Channel Your Granny
In my opinion, Michael Pollan is one of the most important food writers of our generation. His reports on cattle feedlots and grass fed alternatives have deepened our understanding the food supply chain from farm to table; he’s influenced where we shop and what we buy in our grocery stores; and he has highlighted the importance of farmers’ markets, and aided the efforts of so many people who work to encourage the support of local foods.
I very much enjoyed Pollan’s latest book: In Defense of Food. Its two big themes are the processing and industrialization of food and the errors the U.S. government has made in its food recommendations, particularly the lipid or fat hypothesis. I’ll leave the discussion of the latter theme for another time. In this post, I want to focus on that first theme, and Pollan’s arguments and recommendations that so closely echo my own strong beliefs.
In Defense of Food begins with very simple advice: ” ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ That, more of less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.” (pg. 1, first paragraph). I consider Dr. Kracker very much to be part of this admonishment to eat real food!
As an adult approaching the 60-year mark, I very clearly remember the evolution (some would say “devolution”) of food during the second half of the 20th century, when what food Americans bought and where we bought it changed radically in a very short period of time. I tell my two kids that my own parents blessed me with a hearty appreciation for the goodness of fresh food. We did not have a large garden in our backyard in the Midwest, but my father always shopped the farmers market in Kalamazoo, Michigan and later, the market in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Kalamazoo sits on deep glacial soil and black loam, and I remember its market stacked high with lettuce and produce. (Huge salads were almost a staple in my family growing up, to this day, my two brothers, five sisters and I all share a love of the oversized salad bowl.) I will always remember the fall apple harvest (especially Jonathans and Ida Reds) in Fort Wayne. Those experiences forever imprinted my taste in apples. To this day I have trouble appreciating the sweeter varieties that predominate in supermarkets today, since none of them can match the level of crisp texture and acidity that will forever define true “appleness” for me. Sadly, because they do not ship well without bruising, both the Idas and Jonathans never make it to Texas any more, and I only taste then when I travel north in the autumn.
In those days farming was by no means all organic, but it was much more natural. The use of manure as fertilizer was still very common, a reality I always noticed as soon as we left Kalamazoo’s city limits and the not unwelcome odor of cow manure blew in through the open windows of the car. (And no, it didn’t stink, it was simply a smell that defined where we lived and it was always familiar.)
“Defining where we live” is one of the central benefits of eating locally grown and produced foods. And Michael Pollan argues that eating local and eating fresh are also important factors to curing what is wrong with food and health. Thankfully, with the renaissance of the farmers markets, this niche of small, local producers is growing, and according to a recent article in the New York Times, more and more young adults are buying land and dedicating themselves to serving the local markets. In Austin, Texas, my current home town, we have the largest farmers market in Texas and one of the larger in the U.S., and it is very loyally supported by the surrounding communities of consumers, farmers, and other food artisans. Including Dr. Kracker—we’ve had a booth there for four years.
In his book In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan does not recommend that we only buy non-processed food. He recognizes that the amount of time that we have to buy, prepare and cook food has changed, and that today, the stay-at-home parent is as almost uncommon as the family garden. But as processed food has come to dominate what we eat, so has the incidence of chronic disease. Pollan lays out in wonderful, frightening detail how industry removed the inconvenient nutrients and vitamins from foods that limited its shelf life. Some were added back again piecemeal, but without any recognition of the complexity of the nutritional package. And today we’re discovering that the “whole” is much greater than the sum of the parts; that by eliminating the bonds among compounds, enzymes and nutrients, well-intentioned manufacturers ended up delivering failed foods. Moreover, this nutrient-by-nutrient approach failed to recognize that a whole food’s intricate biochemical essence also interacts with our body’s own complexity in ways that we can’t yet fully appreciate. Processing resulted in calorie-dense but nutrient-poor foods, poorer health, dental problems and the reliance on an expensive medical system to fix the problems caused by the new way of eating. This nutrient-based approach has brought us to the dietary disasters that are so much a reality today.
Pollan has simple recommendations when it comes to shopping well: when it comes to processed food, don’t buy it if your grandmother wouldn’t have recognized the ingredients on the label. So I’m paraphrasing when I say, “If you want to return to buying healthy foods, just channel your granny!”
This is not to say that all was hunky-dory in the days of my grandparents. Yes, the big salad bowl and fresh brownies awere fixtures in their house, but I also remember dense clouds of cigarette smoke and heavy drinking. (Then again, like the French with their Galois and wine, maybe their food protected them, because my grandparents did not die of chronic disease. Nor did my father, and my mother is still going strong, living independently at age 86!)
The natural foods industry is redefining how we process food to meet variety and convenience that customers want. Natural foods and organic foods are by and large minimally processed, and their labels are easy to read. (Although there is a disturbing trend in the world of natural foods to attempt to replicate the very heavily processed foods that are part of our health and nutritional crisis. One has to ask if “natural” really makes a difference in this case. Do we need an organic Oreo? ) Granted this food is more expensive to make and sell because of its artisan preparation and shorter shelf life, but I would bet that the money we save by eating fresher foods and whole grains will be offset by not having to go to the medical establishment to fix the problems caused by empty calories. After all, whole grains are shown to be as effective and much less costly than stents at preventing heart disease.
In Defense of Food has many more engaging themes such as the lipid hypothesis and the enshrining of carbohydrates, a topic guaranteed to shock, anger, entertain and enlighten all at the same time. I’ve touched on only a very small part of his book, and urge you to buy it to get the benefit of all of Pollan’s passion and insight. I’d also love to hear your comments, thoughts, and especially your memories of the whole foods and farmers markets you might have been lucky to enjoy in your own childhoods.
Until next time, thank you for joining the health careful and enjoying Dr. Kracker’s whole grains and whole seeds, and many thanks to Michael Pollan for a thoughtful, inspiring book.
