Michael Pollan had a brilliant article in the the New York Times a few weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Pollan explained what’s wrong with how Americans eat today, and explained how we can do better. For those short on time, see Meg Hourihan’s summary, in which she boils it all down into nine rules for eating. The #1 rule is this: don’t eat anything that your great-great grandmother wouldn’t have recognized as food.
IEW, twinkies. Mark, I was a vegan for 7 months, and when I looked at the nutritional facts on the twinkie packet, I was shocked to see that they use some kind of beef strain in twinkies. I never looked at one the same again.
Posted by phriendlyjaime on 2 February 2007 @ 6pm
How about “don’t eat anything that SOMEONE’S great-great grandmother wouldn’t have recognized as food”?
Posted by ChrEliz on 2 February 2007 @ 9pm
I’d have to give up Mexican and sushi. Naaaaah!
Actually, I’m glad you mentioned that: I think it’s best not to regard this as how to always eat but, rather, as an ideal standard to strive for but recognize that you’ll be happier not always meeting.
Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 2 February 2007 @ 9pm
Presumably his great-great grandmother was neither Mexican nor Japanese. :)
Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 3 February 2007 @ 12am
Also presumably because his great-great grandmother would be unfamiliar with ingredients from both cuisines.
Most Mexican food also contains more than five ingredients. Same with Japanese food, outside of sushi. Heck, even inside of sushi, you get the usual stuff (rice, vinegar, nori, sesame seeds or wasabi, not both) and then one filling, lest you break the rule of five.
Can you tell I don’t like rule 3? I think it works alright as a guideline to steer people away from preprocessed foods, but speaking as someone who makes his own chili powder, chicken and seafood stock, and soon, cans his own ketchup and BBQ sauce, well, I’d have to be making a whole lot more from scratch to actually meet this ideal.
Posted by Ben C. on 3 February 2007 @ 8am
That rules seems only to apply to manufactured foods. It’d be a little crazy for cooking. :)
Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 3 February 2007 @ 12pm
Considering that my great-great grandmothers all lived on farms and worked their tails off from morning to night, my first thought was this:
If I ate what they would recognize as food I would be fat from all the deep-fried foods. They ate biscuits every morning (and sometimes night). Fried chicken was a staple.
But, he does have a point–some of the stuff out their today they would have no idea that it was food.
Posted by Sarabeth on 3 February 2007 @ 5pm
Rule 3 does indeed sound silly. I would suggest that it be replaced with “No ingredients with more than five syllables.”
Posted by Tim McCormack on 3 February 2007 @ 7pm
Cut out soda…completely…I lost 10 lbs over the last 5 months because of it.
Posted by Kevin on 4 February 2007 @ 12pm
That’s my point, Tim. Dear old Great-Grandma Beaney (who died a few months before my birth in 1963, and was first generation, a Welsh immigrant) probably never had Mexican, and certainly never had sushi in Shamokin, Pennsylvania (I’m pretty sure you can’t get it there even now). And I LOVE Mexican and sushi (the latter, a taste acquired in the last decade)!
Posted by James Young on 4 February 2007 @ 8pm
Yes, but she would have recognized it as food. (Liking it is a different matter.) I think this article is referring more to, oh, I dunno, Tofurkey. (Anything processed beyond recognition.)
Posted by Tim McCormack on 5 February 2007 @ 4pm
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