Changing the Food System

I thought (my hero) Ruth Reichl's recent blog post on Changing the Food System offered fascinating and new (to me, anyway) perspectives and ideas on how to really enact this change that needs to happen.

And it was a beautiful hall, all carved antique wood, where Marion Nestle, David Kessler and I sat down to discuss the politics of food and health care....

We are all agreed on these basic facts. The question is, what do we do about it? And that’s where the most depressing part comes in. Because these politically connected people (David, after all, was the FDA commissioner who took on cigarettes), both believe that there are only two paths to political change. Campaign laws must be rewritten to prevent large corporate contributions. And the first amendment must no longer be interpreted as protecting advertising as free speech. Until that happens, political change is not possible.

I'd never thought of these before. But when I really think about it, it does make sense. It also kind of blows my mind...things I once thought of as totally un-related (obesity, factory farms, broken food system and large corporate contributions and advertising protected as free speech) are, clearly, very much related.

And so it goes.

Change might be longer in coming than we thought. But I still believe it will happen. Because it must.



P.S. If you are in need of something great to read over the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, may I recommend the extraordinary Ms. Reichl's books? They are captivating, wonderfully written, all about food, and are auto-biographical. They are so good. I wish I hadn't read them so I could read them all over again. I suggest starting at the beginning and working your way to the present, though you could always do it backwards, as hubby did -- though not on purpose. Just worked out that way. And he did not enjoy them any less because of it. So really, just read them, no matter the order!

Meatless Mondays

Have you heard about the Meatless Mondays campaign?

I love the idea: their goal is to "help reduce meat consumption [by] 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet."

Why meatless? "Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel." Hell yes!

Why Monday? "For most Americans the week begins on Monday. On Monday we move from the freedom of the weekend back to the structure of work or school. We set our intentions for the next six days. We plan ahead and evaluate progress. From an early age we internalize this rhythm. And studies suggest we are more likely to maintain behaviors begun on Monday throughout the week. That makes Monday the perfect day to make a change for your health and the health of our planet." Awesome! I love that. Hadn't ever thought about it, but makes lots of sense. And I really love that they are of the it's-all-a-spectrum ilk; ie, if you don't go meatless this Monday, there's always next Monday to give it a whirl.

As any longtime readers of this here blog know, around here at Casa Dena we usually do the inverse: Meatful One-Day-a-Week! But I know that it's hard for lots of folks to give up meat for dinner, especially if you grew up with the framework that dinner simply isn't dinner without meat on the plate. So I totally applaud the attempt to get people to forgo meat one day a week; it's very do-able. And I love that they're getting restaurants in on it. What a way to normalize it, make it seem do-able, and make it easy for folks to take part.

And the newest signer-on? Mario Batali! Yes, he of orange-croc-wearing fame, of Food Network fame, of mouth-wateringly delicious food at restaurants like Babbo fame.

How cool!

And another bonus to a meatless anyday: it's much cheaper! Going without meat is a real recession special, if you ask me. My recent recession special new trick: using dried, bulk beans. It is difficult to remember to soak those bad boys the night before, but when you do, it feels like you've turned $0.37 into a meal for four people!

And if you're interested in good recipes for your next Meatless Monday, I've got lots of vegetarian recipes in my archives. Or you can check out my favorite simple and yummy vegetarian food blog, 101 Cookbooks.

So what about you? How often do you eat or cook meat? If you don't eat it every day of the week, do you do that consciously? How hard would it be for you to not eat meat every Monday?


(Also, can we talk about that little fact that the entire city of San Francisco signed on? That RULES! I'm not exactly clear what that means for dear old SF, but I can imagine it really working out there.)

(And a big hat tip to my dear friend -- and truly delicious home chef -- James for alerting me to Chef Batali's joining the campaign!)

A Sampling of Food Rules

Following up on yesterday's post about Michael Pollan's new book, Food Rules, I thought I'd share the sampling of rules he made available. I think my favorite of the below is #19. I can't wait to read—and take to heart—the rest!

#11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products—and rules like these—into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods: They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or transfats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not. The best way to escape these marketing ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods. Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television: More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you’ll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers or the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush—these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.

#36 Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
This should go without saying. Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we’re eating them every day. The french fry did not become America’s most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes—and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they’re so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you’re willing to prepare them—chances are good it won’t be every day.

#47 Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
For many of us, eating has surprisingly little to do with hunger. We eat out of boredom, for entertainment, to comfort or reward ourselves. Try to be aware of why you’re eating, and ask yourself if you’re really hungry—before you eat and then again along the way. (One old wive’s test: If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry.) Food is a costly antidepressant.

#58 Do all your eating at a table.
No, a desk is not a table. If we eat while we’re working, or while watching TV or driving, we eat mindlessly—and as a result eat a lot more than we would if we were eating at a table, paying attention to what we’re doing. This phenomenon can be tested (and put to good use): Place a child in front of a television set and place a bowl of fresh vegetables in front of him or her. The child will eat everything in the bowl, often even vegetables that he or she doesn’t ordinarily touch, without noticing what’s going on. Which suggests an exception to the rule: When eating somewhere other than at a table, stick to fruits and vegetables.

Food Rules

I will be back to blogging regularly (and promise a post on the amazing Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child), but for today, I thought you'd like to see an excerpt from Michael Pollan's latest missive on his new book, Food Rules. (Bolded parts are emphasis mine.)

I, for one, can't wait to read it -- and most likely, own it and keep it as a little reminder and reference for the real rules when it comes to eating and food.

Friends:

My new book, Food Rules, was published yesterday. You can get some info about it from the website, at http://michaelpollan.com/foodrules.php.

The idea for this book came from a doctor—a couple of them, as a matter of fact. They had read In Defense of Food, which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition.  “What I would love is a pamphlet I could hand to my patients with some rules for eating wisely,” they would say. “I don’t have time for the big nutrition lecture and, anyway, they really don’t need to know what an antioxidant is in order to eat wisely.” Another doctor, a transplant cardiologist, wrote to say “you can’t imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food.” So rather than leaving his heart patients with yet another prescription or lecture on cholesterol, he gives them a simple recipe for roasting a chicken, and getting three wholesome meals out of it – a very different way of thinking about health.

Make no mistake: our health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the American diet -- roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus we spend on health care in this country goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet. And a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists –what I call the Nutritional Industrial Complex—would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refine grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.

So I decided to take the doctors up on the challenge.  I set out to collect and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. I solicited rules from doctors, scientist, chefs, and readers, and then wrote a bunch myself, trying to boil down into everyday language what we really know about healthy eating. And while most of the rules are backed by science, they are not framed in the vocabulary of science but rather culture—a source of wisdom about eating that turns out to have as much, if not more, to teach us than nutritional science does.

Just a Regular Guy

Remember we were talking about the French Laundry restaurant a little while ago? NPR did a fantastic piece on Thomas Keller on Morning Edition today. And basically he sounds like a totally down-to-earth, normal guy who just loves to cook and has an incredible work ethic. Which makes his food heavenly.

My favorite part? When he admitted that years ago, fancy chefs were all into making their own ketchup, but their diners kept asking for Heinz. And recognizing that how we taste and eat food has so much to do with what we were raised on -- Heinz ketchup, for instance. I know this is certainly true for mayonnaise; anything but Best Foods/Hellmann's tastes off to me (though their light mayo still totally works). I've tried fancier mayos and they just don't taste right, to me.

Take a minute to listen. He sounds like a guy I'd love to cook with and sit down to a homecooked meal with. Thomas Keller, you're officially invited over for dinner anytime you're free.

A Dream of A Small Farm

"But they never imagined that the definition of sustainable farming would change so quickly or drastically, to the point that small-scale farming has become a kind of luxury."

My mom sent me this article from The New York Times, about the family behind the French Laundry restaurant, who traded it all in for a small family apple farm.

When did visions of a simple life gleaned from the hard work of creating sustenance from soil become near-to-impossible pipe dreams? What a strange world we live in.

Still, I'm so glad people like the Schmitts are doing what they're doing.

And dining at the French Laundry is still totally on my list of To Do Before I Die!

Quickie Pollan Post

We just moved into our amazing new house, and we are totally in love with it and our new neighborhood. And we're still kind of in shock that we get to live here, as homeowners.

So on that note -- picture me surrounded by boxes trying to figure out where the dutch oven is -- I am going to post another quickie post, and I can't wait to get back to regular blogging. For those of you still reading, thanks for sticking with me.

_____________________________

Two new items of Michael Pollan (or, as they like to call him on my favorite Jewish Ethical Eating website, Rebbe Pollan) interest this week!

The first is a little New York Times interactive article I came across on Facebook, which I adore:

Michael Pollan's Reader's Food Rules

My favorite? "If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry." Genius. Some friends also commented that when apples are not in season, they substitute "lentils" or "a peach," and it still works like a charm.

The second is the recent publication of The Omnivore's Dilemma for kids! As Pollan himself put it, this edition is "aimed at middle and high schoolers. It's shorter and more streamlined, but also has some new material and a wealth of visuals -- photographs, charts, graphs, etc."

I am so ordering it from my library now. And this will definitely go on my list for good ideas for books for kids 13-18.

(Sidenote: if you decide to buy it, I hope you'll support your local bookstore or one of the big independent booksellers like Powell's.)

Our French Chef: We Love You, Julia

This is a food blog, after all. There was just no way Julie & Julia was not going to appear on here in some way or another, right?

I saw the aforementioned movie recently and I have to say... I absolutely adored it! I laughed (a lot!), I cried. I thought it was divine.

Well, truth be told, I thought the parts with Julia Child/Meryl Streep were divine. I was absolutely captivated, entranced, and smitten with those parts of the movie. And much to my surprise, there were more of them than I had originally thought there would be. (The Julie Powell/Amy Adams parts of the movie were fine, in my opinion. Not bad, but very, very pale in comparison to the Julia Child scenes.)

I love that this movie made me think of and appreciate Julia Child in a whole new way. Before, I had known that yes, Julia Child revolutionized cooking in America. Yes, she demystified French cooking and made it accessible even to the humble housewife. Yes, she was a woman in what was very much a man's world.

But seeing it onscreen, seeing it told in a way that made my little heart strings sing -- and I fully admit, seeing it told by the luminous Meryl Streep didn't hurt either -- just made it come alive for me. Now, instead of just knowing these things, I feel them. I feel love, respect, admiration, and gratitude for Julia Child. I wonder if I would be here today, blogging about food, loving to cook, overcoming my fears and intimidation around cooking and foodie culture if it weren't for her.* I can't ever know for sure.

I have a special little place in my heart for the inimitable Ms. Child because she actually went to my high school! At the time, it was a small, private school for girls -- mostly a boarding school. But there were a few day schoolers, and she was one of them. I seem to recall having heard stories from my alma mater's lore that her being a day schooler made her a bit of an outsider. That, combined with her stature, must have been difficult in such a small community. Makes me love her even more!

So, being the kind of girl that I am, and being unafraid of being cliched when it's the truth, I have to tell you that as soon as I saw the movie, I turned to my husband and told him that I already know what two items are on my Hanukkah gift list: My Life in France and Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

There's a quote from Russell Morash, a WGBH producer who worked with Julia, which sums up her importance and her beloved status so perfectly. She was more than all these heroic titles and visions we've put on her. She did the simplest thing, and it changed our culture. I'll let him say it:

"[Before Julia,] if you asked at the A&P for leeks or a clove of garlic, they would have looked at you funny. Julia brought new food and new implements to America. An omelette used to be a French thing. An edible cheese? Ground pepper? Forget it! Chicken in America was fried. The Ritz in the late ’50s was serving codfish cakes. And the world was pointed to food made in factories and sold in cans. Julia said: start from scratch, and make something memorable."

Words to live by today, more than ever. Start from scratch, and make something memorable.

I am so going to make Julia's boeuf bourguignon this winter!



* I really enjoyed this 2004 piece by Christopher Lydon, written upon her death. My favorite passages:

The true measure of Julia Child is a great deal more than recipes and shtik. “Obviously,” Paglia had said, “she is one of those figures in history who totally transformed American culture. This country was a wasteland of Philistinism in terms of food and the preparation of food until Julia Child came on the scene. You know, her manner–her whole mannish manner! I mean, she’s a pioneering woman, with no connection to the Gloria Steinem school, the Patricia Ireland school, and all those, like, white upper-middle-class ladies. I mean, I absolutely adore the whole technology of food preparation, the ritualism of food coming out of Mediterranean culture. And nothing could be more opposite: food-affirming Julia Child versus the anorexia and bulimia-obsessd victimology of academic studies.”

The professional cook in the Lydon family, middle-daughter Amanda, picked up in her commentary where Paglia left off. “The key word Camille didn’t use,” Amanda said, “was pleasure. Julia Child did open up a new world for women. She broke the gender code in cooking. I mean, all the great cooks talk about their mothers and their mothers’ food. But there are differences. Home cooking is relaxed and female. Restaurant cooking is rule-bound, rigid and masculine. Julia put the Apollonian into the Dionysian, and the Dionysian into the Apollonian. Fine cuisine, so called, is a masculine tradition. What Julia Child did is deconstruct this French, classical, rule-based cooking tradition and make it accessible to women as a source of pleasure at home.”