eeeeeeeeeeee he's coming!

Only one thing would warrant a post entitled in such a way.

MICHAEL POLLAN IS COMING!!!!

Yes, the one I blogged about here and here. Oh, and to add to my jubilation, he's coming to my favorite grocery store, as blogged about here. If it's at all possible to have a foodie 'O', this is it. He's coming to the Fairfax, VA Wegmans in 2 weeks! I have tickets in hand and am giddy with excitement. A signed copy of In Defense of Food and An Omnivore's Dilemma are just 2 weeks away! Oh, what to tell him? Thank you for being vocal and standing for good, real, whole foods? You should've been Secretary of Agriculture? Your books have completely shaped my food views? Thank you for being the one person who makes sense in a throng of low-calorie, low-fat 'health' food numbnuts? So many things to say...

And you better believe I'll be posting once I meet him, so stay tuned.

Book Club

It's time for another book review, and keeping in line with my first book club post, I'm reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Between his revealing exposé of the corn industry and his brutally honest critique of what he calls 'industrial organic', Michael Pollan again strikes literary gold.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is the precursor to In Defense of Food and I'm loving it as much, if not more. Pollan has this uncanny way of, oh, I don't know, making sense! While our government continues to subsidize cheap corn and harm both us and the corn growers themselves, Pollan is a bold, refreshing voice of truth about the unfortunate state of our agricultural system. I tend to avoid political statements here, but I'll indulge for a moment. If Obama was serious about making veritable changes, he would have picked Pollan as his Agriculture Secretary and not Vilsack, once again buying into Iowa cornfields.

But I digress. Now get ready to fall in love once again:

So what exactly would an ecological detective set loose in an american supermarket discover, were he to trace the items in his shopping cart all the way back to the soil? The notion began to occupy me a few years ago, after I realized that the straightforward question "What should I eat?" could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: "What am I eating" And where in the world did it come from?" Not very long ago an eater didn't need a journalist to answer these questions. The face that today one so often does suggests a pretty good start on a working definition of industrial food: Any food whose prevenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain.

When I started trying to follow the industrial food chain--the one that now feeds most of us most of the time and typically culminates either in a supermarket or fast-food meal--I expected that my investigations would lead me to a wide variety of places. And though my journeys did take me to a great many states, and covered a great many miles, at the very end of these food chains (which is to say, at the very beginning), I invariably found myself in almost exactly the same place: a farm field in the American Corn Belt.

This man continues to amaze me. He is spot on in every way.

Why aren't you fat?

I realized I haven't added any pithy food commentary since I began my blog. So here it goes.

People, family, friends, etc. often ask me why I'm not fat since I love food, am always around food, talk about food, or always seem to be eating food. Now allow me to explain. I eat food. Real food. And not "foodlike substances" to borrow the words from Michael Pollan. If you know Cheez-Its aren't good for you, then chances are the low-fat version isn't a miracle health food, allowing you to indulge at every whim. It's common sense, people. I'm not saying you're going to get fat on Cheez-Its--the low-fat version or the original. What I am saying is that it characterizes a mentality all too common in the Western diet:

You can eat whatever you want as long as it's labeled low-fat.

Wrong. I eat food. Tomatoes, freshly made bread without additives, preservatives, and high fructose corn syrup, real meat, fruits, vegetables, pasta, real butter (NOT margarine), cream, natural cheeses, etc. Are you following me here? Nowhere in there is HFCS, preservatives, aspartame, MSG, etc. Natural food doesn't need additives to improve its flavor. It's just, well, good. The flavor comes from the healthy soil it was grown in, the simplicity in its preparation.

My latest nemesis has been the yogurt aisle. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but finding a good yogurt is difficult. I don't want low-fat, reduced calorie yogurt. I want naturally sweetened-- no HFCS, no aspartame. They do exist; but they are few and far between. Stonyfield Farms organic yogurt is good, as well as Wegmans Probiotic Super Yogurt and Dannon's All Natural. Navigating seemingly 'healthy' aisles should not be this frustrating.

Thus the confusion of the Western diet.

Book Club

I.am.in.love.with.this.book. Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food is spot-on accurate. I'm only about half-way through and will update as I get through the rest. How have we become so lost as to give up common sense entirely and rely on 'food science' or 'nutrition science'?

Let me be clear: Drinking diet soda is not a great way to pat yourself on the back and pave your way to health. If you aren't willing to drink the 200+ calories that are found in the average glass of soda, then I think you need to comprehend that your body won't be able to miraculously confuse diet soda with water. Your body can't process empty calories. It sends it on an eating frenzy and only serves to make you more hungry. And no, please do not think that you can add vitamins to make your beloved Diet Coke a health drink. If you need more proof of food 'nutrition' gone bad then take a look at my post regarding Splenda with fiber. Still fake. Still bad for you. (Yes, I know the diabetics disagree and can argue the virtues of Splenda. I understand that. I get it.)

I digress, but I highly-- read, HIGHLY-- recommend getting your hands on this book. Check out the preview on Amazon and I'll guarantee you'll be hooked if you're anything like me.

If you need more enticement to read Michael Pollan's latest and greatest, then peruse this excerpt:

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it--in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone--is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances"--no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy... The result is...[t]he more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

Rock on, Michael Pollan. Rock on.