Mató & Maple Syrup » Health

Julia Child, food, cooking, and the environment

alexandra — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:04:21 +0000

Not having grown up in North America, I hadn’t heard of Julia Child until a few years ago and hadn’t actually watched any clips of her show until last night (!). But I’m catching up. I’m now in the middle of reading her memoir of her years in France during the 1950s, when she finally discovered her life’s calling. The book has brought me to tears many times as I understand exactly what she means when she talks about how a particular food can blow your mind. But that’s not what I want to write about right now – I want to review the book when I finish it. This post is more about listing some interesting articles and videos about the food industry I’ve come across recently.

One of the interesting aspects of Julia Child’s memoirs is precisely her disregard for the then new industrialization of food production in America. She doesn’t measure words when describing her disdain for pressure cookers (“the stinking, nasty, bloody pressure cooker… [i]t made everything taste nasty!), margarine (which she called “the other spread”) or even the quality of produce and meats. When researching poultry for her cooking book, she came to the conclusion that the “American poultry industry had made it possible to grow fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear.”

After books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, or films like Food Inc., we now know that the process made more than simply make food taste bad. In the video below, Bill Maher interviews Michael Pollan on the subject:

Also interesting is this article on the NYT in which Pollan talks about how “American cooking became an spectator sport” in which we have become completely fascinated with cooking shows and celebrity chefs while fewer of us actually cook. Most people assume cooking is complicated, time-consuming, and not worth the effort since it is so much cheaper to simply buy ready-to-eat food. That’s very sad. As Michael Pollan points out in the video above, “what happens on your plate represents your most important engagement with the natural world.” It is also our clearest engagement with ourselves and mental and physical well-being.
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While Pollan is great and I’m a big fan, he’s not always right, of course. For some interesting critiques of Pollan’s latest article, take a look at this and this.

Michael Ruhlman offers another interesting comment on Pollan’s article and the influence of Julia Child. Take a look here.

Diet, nutritionism, and health

alexandra — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:58:04 +0000

I believe we are what we eat but for the longest time the whole notion of counting calories, talking about carbs, fats, proteins and nutrients seemed a bit odd to me. I tried supplements and stopped because I don’t care what anybody says – I don’t think my urine should be bright orange/yellow/green. So here I was interested in food but utterly confused by all the nutrition advise out there. Until I discovered Michael Pollan. As a historian, I can recognize his research as good and his arguments as solid. But most importantly, it all makes sense in a way that even our great grandmother would agree. If you don’t have time to read his books, at least watch this video.

Food Matters

alexandra — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:57:59 +0000

I wrote about Mark Bittman before but it was only today that I finally got his newly released book, Food Matters: a Guide to Conscious Eating. Much like Michael Pollan, to whom he often refers in the book, Mark Bittman calls us to be more conscientious of our eating habits and adopt what he calls “sane eating.” There are seven basic guidelines:

Eat fewer animal products than average
Eat all the plants you can manage
Make legumes part of your life
Whole grains beat refined carbs
Snack on nuts or olives
When it comes to fats, embrace olive oil
Everything else is a treat, and you can have treats daily

Numbers 1 & 2 are the hardest for those in a strict meat-and-potatoes kind of diet. But you can cut down gradually, making dishes that combine meat and grains to reduce the proportion of meat. Number 7 will depend on how you feel. If you are feeling fine, losing weight and your doctor is happy, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t indulge on your daily dessert but if you are not getting the results you want, it might be better to reduce the treats.

His plan is not really a diet in a faddish sense. He doesn’t preach we must eat all organic although he admits that eating what is produced locally and in season would be best not only for us but for the environment. And this is where all this eating sanely leads to – better health for us and for the earth we live in. Bittman started becoming more conscious of his eating habits after he read a scientific report that showed that the meat industry was responsible for producing one-fifth of greenhouse gases, much more than the transportation industry. At the same time his doctor raised the red flag telling him his cholesterol and blood sugars were out of wack. By switching the proportions of animal and vegetable products, cutting junk food and prossessed food (anything with more than 5 ingredients or with ingredients with more than five syllables), he lost 15 pounds in the first month, his lab work turned out normal in the second month, and within four months he slept better than ever before, lost 35 pounds (his weight eventually stabilized) and he felt confortable and well with his new eating style.Without counting calories, nutrients, feeling hungry, or rebounding.

Makes a lot of sense to me and I do try to follow many of these tips in my daily life.

Worth a read if you feel your health is below optimal and/or you are concerned about the environment.

Check the Globe and Mail review of the book.