tried tomatillos last year but the dampness here did nothing for them - prob not enough sunshine either. I've lots of chili pepper plants but grown on the window - my daughter's boyfriend, who is funnily enough also a fan of Mexican cooking, grew them all and now the whole family has window ledges full of pepper plants. Interesting enough I have sweet corn growing tall and beautiful in the garden - it's a special variety for our shorter growing season so I'm really pleased. Oriental greens do well here, I've several varieties except that this year the pigeons have taken a liking to the pak choi so I've got a limited harvestof that or rather of any whole leaves. I, too, am an organic gardener - except for the tiny bit of slug bait that I put down at the beginning of the season if I've planted seeds more than twice and have had them eaten. The chance of three unsuccessful plantings is too much for me to bear and the beer baits just get washed out if it's damp. My tomatoes, however are even now starting to get blight as the weather has been damp - at least it's better than last year when they were blighted before any set at all. I've only had about 4 ripening and have picked those and given them to my son to finish ripening. I envy your excess. In the meantime you would be quite welcome to some of my beans although dilled bean pickle seems to be something that is actually good as opposed to many other pickles that I've made over the years that get eaten out of determination not to waste. I've done small pumpkins which are supposed to be good for flavour and like your Robyn, I have several already ripe - unusually early. I do love gardening with both veggies and flowers and am so pleased to see such a lovely topic being discussed - I hope it's still going when I get back from my holiday so I can revel in reading it.
For a while I had a big vegetable garden in the canyon on the level below our house when we lived in Redlands.I even went so far as putting in an asparagus bed--digging a trench, layering it with steer manure, planting the weird little roots, banking everything, waiting two years. But we finally got a few spears. The next year should have been great.
But I forgot to water.
As to mesclun. I ordered a seed packet from a nursery that specialized in French vegetables. This was quite some time ago, before it was popular here, so I had no idea what it was going to look like. Trouble was, when it came up, the weeds came up,too.
And I had no idea which was which.
Here I have to content myself with an herb garden in pots on my patio. Basilico, oregano, thyme, Italian parsley, cilantro, mint.
We planted a garden this year too, and we are right now enjoying the new potatoes. We had radishes earlier on, also lettuce and green beans. But there are still beets, carrots and onions to harvest. Of course, we have zucchini to no end. But the pumpkins, which the kids were looking forward to growing for Halloween, and the tomatoes were hurt by some hail in late July and never quite recovered. Both are just flowering again now, but frost is just a few days away here. I also plant herbs on pots, this way I can bring them into the house and enjoy through the winter months. We raise our own beef, and there is a great amount of pride in seating at a table where we have produced all our food. I have not read the Omnivore’s Dilemma – another book to add to the To Be Read list – but I enjoyed the discussion here nevertheless. We are farmers and the discussion of food production and consumption is dear to our hearts. I often see a great communication gap between “rural” and “urban” people, which saddens me quite a bit. Being an urbanite that got “transpotted” to a rural community I see how much we all could gain in developing a better understanding of each other.
Sorry if this came up already, but has anyone noticed full-page ads showing up in the large dailies (The Boston Globe, in my case) paid for by the High Fructose Corn Syrup lobby (you thought they didn't exist?).The bottom line of their ad: same thing as sugar, fools! I guess Pollan (and friends) have scored a hit.
I had a similar reaction whhen I saw the commercial. Are they trying for moderation when it's put it into every product? This irritability is because I have searched for a week in local markets (including health food stores) and have been unable to find graham crackers that do not contain high fructose corn syrup. This is very frustrating. However, I don't have two hours to drive Trader Joe's and Whole Foods in back, so I will just go on craving.
Full page ad in the LA Times. Yeah, I wanted to yell back, BFD, nobody said it wasn't sweet!
The high fructose corn syrup folks must be running scared to pay for all that propaganda. Graham crackers were invented as a health food.You can make great ones with honey. Here's another recipe. http://bakingbites.com/2005/04/homema...
James, thank you! I am so making those. I have all the ingredients and they don't seem too difficult. I can hardly wait. The time investment will certainly be less than driving to the store.
For a while there I thought Pollan was going to drag me kicking and screaming into vegetarianism, but eventually he let me off the hook.
He tells you everything you never thought to ask about how the food chain works. The bad news is that no way of eating is perfect. It’s given me a lot to think about when shopping for groceries. Perhaps more than I want to think about.