The hamburger book rekindled my old doubts about whether the history of food could qualify as capital "H" History. Most of the book would class as 'burger-biography'; there was little if any argument (historical or otherwise) relating to Smith's opening assertion that burgers - or rather the selling thereof - "revolutionized the way Americans ate." (Hamburger, p. 9) So I began looking for other, more vigorous discussions of this 'food revolution,' and landed on Michael Pollan's best-selling In Defense of Food.
This was another enjoyable 2-night read, which I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone else interested in the argument that a lot of what we eat today isn't "food." Pollan, a journalist and professor, is an excellent writer and a powerful communicator. The book is easy to read, but I find it difficult to summarize. I suspect Pollan's prose is a big part of the book's appeal, especially since, when I was bored, the book felt like a very long magazine article.
The book starts with Pollan's mantra ("Eat food, not too much, mostly plants") and unpacks it by explaining a) why a lot of what we eat isn't food, b) why it's bad for us, and c) some suggestions for how to remedy the situation. I was surprised not to be more taken aback by the book's arguments. We're used to hearing that "the Western diet" of "lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything except fruits, vegetables, and whole grains" (p. 89) is causing serious health problems like diabetes and obesity. If we pay attention to food packaging and advertising, it's not news that the food industry has a tight grip on public health messages, with their pocketbook rather than our health in view. Even Pollan's deconstruction of "nutritionism" - the scientific dissection of food into various nutrients such as fat, protein and carbohydrates, so that we obsess about 'nutrients' and lose sight of 'food' - came across as confirmation of my own suspicions rather than a novel argument. (This was the most interesting part of the book, however.)
Because this book identifies and excoriates a problem, and actively searches for a solution, it has the 'ethical bite' that I missed in the hamburger book and the medieval cooking articles. But to offset that advantage, In Defense of Food has a rather peculiar sense of history. Most of its stories come from the 1950s or later, the era in which scientific "nutritionism" took over from "mom" (a.k.a. local culture) as the authority on food. Pollan dipped into the 19th and early 20th C on occasion, but immediately beyond that there was nothing but a utopic evolutionary past - where humans ate real food and weren't diabetic or obese. My mental history book tells me that past simply doesn't exist. To the extent that the book's argument relies on this pre-historic chimera, it has pulled the rug out from under its own feet. In the quest for real food, it has ignored the real history of food, which is full of shortages, inequalities, disease, starvation...and, um, non-processed but nutritionally inadequate, semi-rotten food. [For a taste of that history, I recommend David Gentilcore's stunning article in History Today (September 2014) on "Peasants & Pellagra in 19th-century Italy," describing the terrible effects and long duration of a niacin-deficient maize diet in rural southern Italy.]
At the end of the day, In Defense of Food is about a present food problem, and it doesn't need to invent an ideal past for its argument to stand. I'll close with Pollan's suggestions for how to carry out his mantra: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." With 24 options to choose from (!), you're sure to find a few you like.
- Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
- Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup
- Avoid food products that make health claims.
- Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
- Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
- Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
- You are what what you eat eats too.
- If you have the space, buy a freezer.
- Eat like an omnivore.
- Eat well-grown food from healthy soils.
- Eat wild foods when you can.
- Be the kind of person who takes supplements.
- Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks.
- Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
- Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet.
- Have a glass of wine with dinner.
- Pay more, eat less.
- Eat meals.
- Do all your eating at a table.
- Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
- Try not to eat alone.
- Consult your gut.
- Eat slowly.
- Cook and, if you can, plant a garden.
