A great deal?

Here is one last, kinda long entry featuring tidbits from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food (if you endure to the end, there will be reward). I think most all of us have an awareness that as a culture we are snacking more, eating fewer meals together, and eating on the run. Not so good.

“One study found that among eighteen- to fifty-year-old Americans, roughly a fifth of all eating now takes place in the car. (*The study, commissioned by industry and unpublished, was conducted by John Nihoff, a professor of gastronomy at the Culinary Institute of America.) [p 189, In Defense of Food]

It’s easy to eat on the go with convenience foods. Snacks, microwavable entrees, soft drinks, and packaged food of all kinds “are the source of most of the 300 or so extra calories Americans have added to their daily diet since 1980” [p 186, In Defense of Food]. And not only are the foods convenient, but also cheap. I’m usually all for a good deal, but it turns out that cheap food is not such a great deal.

“The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There's no escaping the fact that better food -- measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) – costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils -- whether certified organic or not -- will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown. [http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87]

I’m a believer in fruits and vegetables, and put out for consumption of them. Every so often I even buy organic and pay more, though it could be so much more often that I do so. Pollan’s words and admonitions encourage me to buy organic, continue gardening, and go more often to open markets and whole food stores. You have my invitation to ask me how I’m doing. Happy eating.