Pollan's at It Again with Cooked

 Mr. M. Pollan is on the media circuit again selling his new contribution to the national food conversation. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is his booster book for a return to the kitchen.

I haven't read the book, so I can't offer a full review yet.  But I know that he starts, as he has done in similarly-focused articles, with a gasping review of the decline of American cooking. For instance, between 1975 and 2006, the average time American women spent in the kitchen went from 90 minutes to 60 minutes--oh my, deep inhalation. Is this possible?  Are women actually spending 30 fewer minutes cooking per day? !  Somebody hold up the sky, I fear it is a fallin'.  Actually, a 30 minute decline doesn't seem all that noteworthy or frightening. If he had found that cooking averages went from 90 minutes to say 15 or even 20 minutes, well that would be something to incite short, quick breaths. Thirty minutes over thirty or so years, that don't seem so bad to me. 

So guess what Pollan cooked in Cooked?   Something easy that can help the harried working family  eat well and cook from scratch in a jiffy?  Microwave meals that make children's muscles grown strong and brains get smarter?

Ha, ha, ha. Remember we're talking about Mr. Michael (I-live-in-Berkeley-and-hang-out-with-Chez-Panissers) Pollan.  That's right he learned to make a sourdough Boule with a baker from San Francisco's  Tartine.  He mastered pig-roasting with bar-b-que aficionado, Ed Smith. And he studied cheese cultures with raw-milk cheese artisan, Noella Marcellino. You got it. The solution to America's food crisis is boutique cheeses and spit-roasting whole animals.

I think I have a great idea for tomorrow night's dinner. Tonight, I will drain some yogurt to turn into homemade farmer's cheese.  And I will get that sourdough starter, the one I've kept active since my grad school days in the mid 1990s, and get a loaf on a slow rise to bake in the afternoon. In the morning, I will go out and forage for wild mushrooms and dandelion greens.

Wait a second. I have to go to work tomorrow. Skip that, I'll pick up a pizza on the way home.

Until I get a formal review together, enjoy this one by Tom Philpott in Mother Jones.

The New York Times: Hotbed of Middle Class Food/Health Anxiety

Oh New York Times Magazine and Thursday Dining section, how I love thee and hate thee.

My mother-in-law dutifully saves the Dining section for me. When she first started saving it,  I was tickled. I only get the Sunday Times, so I wasn't privy to Thursday's riches. But overtime, it began to put me to sleep.  Melissa Clark's Good Appetite, some new hipster hoof-to-tail food truck in Brooklyn, a feature on dinner kits for harried rich people. Color me bored and a bit annoyed. Now, whenever  I go to my mother-in-law's for a visit, I snap it up, take it home, and promptly toss it into the paper-for-fires bin.

And the Sunday Magazine- oy vey! The unsubstantiated and ever-shifting health reports that it so blithely presents as breaking health and food news are astounding.

On Feb. 25, 2013, Gina Kolata reported in the NY Times Health section about the new (but really hardly new) benefits of the Mediterranean diet.  Shortly thereafter, the Sunday Magazine's Gretchen Reynolds advised readers, in Eat Your Heart Out to come back to butter. Based on a slim stick of evidence--"a long over-looked Australian study conducted from 1966 to 1973"--Reynolds concluded that polyunsaturated fats (canola, safflower oils, etc.) rather than saving us all from cardiovascular disease, may actually be kicking our tickers.  And on top of all that, nutritional immunologist,  Philip C. Calder, reported that "the link between cholesterol and heart disease is not actually as strong as we think." Now, now, wait a second (read in Jimmy Stewart-like stammer).

Should we follow the low cholesterol Mediterranean Diet or grab a pound of butter and start slathering it on??? Should we indulge? Should we deny??  WHAT THE HELL IS A PERSON TO EAT, in the face of such wild informational fluctuations?

It is hard to say whether the New York Times reflects the health and food whirl-a-gig of our times (particularly for the sub and urban elite who seem to be eating this stuff up) or whether it creates it. I think it is a little bit of both--a symbiotic relationship.

By The Way- Here is the cover of the March 10 magazine issue that contained Reynolds' animal lard celebration. 

                                                                   I rest my case.
 

Organic Food Not Healthier

NPR ran a story yesterday about the lack of evidence for organic foods healthfulness. Not much to my surprise, scientific studies have failed to show that organic foods have greater mineral or vitamin content, or any other nutritional properties often attributed to them. What the story misses is the environmental health issues surrounding the production of conventional agriculture-particularly the health risks for migrant farm laborers and the issues of fertilizer and pesticide run-off. The story mentions that the pesticide levels on organic produce have been found not to be harmful or toxic. But the long term effects of pesticide/herbicide/fungicide/hormone ingestion from conventional products is inconclusive, the story notes.

The angle taken by NPR regarding organics and health fits well into the "Not In My Body" ethos of many organic devotees. Many consumers buy organic as a health preventive measure and think little beyond that. What's missing  in their analysis are the threats to workers and the environment which are certainly about health, just not about the organic shopper's bodily safety.

And anyway, this is old news. There has never really been any evidence for the nutritional superiority of organics. That was just one of the desires of advocates and marketers subtly peddled that bit in organic advertising campaigns.

Maybe it is time to start thinking less about organics and more about reforming the conventional foods system- the whole big monster for the benefit of all eaters!

Questioning the Obesity Epidemic: A Review of Weighing In

Julie Guthman is my new hero, at least when it comes to deflating the so-called “obesity epidemic”. Her book, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (2011), really hits my skeptical foodie itch. That said, this ain’t light reading. It is d-e-n-s-e! I will try to summarize her main points; if you’re still interested, get the book and slog through it.

To Be An Epidemic, or Not to Be An Epidemic.

Guthman begins by picking apart the very idea that America is experiencing an “obesity epidemic”. She does not deny the documented weight gain trend. But is this phenomenon an epidemic?   Studies that set this epidemic talk in motion, point to BMI (Body Mass Index) increases since the 1980s, as prime evidence. Guthman’s got a whole bunch of issues with the BMI as an analytical tool.  Most particularly, she thinks the cutoffs between overweight and normal, normal and underweight are all pretty arbitrary. In 1998 the NIH moved the bottom overweight BMI from 27 down to 25. With that simple move, a slew of Americans became overweight overnight. Guthman suggests that we are seeing a trend of weight increase, particularly for those on the top end of the scale. But many folks remained in the normal and overweight range, both of which are not correlated with health issues or early death. So where is the crisis, she asks?   This emergency rhetoric has real consequences for those on the higher end of the scale. “The epidemic language", Guthman argues,  "is somewhat cruel, simultaneously minimizing the violence of serious plagues and overstating the association between corpulence with death” (32).

Fatness and Social Censure

Guthman  wants us to think hard about how we (the media and individuals) discuss fatness. We are disgusted by weight. We behead the overweight in news stories about obesity. We berate people on reality television—and later honor them with money and admiration for becoming thinner.  We have pathologized and stigmatized fatness.  And we have made thinness magical beauty. The thin and fit are idealized for just that being thin and fit, even if they are idiots or  assholes. And the thin and the fit get to make their body type the medical and social ideal.  With thinness set as the sought-after norm, it is no coincidence that doctors and medical scientists have made overweight and obesity a national health crisis. Guthman doesn’t give scientists and doctors a free pass; she thinks they are just as susceptible to culture cues as the rest of us. They have done much to make overweight and obesity abnormal and sick. 

Here's an excellent example of how the anti-fat, personal responsibility rule finds its way into the collective consciousness. And how we have given thin, wealthy, and famous folks the right to publicly humiliate the overweight.

The Energy Balance Model: The Answer
Guthman goes after the much touted remedy for overweight and obesity- that is the “stop shoving crap into your cakehole and go to the gym” thesis .  Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman,  Marion Nestle and others routinely point to this "calories in, calories out" formula as the solution to America's weight crisis. Guthman, on the other hand, argues that  1) Weight loss ain't easy and the food reduction, exercise increase remedy has been show not to work for many, many well-intentioned, good people. 2) She also, more controversially, suggests that this decades long weight increase may have nothing to do with eating too much and moving too little. She wonders how the energy balance model applies to the 73.5% increase, from 1980-2001,  of overweight babies. Robert Lustig, from UCal San Fran., humorously notes that that this is a “segment that doesn’t go to the movies, can’t chew and was never that much into exercise” (99). These babies certainly aren't eating too much and slacking off, so what's up with their weight increase?

Why are we fat, then?
Obesogen or EDCs (Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals). What are obesogens, you ask? They are Guthman's word for chemicals that work to disrupt normal hormonal functioning and cause weight gain. We've been swimming in a pool of  food additives and agricultural chemicals with hormone disrupting properties; they are responsible for our nation's spare tire. In light of obesogens, the obsession with individual consumption and fitness is energy poorly spent from Guthman's perspective.  Instead we should dial down the obesity hysteria and scolding and start the hard work of reform and regulation of our food system

Guthman's obesogens proposal got heated responses from readers of  her New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle articles. Everyone wanted to testify to how they lost weight by eating less and exercising, that it was a matter of settled physics, that Americans were fatsos and they needed to get off their lazy butts and... Anecdotal evidence and ad hominems.  The ferocity of the comments indicates how loyal we are to the idea that weight gain is a personal problem and a failure of will power. 

The Limits of Capitalism 
For Guthman, Capitalism, not lazy Americans, created this food crisis by making and selling cheap food  packed with chemical fillers and additives. And capitalism made these cheap foods necessary by decreasing the average American income since the 1960s. Adjusted for inflation, weekly wages have gone from $302.52 in 1964 to $277.57 in 2004. Moreover our consumer debt has risen precipitously in this same period. Cheap food and other goods keep underpaid Americans consuming (169). 

In the hands-off, de-regulatory context of the 1980s, 90s and 00s, food producers have poured pollution into the air, water, and our bodies with reckless abandon.We imbibed all this and got fat. And now capitalism is offering a solution through more consumption. The overweight can buy their way out of fatness through Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers or follow the more ascetic and aesthetic local-organic path.   

My Take-Away
I am enthralled by Guthman's no-holds-barred attack on America's obesity fixations. I am right with her for most of the book. But I need more evidence for the obesogens theory. She builds this argument on too few studies, while she simultaneously critiques obesity epidemic advocates for relying on limited  science. Until there is more proof for obesogens, I will hold my breath. I did not cover the very compelling parts of Weighing In that look at the class and racial implications of the obesity epidemic and the alternative food movement's role in bolstering obesity mania.  I encourage you to get the book and read these parts OR stay tuned for future posts that take on these issues.