Leave it to my brother to take a simple meme and turn it into 2000 word assignment. In addressing his suggestion, "Blog about your transition from kid fascinated with animals to art student to zookeeper," I have also answered drocera's questions about what it was like where I grew up, what I was like in high school and how I met Alexis. belen1974's questions (including the exciting one about my back hair) will have to wait for another post. Trust me, after this novella, you'll need a break.

( My life story, if you can stand it. )

Michael Pollan, the man who made many people think about the food they eat with The Omnivore's Dilemma continues to contribute to the collective consciousness as regards to the modern American diet with a new book In Defense of Food. I heard his seven word summation of what a proper diet should consist of on NPR this morning:

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

It's simplicity itself, although there is extra meaning buried in some of those seven words. By "food" he means Real Food, the kind of food items that "your great grandmother would recognize." He singled out Go-gurt as a product that falls outside of this definition, but it clearly includes just about everything that you can only buy pre-packaged. (You can't make a twinkie from scratch, unless you have magnesium oxide and natural gas-derived sorbic acid in your cupboard.) I thought for a moment about this, and I'm sure that my great grandmother would not recognize sushi or tofu, but that's not the point--someone's great grandmother would.

By "plants" he means unprocessed plants--not bread and pasta, which of course come from plants, but fruits and vegetables. He also specified that while meat is good, digestible, nutritious food that can be consumed in moderation and still be healthy, that we should choose animals that eat mostly plants. And again, he means not the kind of processed feed that most farmed animals eat, but actual plants. In other words, he's restating his caution about the corn-dominated animal agriculture that exists today, and putting in another vote for small-scale farms. I can only hope that he is very strong and convincing on this point in his new book. That's the part of our culture that I would most like to change.

http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php

“In a Time of Cuisine”


A fact the gourmet
euphemism can’t silence:
vegetarians eat sex,
carnivores eat violence.”




cross-posted to vegetarians