I wasn’t in a rush to pick up Michael Pollan’s Cooked, but after watching the review below from the folks at THNKR, I decided to move it up in my reading queue!
I like what Dan Barber of Blue Hill Farm has to say at the very end:
The most dangerous thing about the industrial food system is that the food doesn’t taste good. To have flavor you have to have all the minerals and micro-vitamins [sic] that come out of healthy soils. So flavor and nutrition are sort of the same subject.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
Pollan is at his best as a writer when he’s questioning and exploring the complex and historical relationships between humans and plant life—as he did in “The Botany of Desire” (he discusses apple cultivation to make hard cider, and growing Cannabis as “adaptation strategies” for both people and plants) and in “Opium Made Easy”, his delightful 1997 Harper’s article (in which he slyly mocks the inconsistencies, contradictions, and biased regulations governing cultivation of plants with the potential to produce mind-and-body-altering substances (apples, potatoes, poppies and foxgloves, for instance). Here’s a link to his Harper’s article, for the benefit of those who enjoy growing poppies yet wish to avoid confrontations with law enforcement agencies: http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/opium-made-easy/
I realize this comment veers away from references to food and cooking, but we have truly lost something vital and maybe even mystical when we relegate our gardening pleasures to the “efficient” production of edibles. I, too, feel indescribable happiness from growing successful crops (winter squash, maize, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, etc) but by far my most intense experiences of gardening ecstasy result from my various experiments with mass plantings of flowers (almost never eaten except maybe by my hens) of as many unique and unusual varieties as I can manage.
Of course, should you, Beth, or any of your lovely readers venture into my neck of the woods, I will be happy to serve salads dotted with “Johnny-Jump-Ups” (miniature pansy-like flowers with “faces” displaying yellow, white, lavender and deep violet colors), noted to blend nicely in flavor with a simple vinaigrette! :)
You’ve read more of Pollan than I, but I’m not sure I would extrapolate from the idea that “gardening is good for efficient production of edibles” to “gardening is only good for efficient production of edibles.”
I’m a terrible gardener (too many decades in the city), but I did manage to plant some bulbs last fall that actually bloomed ;). I hope to eventually have three season’s worth of flowers! BTW, pansies are one of my faves. We had “Johnny-Jump-Ups” at the home I grew up in. I hope to find a nice place for them in my new digs!
Cooking is one of the most “interesting, worthwhile, and self-defining things that we do”? Seriously? I can’t say how many meals I had to plan, shop for, cook, serve, and clean up while my kids were young-a rough estimate would be something like 15,000. Those are not words that I would use to describe those years. If you are spending most of your life cooking (as opposed to chewing), you don’t have time for art & music & books either. Sigh.
I don’t think the kind of cooking Pollan is doing is the day-in-day-out slog that most folks go through feeding their families. Canned foods were a relief to my grandmother; Hamburger Helper was a relief to my mom; my husband taking over cooking duties recently has been a relief to me. It just seems like Pollan is sort of out of touch with reality sometimes. But I will probably read the book anyway.
Your experience describes my mother’s when I was growing up. I think I’ve mentioned that watching this “day-in-day-out slog” was pretty intimidating to me, despite the fact I’m relatively smart AND somewhat trained (heck, I can bake … take that Rachel Ray!).
I haven’t gotten the book and/or read it yet. So while it’s clear that Pollan is on the elitist end of the spectrum, I also could imagine that he might argue that the “day-in-day-out slog” of cooking was in fact a real problem. But it’s not clear that perpetual take-out and microwave cooking is the ideal solution.
With the genie out of the bottle, I’m not sure getting folks back in the kitchen is a likely option. But what intrigues me is that some combination of interest and ability in cooking may be helpful to those of us (read: me) who struggle with the lure of 24×7 industrial fare.
I don’t think (I really mean I sure hope) take-out and microwave cooking are not the solution. I think you know my bias: we’ve got to make pork chops as acceptable and affordable an option as rice & beans or (for that matter) braised duck with roasted fennel over arugula, etc.
The one thing that I know for sure is that switching from a strict vegetarian to a sloppy omnivore (sometime if we are pressed for time/energy/ideas, we do pretty much just have meat for a meal) made cooking easier-but not so easy that I would call it “interesting, worthwhile, and self-defining.” Maybe Pollan’s book will make cooking cool enough that it becomes less of a burden for women & shared more equally between gender roles-but I really only expect that in Pollan’s target market & those guys may be inclined in that direction anyway. No easy answers here.
“No easy answers here.” That’s for sure! The suggestions Pollan had at the end of his interview with Bittman are either 1) hard or 2) potentially ineffectual. But if it’s a conversation-starter, that is presumably a good thing.
Good grief! A tax on prepared foods but not on the raw ingredients? And who gets to draw that line? Bread? Pasta? Anything in a can? Anything Bittman & Pollan don’t think we should be eating? double sigh
“The most dangerous thing about the industrial food system is that the food doesn’t taste good.”
It’s funny because sometimes when I read articles about processed food, I can feel my mouth start to water. My memories of things like Chick Fil A lemon meringue pie and Ham & Cheese Hot Pockets are memories of foods that while they might not be paragons of complexity, have many elements of deliciousness that they share with items coming out of fine-dining kitchens like Barber’s. When I first tasted white truffles, I was really struck by how much the flavor reminded me of Kraft Handisnacks. It would be nice to think these things are overeaten only because of some addictive properties, I think that might be the case with a few items, but some industrial foods are, I’m sorry to say, damn delicious. And many Michelin-starred chefs with less pretentions than Barber often indulge in them. One of the best items at Schwa in Chicago is a soup based on a Wendy’s dish.
Also some industrial foods have surprising elements of complexity. As I’ve gotten more into cooking, I’ve grown to love things like fish sauce, anchovies, and other funky umami flavors. But I was shocked to look back on some childhood foods and realize I’ve always loved some of these flavors- they are present in Chex Mix (Worcestershire sauce), Auntie Annie’s pretzel cheese sauce (anchovies), and the chicken wings at the local pizza parlor (anchovies). If I had known as a kid I never would have eaten these things though. But overall, I think not admitting the deliciousness of many industrial foods places sustainable food advocates in an out of touch position.
I’ll admit the latter part of his comment resonated more than the former, but I thought it more honest to include it.
That said, it’s clear that there is a continuum of industrial food too. My brother recently turned me onto Woeber’s Southwest Mustard … yum! But I also think it’s fair to ding the other end of the spectrum where jacked-up salt and sugar (a la Pringles) — which may taste good to our SAD palettes — have neither elements of complexity and may well even desensitize our ability to taste them when there.
I dunno, but Pringles, which are industrial food par excellene, are delicious. If someone puts a tube in front of me, I’ll finish it.
Don’t you mean ‘does taste good’ in your title?
You mean the Barber quote? No, he said “doesn’t taste good.”
One of the best investments I ever made was the purchase of three cookbooks by Rick Bayless—no, of course they weren’t gifts to myself but to my husband, who subsequently discovered the hidden chef beneath his day-to-day work identity as a plumber! (He has also worked as a locomotive mechanic, carpenter, etc, so admittedly it’s quite possible that his passion for cooking results from his passion from working with his hands.) In any case, he now works 10-12 hour days (currently 7 days a week…*sigh*) yet still he finds time to make fabulous concoctions a la Bayless…the secret is in using the slow cooker method (aka “crock pot”) whereby it’s a matter of chopping and dumping into the pot, then walking away while the house fills with the most amazing aromas over the next 10 (or so) hours. Oh. My. Lord. The meals that come from his crock pot resemble nothing I ate growing up and nothing that most folks would relate to as “mexican” food. Best of all, the quantities can feed two people for 3-4 hearty meals over the course of a week, and you might imagine getting bored with so many leftovers—but there’s also another ingenious trick for variety’s sake: homemade salsas (from fresh ingredients combined with canned…tomatoes, chilis, etc) assembled ultra-easy and quick with the use of a handy-dandy Cuisinart.
I know. I’m spoiled rotten. On the other hand, while the dude does all the cooking (even simple scrambled eggs with sour cream and green salsa-plus a couple slices of crisp bacon—can be heavenly, btw), for my part…I just happen to love baking. I bakd all “our own” breads, muffins, bagels, cookies and cakes (every week), which I TASTE (sample) but rarely consume in whole serving quantities. (An exception: my macadamia nut cookies, which even I—normally, a low-carber—do not bother attempting to resist.) :)
I can’t say enough for the partnership approach. Or maybe I’m living in a bizarre and exceptional set-up (aka marriage) here.
After note: Please accept my apology, Beth, for my inadvertent and inelegant suggestion (apparently implied by my first comment) that Pollan, or anyone else reading or commenting here, for that matter, has asserted that “gardening is only good for efficient production of edibles.” I did not wish to construct a straw man argument—rather I only meant to counter many gardening-related comments I hear in my everyday life (as a long-time member of a rural community)…those assertions tending to emphasize the widely held (hereabouts) growing purpose primacy, which consists of maximizing crop (food) yields. Thus, my comment may have easily given the wrong impression that I was arguing about an issue that’s clearly not advanced by your blog (or by this current post), and really I was just mentally protesting (unfortunately in print on your blog) the kinds of arguments I repeatedly hear elsewhere (locally) about the supposedly self-evident value of gardening for the sake of increasing plant production to meet the goal of increased consumption.
This common transfer of capitalist market values onto the gardening/growing arts (see, now, that’s my own bias) irks me far more than I have, evidently, realized until now. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have come off sounding like I was arguing with Pollan or with you, dear blogger Beth. :) Please forgive me if I gave offense. I need to learn to speak up in real life and not let these internalized disagreements fester—only to erupt on innocent bystanders!
Peace and good will to you! For the remainder of the afternoon, I will be squatting in my raspberry patch, pulling weeds, should anyone wish to send happy thoughts (and/or good vibes) in my direction! Thanks!