Healthy eating expert Michael Pollan
says,
I really like "don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." That kind of gets at the essence.
Our great grandparents lived on tinned salted beef from lead-lined cans, salt, lard, bacon, dried beans, salt, herring soaked in oil, molasses, bread flavored with bacon drippings, salt, tea, coffee, and occasionally some fresh fruits and vegetables that were contaminated with E. coli. For a chaser they smoked unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarettes.
Healthy eating expert Michael Pollan says,
13 comments:
We can live healthy lives on modern processed food. The "problem" is it's so cheap, so we consume more of it. That's a normal human reaction that I think is imprinted in our genetics.
Just eat less of it.
They smoked filtered menthols to cure a sore throat on doctors orders.
Yeah the availability of food in this country is astounding.
Funny you say that but it was my doctor that turned me onto cigars. I mentioned I started smoking a pipe (hey, it was college) and he mentioned how and which cigars he likes. That was 21 years ago. I am finally quitting and am looking forward to not doing it any more.
Though I am inclined to say that your argument actually does somewhat agree with what Pollan said. It was more about eating whole foods. Oil soaked herring or sardines is actually not to bad since it's a good fish stored in a vegetable oil, all of which is whole food. Sure, he does go off on the more vegetables less meat thing but his book isn't that bad. The wife and I quit eating packaged food when she found out she had an aggressive cancer. It was largely on the recommendation of her oncologist and radiatiotherapist that we actively started watching what we eat.
No, the food didn't cure the cancer. The people that say that are full of it. But, we concentrated on eating more nutritious foods that were easier for her to digest. Since she ended treatments a few months ago, we are still eating "real" food and both really don't like eating fast or really processed foods. The funny thing is, I really have learned to love pukkola for breakfast and I even make my own Greek yogurt now. I do love corn flakes though and would never give them up. Still, I'd rather have my own stuff than the store bought. Plus it's cheaper.
In the end we die...no fountain of youth, no magic bullets....live and love life, give thanks for what you have, and avoid the landmines on the road. Now I do eat "whole foods", but gosh if someone else wants to live on Big Macs more power to them, we all make personal choices all day long-some good, some not so good.
Don't forget head cheese. From Wiki "Head cheese is not a cheese but a meat jelly made with pieces from the head of a calf or pig." My grandpa loved head cheese. This must prove what Nietzsche said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
-Mark
And all of that was washed down with Manhattans made with cheap Canadian whiskey.
The whole "pink slime and ammonia" thing on CR was enough to convince me to skip McDonald's et al, forever. I just quit soda too (I'll still have an occasional one so as not to be "the PITA" at the backyard BBQ).
I just started a huge garden this year...seems like a good time to start growing quality food close to home.
Steph, what's wrong with soda? If it's the corn syrup thing, there are plenty of Mexican soft drinks in the local grocery stores that use 100% pure cane sugar. And just 50 cents/bottle.
Real head cheese is pretty much impossible to get since the whole mad cow scare caused people to quit eating cow brains. Still, I'd rather have head cheese than blood pudding/sausage or haggis.
Give me big plates of all of the above before looking at lutefisk. Oh dear God, no wonder the Vikings were always such fierce and ticked off warriors. I'd want to kill after eating nothing but lutefisk.
Lou, I think I just decided to get "whole food religion" and try to cut down on all the processed stuff out there-- and since soda has aspartame and all sorts of acids and benzoates and other stuff I can't easily pronounce, it seemed like a good thing to cut out. Especially because I was just mindlessly drinking can after can of it...
Like This Blog is Not Here, I've decided to focus on eating nutrient-rich foods. And although I don't make my own Greek yogurt (yet! totally googling that next), I've found I now prefer the healthier foods...I try not to be too rigid about it though-- if I want a bit of junk, I have it (fast food aside-- I simply can't look at it now without thinking "pink slime and ammonia" and that's enough to quell any urge to eat it) but I find that I no longer even crave junk. Funny that.
If you had to list the chemical names in fruits and vegetables, they'd be just as scary as the list of ingredients as a diet Coke.
And don't drink too much dihydrogen monoxide. It is a major killer when encountered in excessive quantities, although it is present in pretty much everything you eat.
(But your great grandma doubtless knew of it and would have loved to have a clean source of it, which was rather rare in her day...)
Dihydrogen monoxide, funny. I actually got my kids to start making signs protesting the schools use of dihydrogen monoxide because I explained that it kills thousands of people per year, caused the erosion of the Grand Canyon, etc.
The ones that took the time to look at what it was passed. I managed to keep the ones that realized what it was quiet. It was hilarious.
Very effective piece of writing, thanks for your post.
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