Movin’ to Foodsville

It’s not often that my contribution to infodoodads could have just as easily been a post here, but the site I reviewed, Foodsville, is pretty sweet if you’re at all interested in the history of food.

Food for thought: Pollan’s In Defense of Food

If you consume any media at all, I’m sure you heard Michael Pollan discussing his new book In Defense of Food last month. His catchy “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” mantra was picked up not only by the New York Times, where he originally published the article that spawned the book, but also Slate, NPR (more than once) and pretty much everyone else.

I was excited to get my hands on the book, and read it in less than 24 hours. First in line for a library copy, four weeks later it’s overdue (bad librarian!) and I’m still trying to figure out what it was about the book that left me flat. I can’t imagine arguing with his “eat food…” premise, but I’m not so sure about the way Pollan gets there.

Pollan spends much of In Defense of Food decrying “nutritionism,” a term he found in the 2002 article “Sorry Marge (.pdf)” that criticizes of the “use of and reliance on nutritional categories, and this whole framework of analysis, to guide us in our everyday quest to eat well.” Instead of science, Pollan writes, he relies “mainly on the authority of tradition and common sense” to tell us “how to eat.” This philosophy he contrasts to “letting scientists decide the menu,” “a mistake,” he tells us, because “they simply do not know enough.” It seems that here he either misunderstands or misrepresents scientific research. Science is in the business of describing our best understanding of the world up to this point. It changes, and rightly so. Each individual study adds a tiny building block of knowledge to all the others that came before it, and no single finding alone means as much as the synthesis of the findings together. The food industry, on the other hand, and is more than willing to cherry-pick the science that will help it sell food, and government agencies seem happy to turn a blind eye to the behavior. This is a relationship Pollan does not fail to discuss, yet he seems to ultimately hold science to blame. The distortion of science is not a good reason to reject science itself.

An assignment I always like to see coming through the library is one where students are asked to find an article in a popular source like Time or Newsweek that reports on a recent scientific study. Then, they have to find a copy of the actual scholarly article, the primary source, and compare the conclusions drawn in the two articles. Typically they find that the scientists are fairly circumspect, qualifying their conclusions and noting the limitations of their studies, while the reporting on the studies tends to simplify (and therefore distort, in many cases) the findings. These students are learning to read critically, and they’re learning how we synthesize data into knowledge, skills that are in short supply. The trouble with nutritionism is not bad science, it’s an inappropriate use of science, egged on by marketing, supported by government agencies like the USDA, and made possible by low scientific literacy.

The end of In Defense of Food covers Pollan’s recommendations for how to eat. These are suggestions like “don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does” or “cook, and if you can, plant a garden.” These are the kinds of suggestions that can’t possibly hurt anyone who chooses to follow them, whether they do it because they don’t trust science or because they make sense given what we know about diet and the human body up to this point. Trouble is, the food industry is just as happy to use Pollan’s advice to promote their products as they are to use science. The Salt Institute picked right up on the “don’t trust all that science-y stuff, just eat what you like” message when “Unhappy Meals” was published last January. Caveat lector.

Everyday Food is a tool I use

I’m doing my part to help keep Martha in new furniture; I subscribe to Living, Blueprint, and Everyday Food. This is not a new habit for me (though, in my defense, all my subscriptions are gifts.) While I enjoy all the magazines, Everyday Food is the only one I really use on a regular basis. The recipes are simple and issues focus on foods that are both in season and easily found in a regular grocery store. While I have made a few things that I wouldn’t make again, for the most part I’ve been happy with my results when using EF recipes. The photography is appealing and the directions are clear. I now have about three years’ worth of the magazines and frequently flip through my back issues for inspiration when I’m making our weekly menus and I’ve even used several recipes from the holiday issues when preparing Thanksgiving dinner.

You don’t have to subscribe to the magazine to test out some of the recipes. Many are available through the Everyday Food website (though I wish the links were more user-friendly. Those links are hideous!) There’s also an Everyday Food cookbook called Great Food Fast (find in a library). Though I haven’t looked at the book myself, according to the reviews on amazon.com the recipes are arranged seasonally. This preserves one of the great things about the magazine, the fact that each issue’s highlighted ingredients and methods of preparation are geared to the season in which it arrives.

I know Martha doesn’t need my help, but if you’re trying to plan weekly menus Everyday Food is worth your time. If you’re looking for other menu planning & budgeting tools you might be interested in my “Tools I use” post too.

Thrifty? Us?

Where did our $75/week grocery budget come from, anyway? Honestly, it was what I had estimated we were spending on groceries before I actually went back over the statements from last year. It just sounded about right. In reality, we were spending over $500 most months. I was aghast at this figure, but it turns out it’s somewhere between a “moderate” and “liberal” food budget according to the USDA. Our $300/month budget, on the other hand, is much closer to the USDA’s “thrifty food plan”, a topic that’s been popular recently (the comments are especially interesting on that last link). Knowing that $300/month for two people is considered “thrifty” makes me feel a little better about managing to go over budget every month. Knowing that there are plenty of other people who are successfully eating well on $75/week, however, makes me wonder why we’re having trouble.

Although I know how much we’ve spent on groceries for the past six months, I don’t know how those dollars break down.  Is it our produce habit that breaks us?  Too much meat? I’m inspired by this NPR review of the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats; over the next month I am going to keep track of not only what we spend, but how we spend it.  I think the pictures of a weeks worth of groceries are absolutely fascinating–I’m hoping my library will order the book because I really want to see what the rest of the families eat each week!

Food for thought: Plenty

Inspired by a meal created from ingredients found within walking distance, authors Alisa Smith and James (J.B.) MacKinnon decided to spend a year eating only what could be grown, raised, foraged, or caught within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver, B.C. home. They chronicled their “raucous year of eating locally” in Plenty (or, as it is titled in Canada, The 100-Mile Diet) and continue to write about eating locally at www.100milediet.org.

Each author wrote chapters from his or her point of view, a technique that can be distracting if the voices are too distinct, but one that seemed to work for this book. The challenges of eating locally occasionally seemed to cause (or at least intensify) challenges in their relationship. These vignettes seem, at first, tangential to the topic of eating locally until you consider just how often we negotiate food in a relationship. What restaurant shall we choose? What do you want from the store? What’s for dinner?

Eating locally in the face of a global food market is bound to be challenging. Many react to the idea of the 100-mile diet by assuming it’s not possible where they live; I have to admit I’m a little guilty of this myself. Plenty, however, is not prescriptive; Smith and MacKinnon aren’t calling on their readers to do exactly what they did. They write early in the book about wanting to challenge themselves to eat locally rather than a desire for a staunch devotion to rules. Perhaps local eating will look a little different where you live, but don’t assume it’s not possible without looking into it. Although Smith and MacKinnon “walked smack into a year of strict 100-mile eating“, an experiment that provided great experiences to write about, they recommend learning from their mistakes and figuring out what will work for you. Even one local meal is a place to start.

Looking at my 100 miles I’ve already discovered we would have access to wheat, apples and other orchard fruits, plus nearly all the fruits, veggies, meat and dairy products available at our local farmers’ market. With some planning, preserving, and a maybe a little more freezer space, it looks like we actually might be able to comfortably go localvore. Well, ok, I’m sure we’d still drink coffee, but it’s a start!

Obviously Plenty has already inspired me to consider my foodshed. Now if we could just find a source for locally-sourced Snickers bars, Jeff might be willing to go along with me….

Find Plenty in a library.
Find Plenty in a bookstore.

Getting my garden started

A few years ago I checked a book out from the library called McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container (find this book in a library). Most books about container gardening focus on flowers and foliage, but this book was all about growing edibles–from apples to zucchini–in containers, no matter how small your space. Included in the vast amount of helpful information in this book is the soil depth needed for each particular plant–I was surprised to learn that many plants need only six inches of soil, and some need even less. I assumed growing vegetables in containers would require many cubic feet of soil and big containers; both expensive items when you’re starting a garden from scratch. I returned the book without planting anything except the idea that container gardening might be easier than I thought.

Regular gardening always seemed a little out of reach; all the information about pH, soil amendments, transplants, fertilizer, etc. is overwhelming. Container gardening, on the other hand, is a little more straightforward. Dirt (or potting soil, to be more accurate) is purchased with the right balance of organic materials, etc. already in the bag. Containers can be easily covered if the temperature is taking a plunge, and the small scale of the garden means pests are usually easy to spot and remove.

I went back to the library & was happy to find Bountiful Container again; this year I didn’t just read about container gardens, I finally took the plunge. So far I’ve planted radishes, mesclun, bok choy and swiss chard, fava beans and peas–all plants that are supposed to survive cool weather. When it warms up (June? Maybe?) I’m hoping to add tomatoes, squashes, and edible flowers to the lineup. Even though I’ve seen ice in my containers some mornings, my intrepid little radishes and lettuces are already growing. I’m so excited!

Here’s what twelve days of Central Oregon weather will do….