A book report on a book about food on the eve of a holiday mainly about food
I just finished an excellent book which I found fascinating. It is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. It is both a history of how scientists have studied food, and a critique of our current food situation. It is not always a comfortable read, but even so, I highly recommend it.
"A hallmark of the Western diet is food that is fast, cheap, and easy. Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food; they also spend less than a half hour a day preparing meals and a little more than an hour enjoying them. For most people for most history, gathering and preparing food has been an occupation at the very heart of daily life. Traditionally people have allocated a far greater proportion of their income to food -- as they still do in several of the countries where people eat better than we do and as a consequence are healthier than we are." (p. 145)
Of course, as someone who cooks nearly every meal we eat, making much of our food from scratch, I may be a bit biased about an author who, after much research, highly suggests eating real food rather than processed food-like products.
And of course I'm going to like an author who suggests that one of the best things we can do is actually share meals together. I'm always ready to ride that particular hobby horse.
"That one should feel the need to mount a defense of 'the meal' is sad, but then I never would have thought 'food' needed defending, either. Most readers will recall the benefits of eating meals without much prompting from me. It is at the dinner table that we socialize and civilize our children, teaching them manners and the art of conversation. At the dinner table parents can determine portion sizes, model eating and drinking behavior, and enforce social norms about greed and gluttony and waste. Shared meals are about much more than feeding bodies; they are uniquely human institutions where our species developed language and this thing we call culture. Do I need to go on?
All this is so well understood that when pollsters ask Americans if they eat together as a family most nights, they offer a resounding -- and resoundingly untrue -- reply in the affirmative. In fact, most American families today report eating dinner together three to four nights a week, but even those meals bear only the faintest resemblance to the Norman Rockwell ideal. If you install video cameras in the kitchen and dining room ceilings above typical American families, as marketers for the major food companies have done, you'll quickly discover that the reality of the family dinner has diverged substantially from our image of it. Mom might still cook something for herself and sit at the table for a while, but she'll be alone for much of that time. That's because dad and each of the kids are likely to prepare and entirely different entree for themselves, 'preparing' in this case being a synonym for microwaving a package. Each family member might then join mom at the table for as long as it takes to eat, but not necessarily all at the same time. Technically, this kind of feeding counts as family dinner in the survey results, thought it's hard to believe it performs all the customary functions of a shared meal."
Really, go read this book if you care about what you and your children eat and your family's health. It is not yet another new diet fad, but it is a rather scathing critique of the entire food industry. You might not look at the things in your grocery cart the same way again, though.
"A hallmark of the Western diet is food that is fast, cheap, and easy. Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food; they also spend less than a half hour a day preparing meals and a little more than an hour enjoying them. For most people for most history, gathering and preparing food has been an occupation at the very heart of daily life. Traditionally people have allocated a far greater proportion of their income to food -- as they still do in several of the countries where people eat better than we do and as a consequence are healthier than we are." (p. 145)
Of course, as someone who cooks nearly every meal we eat, making much of our food from scratch, I may be a bit biased about an author who, after much research, highly suggests eating real food rather than processed food-like products.
And of course I'm going to like an author who suggests that one of the best things we can do is actually share meals together. I'm always ready to ride that particular hobby horse.
"That one should feel the need to mount a defense of 'the meal' is sad, but then I never would have thought 'food' needed defending, either. Most readers will recall the benefits of eating meals without much prompting from me. It is at the dinner table that we socialize and civilize our children, teaching them manners and the art of conversation. At the dinner table parents can determine portion sizes, model eating and drinking behavior, and enforce social norms about greed and gluttony and waste. Shared meals are about much more than feeding bodies; they are uniquely human institutions where our species developed language and this thing we call culture. Do I need to go on?
All this is so well understood that when pollsters ask Americans if they eat together as a family most nights, they offer a resounding -- and resoundingly untrue -- reply in the affirmative. In fact, most American families today report eating dinner together three to four nights a week, but even those meals bear only the faintest resemblance to the Norman Rockwell ideal. If you install video cameras in the kitchen and dining room ceilings above typical American families, as marketers for the major food companies have done, you'll quickly discover that the reality of the family dinner has diverged substantially from our image of it. Mom might still cook something for herself and sit at the table for a while, but she'll be alone for much of that time. That's because dad and each of the kids are likely to prepare and entirely different entree for themselves, 'preparing' in this case being a synonym for microwaving a package. Each family member might then join mom at the table for as long as it takes to eat, but not necessarily all at the same time. Technically, this kind of feeding counts as family dinner in the survey results, thought it's hard to believe it performs all the customary functions of a shared meal."
Really, go read this book if you care about what you and your children eat and your family's health. It is not yet another new diet fad, but it is a rather scathing critique of the entire food industry. You might not look at the things in your grocery cart the same way again, though.
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