In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan's new book came out. Did you notice? Or are you not big into food books? It may not be as awesome as his previous book, but it has many interesting and important points to make. Here are my top 3 for now:

1. Most of the stuff at the grocery store is not food. It is food-like stuff. It has very little relation to any of the stuff that grows in a garden or on a farm. Can you see the berries in a nutrition bar? Really? Look at the ingredients. Are there any real berries even in them? Do you know what most of the listed ingredients are? Where the come from?

2. Most of us have no idea when we are full or hungry. We pay attention to external cues to determine how much to eat and when. And we're eating all the time now, which is how the food industry is making more money off of us, since the average number of calories we each eat has increased by 600 in the past 40-50 years.

3. The health of the soil affects the health of the produce. The health of the cow affects how healthy a steak is for you. If you are just buying conventional produce and mass market meat, you aren't getting very much nutrition for your $$'s. Did you know there have been oranges tested that had NO vitamin C in them? Liebig's PDK hypothesis about fertilizer and plants is FALSE. Plain and simple. More over, cow's are ruminants. That means they are made to eat grass. Not grain. When they are grain finished on feedlots, they are also pumped full of hormones and drugs to keep them from getting sick. Do you really think that stuff isn't in the meat that comes from them?

While I had a harder time reading this book and didn't find it as well done as The Omnivore's Dilemma, it is a great read still. I am inspired to be more diligent in going to the farmer's market, to the pick your own farms, to buying everything meat from pastured sources.

We joined an organic food co-op and after our first week, I love it. I hope that continues!

Other great food book to read: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

Interesting link on What the World Eats. Full of pictures that you'll find fascinating!

I need another Book Group

I go to two book groups currently. But I need another one. Seriously.

I am currently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. I recently finished The Gospel of Food, and a few months ago read Fast Food Nation. The things I have been reading are eye-opening and astounding to me. I try to talk about it with DH and he just laughs because he grew up on a farm in Idaho. He has personally experienced all these things that I have no clue about, that I am just horrified to learn about the animals I used to eat.

I am currently a vegetarian. My main reason is because I don't really like the taste of meat anymore. It makes me sick feeling. I am happier without meat, so I stopped eating it. But reading these books (specifically Fast Food Nation & The Omnivore's Dilemma) is making me feel like it is just wrong to eat animals that are treated so poorly.

But should eating on a daily basis really be a MORAL issue? We are still poor and just trying to make rent for a few more months before my husbands' real job starts, since school is ending this week. I can't afford to buy all organic, morally raised food.

For this reason, I really appreciated The Gospel of Food. It is very different from the other two books, in purpose, tone, and issues discussed. It provides a balance to the reading of the other books, from which I start to believe I need to start living on a self sufficient farm, like in the book The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live it by John Seymour. I will write a post about all of those ramblings in my mind later.

So why do I need another book group? I need to be able to discuss these books with people who have read the books and want to talk about them too. Then I can stop hijacking perfectly normal conversations with family members who don't want to discuss them.