…health should be a byproduct of eating well, for reasons that have nothing to do with health, such as cooking meals, eating together and eating real food. You’re going to be healthy, but that’s not the goal. The goal should just be eating well for pleasure, for community, and all the other reasons people eat.

I’ve only just started reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan, but already I’m scared. The book illustrates how difficult it is to trace the origin of our food, and it leaves me wondering, “what exactly AM I eating?”

Pollan wrote his latest book, In Defense of Food, to help us hungry hippos figure out what’s OK to eat and what’s, well, not really food at all.

There’s a great interview with Mr. Pollan on the New York Times, in which he discusses the philosophy behind the book, which is summed up by the subject of this post. The challenge in getting people to eat real food is the cooking…

A lot of us are intimidated by cooking today. We watch cooking shows on TV but we cook very little. We’re turning cooking into a spectator sport. This process of outsourcing our food preparation to large corporations, which is what we’ve been doing the last 50 years, is a big part of our problem. We’re seduced by convenience. You’re going to have to put a little more time and effort into preparing your food. I’m trying to get across how pleasurable that can be. It needn’t be a chore. It can be incredibly rewarding to move food closer to the center of your life.

Read the book
Read the interview
Read Pollan’s original article in the Times
Read the commentary on angry fat girlz

Crossposted to spacekadet.org