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TreeHugger colleague Jenna Watson and I went to hear Michael Pollan speak in Toronto earlier this week. I'm a long time fan of Pollan's, going all the way back to his book Second Nature published in 1991. Regular Planet Green readers will have been introduced to Pollan's work through Collin's review of The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006, Penguin Press), and Lloyd's review of In Defense of Food (2008, Penguin Press).
It seems that Mr. Pollan and the writers at Planet Green are on the same wavelength. In one of the very first posts on this site Jasmin talked about ensuring you have healthy food. We have covered eating more vegetarian meals, getting your kids to eat vegetables as well as teaching them to cook, production issues surrounding meat, shopping at your local farmer's market or growing your own garden, the joy of eating real food, eating together at a proper table, as well as the simple advice to cook dinner.
Mr. Pollan's statement, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," is so simple, so common sensed that it seems astonishing that we need to be told, or even that he needs to explain what food actually is.Mr. Pollan is as fluid and compelling a speaker as he is a writer. Even though I'm familiar with all of his concepts, hearing him elucidate them had me sitting in the audience quietly saying "Yes! Yes!" to myself. The focus of his talk was on nutrition and how science has taken over our eating habits, mostly to our detriment. We now eat as though we were "fueling up," rather than for all the reasons that people have traditionally eaten, for community, family, ritual and simple pleasure. He tells us to go with your intuition. His mother was right when she said that butter would turn out to be better for you than margarine. He points out that we shouldn't eat anything that has a health claim. By it's very nature it is a processed food in need of packaging. Carrots, on the other hand, have no health labels.
Get a copy of this book and read it this weekend. If you live in Toronto, take yourself down to the wonderful The Cookbook Store and buy it from them. If you live outside of Toronto you can order it from them. It's 200 pages that will have (hopefully) a lasting impact on the way you cook and eat.
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